A picture may be worth a thousand words, but when it comes to weight loss, photos can only tell us so much. Yes, you may think you’re seeing someone transformed to a “healthy weight,” but unless you’re their doctor, you don’t really know what’s happening behind the scenes, and can only speculate. We’re so conditioned to believing that a lower weight is automatically a better one that, especially in summer swimsuit season, we heap praise on those who’ve dropped pounds without knowing how they went about it.

When celeb magazines show photos of dramatic weight loss out of context, they only reinforce unhealthy practices