Instagram Is Where Fitness Goes To Die

Social media is both a good thing and a bad thing for the fitness community.

On the one hand it gives experienced trainers access to a worldwide audience, providing them with a way to help more people than ever.

But on the other, it gives ANYONE access to a worldwide audience – regardless of experience or qualifications – so instead of finding that top class PT you hoped for, you wind up being blasted by hundreds of reels from orange folks with luminous white teeth yelling “#YouAreEnough” before showing you 10 perfectly-angled photos of their butt which say otherwise.

Fucking kill me now.

Living Their Best #FakeLife

It’s now the norm for people to present an unauthentic version of themselves online.

It’s not the real you, it’s the brand you.

But why are we so concerned with trying to obtain social acceptance from total strangers?

After all, if we look back to our childhoods most of us would agree that our heroes were the rule-breakers, the mavericks, and the people who genuinely didn’t give a fuck whether anyone liked them or not.

(Mine was Axl Rose)

But for some reason, pandering to strangers for likes and follows has now become a barometer for gaging how popular somebody is, or how knowledgeable they are, which is frankly absurd.

Handing strangers this kind of power over your self-worth is a slippery slope, my friend.

Listen to Joe Donnelly:

“We now live in a world of selfie posting, ego floating, insecure and shallow persona. But when your confidence is built upon a foundation of compliments from subjective third-parties, you become nothing more than a mental prisoner to the shallow words of others.

Essentially, you have no self-confidence.

In order to be truly successful you must first learn how free yourself of this quest for social acceptance, because you can never really be free, nor successful, if your whole demeaner hangs upon the meaningless comments of others. Instead, you will become an insecure mental slave, posting edited photographs of yourself online for strangers in the hopes of achieving your daily fragile ego boost.”

– Joe Donnelly

The Sea Of Bad Fitness Advice On Instagram Gets Deeper Every Day

This is the bit I was really looking forward to writing, because Instagram is a fucking treasure trove of incorrect fitness information.

I can’t decide who is the worst…

There’s the personal trainers who deem themselves too cool to need any recognized qualifications (?!), and the coaches who’ve never actually coached anyone in a gym (“it’s all online, brah”), and the so-called “fitfluencers” who come up with body shaming trends, and the minor celebrities who nab sponsorship deals with supplement brands and then start handing out crazy dieting advice to their star-struck followers.

Fuck, don’t even get me started on “detox tea”…

(No, you didn’t misread it. This reality tv star got in trouble for telling all her followers that they can eat as much as they want without gaining weight by popping a carb blocker pill – which she was of course selling.)

Thankfully the industry is beginning to clamp down on this type of misinformation, but there’s still a long way to go before it reaches the required standards.

Heck, just recently we saw a court order drop the ban hammer on a couple of misleading-as-fuck advertisements featuring reality television stars Katie Price, Lauren Goodger, and Georgia Harrison, where the judge ruled that each celebrity should’ve been more responsible and more aware that the bulk of their social media audience is teenage girls.

NOTE: It appears TikTok is now giving Instagram a run for its money in terms of being the #1 source of fitness-related dumbfuckery. The same rules apply, people.

instagram celebrities who give bad fitness advice

the mental health dangers of social media

Fuck Those Fucked Up Fucking Fuckers

As you can see, I’m not the biggest fan of social media.

One of the best moves I made in recent years was to radically reduce the amount of time I spend on it, and I encourage anyone else who feels burned out by the conveyor belt of nonsense on there to follow suit.

On a more serious note, I know I’ve made a lot of jokes in this article to get my point across (it’s my way), but there are serious undertones here. You see, aside from the obvious risk of depression that comes with presenting an unauthentic version of yourself online, there has also been a dramatic rise in the number of folks who are clinically addicted to taking selfies (selfitis; it’s a thing), and body confidence issues as a result of spending several hours per week (or even per day!) scrolling through endless reels of “perfect-looking people” and then beating themselves up about it. (1)

So listen up:

You genuinely ARE enough. The authentic version of you is the only one the world really needs. Social media’s highlight reel mentality can make us feel otherwise, but in that’s because it’s fake as fuck. One lady did a fantastic job of documenting this, by taking these photos just a few moments apart:

So there you have it, that’s my take on Instagram.

And the next time you see a ridiculously polished half-naked selfie with a 700-word caption which essentially just reads “Never give up – and please buy these fat burners!”, hopefully you won’t beat yourself up about it.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll click that unfollow button and put your phone down, because they really don’t deserve your attention. Fuck those fuckers.