Whenever I open a health, fitness or outdoors adventure magazine and am assaulted with images of buff guys who look like they are sculpted out of steel cable, two things happen: First, I suffer a wave of anxiety and despair because, despite my diligent workout schedule and attention to diet, I don't look at all like those guys. Then, still being juvenile, I grab a pen and draw mustaches and warts all over the pictures.

Turns out I'm not alone (at least on the feeling-lousy issue). A recently completed study showed that men and women who while exercising had access to magazines featuring images of ultra-fit people reported higher levels of anxiety, depression and tension afterward than before. By comparison, a control group whose reading options were limited to National Geographic reported reduced anxiety and depression — and better overall mood — after the workout.

The study, which isn't published but has a sufficiently academic pedigree to be worth attention, involved 64 men and women ages 19 to 26 recruited from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater community. Men in the ultra-fit-image group read FitnessRX magazine ("Your ultimate prescription for the perfect body"); women read Fitness ("Slim and Firm for Summer!"). The issue of National Geographic read by the control group contained no images of super-fit people, says lead study author Ann Wertz Garvin, an associate professor of kinesiology at the university.

All participants worked out once, for 30 minutes, at their own chosen pace, which for almost all of them was "moderate intensity — around 60 to 70 percent" of their aerobic capacity, says Garvin. Participants had no access to televisions, iPods or other media during the workout. None of the participants was suffering from clinical depression or anxiety. All participants said they did not have clinical depression or anxiety.

National Geographic readers all reported reduced anxiety and depression scores, and elevated mood, after exercise. Garvin says this would be expected of any group of exercisers after a single workout, based on numerous prior studies.

All participants in the ultra-fit-image group reported either a rise in anxiety and depression markers or no change. The differences in the groups' scores, derived from an industry-standard questionnaire, were statistically significant, Garvin says.

She designed this study after hearing many comments from people in her research on eating disorders about the impact of ultra-fit media images. Garvin says she wanted to learn if such imagery could affect the well-established link between exercise and elevated disposition.

"If (people are) bombarded with ultra-fit images and that's going to affect them, that's something we need to know," Garvin says. "If one of the reasons you work out is to feel better, you might not want to pick up these magazines. They're selling low self-esteem, and if they can sell that, they can sell their magazines."

She says she got the same results when she replicated the study in nonexercisers — i.e., people who were asked to just sit and read magazines.

So what, you ask, does this mean to you? We don't recommend the wholesale dismissal of a type of publication (or magazine genre) based solely on the images therein — or on the results of one study.

But you may want to choose reading material that does not picture pecs the size of small farm animals and abs you can play the xylophone on. Exercise should make you feel good. Throw overboard anything that makes you feel lousy.