You’re scrolling through Instagram, and there between vacation pictures from your cousin and engagement pictures from some girl you knew in high school, you see them: the fitstagrammers. Their perfectly toned bodies make you envious. The stats from their latest workout make you feel so out of shape. Their organic-paleo-gluten-free protein shakes look intimidating, but delicious. They look so happy, so healthy, so good.
You want what they have, so you follow a few accounts. You take note of what they do. The girl with the abs you wish you had does an hour and a half of cardio a day, so that’s what you’ll do. She eats 1300 calories a day and only eats ice cream on Christmas, so that’s what you’ll eat. She drinks nothing but kombucha and lemon water, so that’s what you’ll drink. If it’s working for her, it’ll work for you, right?
Except there’s a flaw in your plan: you’re not her. Everybody is different, and everybody reacts differently to different diets and exercise programs. Idolizing fitstagrammers as the pinnacle of health and attempting to emulate everything they do can be dangerous for a multitude of reasons.
For starters, just because someone posts a sweaty gym selfie and says that they just ran ten miles doesn’t mean that they did. They could have run three miles. They could have walked one mile. They could have just worked up that sweat in a sauna, and nobody on the Internet would be any wiser.
But even if they did do exactly what they claim to have done, trying to copy the fitness plan of a stranger online is a great way to end up frustrated, burnt out, or even injured because it’s made for their fitness level and their abilities, not yours.
If you want to get in shape, find a routine tailored to you. Just because someone you admire can lift 200 pounds doesn’t mean you have to start out trying to lift that much. Just because someone online is a runner and looks great doesn’t mean you have to be a runner to look great.
Along the same lines, trying to copy the diet of someone online can also be detrimental to your health. Most of the time, the people promoting certain eating habits aren’t professionally trained in nutrition. They’re just people who have found something that works for them, or that they claim works for them. In reality, they may be eating too little, too much, or missing key nutrients. Either way, you’re not them, so their diet is almost guaranteed not to work for you.
Instead of mimicking others' meal plans, try talking to your doctor or a registered dietician. The amount of food you need to meet your goals is totally unique to you—your height, your weight, your activity level, and a multitude of other personal factors. A professional can help create a custom meal plan to accommodate all of these things and make you the healthiest version of yourself. That’s something you just can’t get from a stranger on social media.
A final reason to take everything you see from fitspo (that’s fit-inspiration, if you haven’t heard) accounts with a grain of salt is that you really don’t know how much of what they’re telling you is the truth. A person’s social media profile is a carefully cultivated window into their life. They are in complete control of what they share and how they are perceived. There could be so much more happening behind the screen that you don’t know about, like eating disorders or obsessive over-exercising.
Online fitness communities can be great sources of motivation and support, but they should never be your guidebook. Find forms of exercise that work for your body, diets that meet all of your body’s needs, and don’t become discouraged if your body never looks exactly like that of someone you saw online. Embrace the things that make you unique, and aim to be the healthiest version of you—not somebody else—that you can be.
