Joe, I have a complaint about fitness magazines (yes, even yours) and all those TV commercials for home gym equipment and diet pills and the like. They all feature people with perfect bodies – bodies I know are beyond my reach. I was born to big-boned parents and no matter how I try, I can’t get down to a size 4. I’m a size 8, which makes me the smallest woman in my extended family. I guess this isn’t so much a question as a comment. Thanks for reading it!

I hear your frustration and I do understand your point of view. It’s true that I would always use the fittest men and women for my covers of my magazines as well as for the inside stories. So do most of the fitness companies when advertising their products. It does make sense, doesn’t it? We are promoting an ideal, as represented by these very fit people.

Of course no one should judge themselves by the standards set by others. Each of us has our own set of abilities and limitations and only we know how much we’re capable of achieving.

That being said, I’ve always considered out models to be living representatives of goals. In my bodybuilding magazines we would feature images of men like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Franco Columbu, not to make readers feel they had so far to go, but to give them goals to reach. Whether or not they ever reached them wasn’t nearly so important as whether they tried.

So I say to you, try not to become antagonized by the images of fit models you encounter. Rather, let them inspire you to be the best you can be.