"[3] Weider began weight training in his teenage years into order to stand up to bullies, and participated in his first bodybuilding contest at the age of 17.

[2] Weider published the first issue of Your Physique magazine in 1940,[4] and built a set of barbells out of car wheels and axles the same year out of the family garage on Coloniale Street in Montreal.

He designed numerous training courses beginning in the 1950s, including the Weider System of Bodybuilding.

[9][10] Also in 1972, Weider encountered legal problems for claims made in his booklet Be a Destructive Self-Defense Fighter in Just 12 Short Lessons.

The FTC complaint was settled in 1985 when Weider and his company agreed not to falsely claim that the products could help build muscles or be effective substitutes for anabolic steroids.

[12] In 2000, Weider Nutritional International settled another FTC complaint involving false claims made for alleged weight loss products.

The settlement agreement called for $400,000 to be paid to the FTC and for a ban on making any unsubstantiated claims for any food, drug, dietary supplement, or program.

[15][16] On Labor Day 2006, California governor and seven times Mr. Olympia winner Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Weider protégé, presented him with the Venice Muscle Beach Hall of Fame's Lifetime Achievement award.

[17][18] That same year Joe and Ben received the lifetime achievement award by the Young Men's Hebrew Association.