by By Chloe Sesar
People have become glued to their phones and often believe everything they see and hear. Many wellness and fitness influencers post new workouts for certain body parts promising “Summer Bodies” and other harmful terms that continue conversations and feelings of body shaming. Although these workouts may show results for these influencers, everyone’s bodies and minds are different, and posting such content can be triggering, especially if it contains misinformation.
- It Has Been Demonstrated That Fat Loss Cannot Be Targeted And Workouts Are Not One Size Fits All
Trending on Tik Tok and other forms of social media right now is posting fad workouts. This can be helpful to those that struggle with knowing what exercises to perform, but what influencers don’t realize can be damaging is targeting fat loss. It has been proven that spot fat reduction doesn’t work. You have to lose the fat from all places of your body at the same time, so all exercises are important in order to see results. Many of these influencers are not educated on the human body and are therefore not completely reliable, but still, have such large followings.
- Encourage Diet Culture and Disordered Eating
Diet Culture is very popular in the media and edited/unrealistic social media posts from popular influencers help to spread this harmful content. Many adolescents are very unhappy with their body shape and size so this can be particularly bad for younger audiences whose bodies’ are still maturing and developing. Social Media is a highlight reel of reality and does not show followers everything going on in someone’s life. Influencers’ “What I Eat In A Day” videos don’t always show a full day of eating and different daily routines require different nutrients. Diet Culture, Especially for adolescents that are still growing and changing is extremely damaging and teaches people to restrict foods deemed “unhealthy.” In reality, all foods are good in moderation and food should not be seen as a bad thing, but as something necessary to keep our engines running!
- Wellness Influencers Are Fueling The Anti Vaccine Movement
For many years, wellness influencers have tried to use very natural remedies and practices to heal. It was not a surprise when the Covid-19 vaccine came out, many of these same people were advising their followers and Facebook groups against it. There is a big community of wellness influencers that do question the safety of vaccines and are encouraging their followers to remain “unpoked.” Although Tik Tok, Twitter, Youtube and Facebook are able to take some of these posts down, there are so many micro-influencers that throw in a comment here or there about the anti-vax movement that might get overlooked.
Social Media Influencers are always in the spotlight and people scroll through their daily posts and use their advice as words to live by. While we are allowed to “fangirl” and admire these people, it’s important to always be aware of the misinformation embedded in many posts and remember to be kind to our minds and bodies!
Great blog post! I think this is an incredibly important topic to discuss especially because it affects so many people around the globe. As everyone knows by now, social media is just a tiny glimpse into someone’s life and many background things going on without anyone on the internet knowing. I believe that as a fitness influencer, it’s important to note that those workouts and eating habits are what help that specific person and that it won’t work for everyone. There are many ways to work out and lose weight, but many influencers aren’t transparent enough.
Hi Chloe,
Your blog rang so true & is something that should be talked about more often. As a generation that is influenced strongly by the content we consume via social media. I specifically want to highlight the ‘what I eat in a day’ not being helpful. This is especially true since most influencers use macro counting for their goals where not everyone has the same goals or the same calories burned per day. It is a slippery slope since it is helpful to broaden dieting horizons, but it can influence people negatively who simply follow that video as individual advice.
Hello Chloe,
I really agree with the content that you have included in this blog post. Oftentimes, I think that we forget about toxic positivity which can go hand and hand with how wellness and fitness via social media can turn toxic. Though fitness and wellness are great, social media loves to emphasize a one size fits all persona. This can be detrimentally negative regarding the upbringing of a lot of youth. Nonetheless, it is important to note that diet culture is never the best to promote. This can lead to eating disorders as you mentioned and further health problems that could potentially impact people in the future. -Leah Friedman
The argument in this post is spot on! I completely agree that the way TikTok is influencing these diet and workout trends can be very harmful for so many reasons. You nailed it on explaining the harmful effects that this may have. It definitely should be shown more that everyone is build differently and should eat differently in order to consume the proper amount of nutrition. It will be interesting to see this spread, hopefully sooner rather than later, to diminish the toxicity of eating and workout trends.
Great post Chloe! Very relevatn! I found this article very interesting because it brought up such important things to look out for on social media when following a health and wellness influencer. I enjoy looking at these influencers because they motivate me in my own life, but that being said there are some that have made me feel bad about myself. These influencers’ entire life revolves around health and fitness, but the average person is balancing a lot in their day-to-day life that they can’t always focus on just fitness and being healthy. I think influencers put up a front regardless, but when talking about health and body positivity it is necessary to be transparent that not every day you get the best workout and eat all greens. It’s about balance I think that is what we are all trying to navigate in life.
You did an awesome job writing this blog post. This is a super relevant problem on social media. I cannot open TikTok or Instagram without stumbling across posts about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods as well as different work out routines. Wellness and fitness can cross over from helpful to toxic very easily, and more often than not it does. You expressed these issues very well. Every person’s body is different and social media has made it so we can compare every part of ourselves to someone else.
Hey Cloe,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts about fitness and wellness influencers. I also view it critically that a lot of fitness influencers do not have enough expertise or knowledge about the human body but still influence a lot of their followers. I tried some workouts of fitness influencers at home during COVID and sometimes I questioned, if a trained fitness coach would give the same advice for the shown exercises. And following the wrong fitness advice can lead to serious injuries.
Additionally, I totally agree with your point that seeing so many “perfect bodies” and unrealistic body images on Instagram is very unhealthy for young adults because they spend so much time on Socials and can get the impression that their body is only perfect, when they look exactly like those fitness influencers.
Hi Chloe,
This is an amazing topic to discuss. I like the point on the need for young people, whose bodies are still developing to appreciate their situation and stop desiring unrealistic body types. My take is that we need to appreciate who we are, and not be dictated to by influencers and friends on how we should look or appear. Social media have become sites of both the positives and negatives, and we need to decide what fits our needs and make the right choices in terms of the influencers and content we consume.
Hi Chloe! I love that you chose this topic for your post because fitness/wellness influencers are so popular right now. For someone like me who doesn’t have a fast metabolism and isn’t naturally skinny, GymTok especially has become a really toxic place. I’ve always thought it was interesting to see how often influencers disagree in terms of what exercises are best, caloric deficits, diets, etc. which speaks to your point of how influencers typically aren’t formally educated in fitness, training or dieting. At the end of the day, it’s so important for people to remember that any movement is better than none!
Hey Chloe, I loved reading this post! The fitness influencer sphere has always portrayed health and fitness as an achievement reserved only for people who have very little body fat, and constantly reinforces the idea that you have to lose weight in order to be beautiful or even to be treated normally in society. Fitness influencers have so much power in shifting the conversation to be more inclusive of all bodies, yet they consistently choose not to. I hope that in the future, more influencers will become more transparent about what a healthy body actually looks like because it doesn’t all equate to body fat percentages.
I couldn’t agree with you more Chloe…Tik tok is so interesting as a whole. It really just seems like people can get on and say what they want with no fact checking. It’s particularly concerning thinking about all of the young people on the app, and knowing they could be swayed or influenced by the thoughts of those they admire. Wellness is a big theme there and it’s saddening to know just how many people willingly skew the truth for the sake of fitting in or promoting the ideal body, especially if it is not even achievable.
Hi Chloe, you made some really excellent points in your posting. I find that wellness and fitness influencers can be especially toxic to women. There are already toxic social norms around wellness and fitness for women and these influencers just exacerbate that problem. Fitness influencers encourage women to follow their workouts so they can achieve the “ideal” look. Wellness influencer “sell” a lifestyle which is not always achievable for everyone nor healthy for everyone. Health itself is more or less a socially constructed idea.
Great post!
Hi Chloe, you make some really good points. Tiktok and Instagram are filled with fitness influencers telling people how to lose weight. Over quarantine, I fell into the trap of fitness Tiktok and became obsessed with working out and following influencers’ workout routines. It became a toxic part of my life and it took me a long time to realize that every body is different. I see many issues with this fitness culture on social media and now do my best to avoid it. I have learned to focus on what makes me happy and not what influencers are telling me to do.
Hi Chloe!
Such a great and relevant post. As someone who personally takes health and fitness seriously I am glad you brought this up. My TikTok and Instagram is filled with workouts and diets that always seem so great until you actually start doing them. I think it was really creative how you tied this topic into something as current as COVID-19, I had no clue there was a link there. The vaccine is something so critical to society and it is crazy to me that fitness influencers felt comfortable enough to speak on the topic. I agree with your closing statement, it is so important to rethink what you are seeing online and that being kind to yourself is the most important tool to being happy and healthy.
This is so well written. I also think that the prevalence is so accurate. I have noticed the tremendous increase in fittok on my for you page. While this is prevalent in my life I do not want it all over my social media. This post also feels just relatable and with great observations. The way you tied in fitness with the antivaccine was very well done and did not seem with ill intent.
Hi Chloe,
Your post was really well-written and interesting to read. I think it’s easy for people to forget that they are influenced by what they see on social media, even if they don’t think they are. The culture that some social media communities have created can be dangerous for followers, and impact them—both mentally and physically. In this blog post, I wouldn’t have thought to include information about the anti-vax movement, but I think it’s an important component and something to understand.
Hi Chloe!
I really enjoyed this insightful, well-written post. I appreciate you writing about such a prevalent issue within social media influencing and content creation. All too often do I see fitness and wellness content on my instagram and tik tok that highlight eating disorders and promote unhealthy living standards. Thanks for sharing!