Blog #10 - Kayla Snell - #fitspiration

I'm realizing that many of my blog posts feature something health and fitness related. I don't know if it's a little overboard or not, but if it is at least I can say that good health is something worth spending time and energy on. Today's episode  of health and wellness features Instagram and #fitspiration. To be clear, Instagram is one of my favorite digital media platforms. It allows for creativity for photographers and any old smartphone user to be shared with friends, family, or anyone really. There's a lot of quite beautiful photographs, and I enjoy the minute long cooking videos and other so-called food porn. Plus, I personally really enjoy having a platform where I can share the coolest photos a photography noob such as myself can take.

However, it is also another platform for the continuing discussion on unrealistic standards. The photographs with the most likes are absolutely always digitally edited. This is also hugely important for people looking to better their health. Something we are always told to do is visualize our goals, find role models, and use that to inspire and motivate us. So when we're looking for these role models to inspire us with the ideal body, we look to Instagram's hashtags #fitspiration and/or #bodygoals. The problem is that these goals are so unrealistic. These are people who spend multiple hours every day in the gym, who haven't so much had a slice of birthday cake or a sip of alcohol in years, have given up the right to be spontaneous, and keep track of their calories so closely that they have to measure out their spinach every meal, and more. They're the body builders who've almost hit essential body fat, ( ~4% for men, ~6% for women), people who work in the gym for a living, models who have to remain strictly on diets to remain thin, the genetically gifted, or the ones who bypass all this by taking steroids. None of which they'll admit.

All this changes our society's ideal of the perfect body, and changes our perception of what is attainable. When the people in the #bodygoals photographs start pushing supplements or workout programs insisting that anyone can do it too, regardless of job or family situation, they're not being honest. Suddenly, everybody wants a 6-pack without quite understanding how much work goes into it, how much they will have to give up, or how dangerously low our body fat percentage needs to be in order to achieve it. Before digital media such as Instagram came into people's hands, the only other time I saw anyone with the equivalent to those #bodygoals people were in advertisements in magazines. Those I brushed off because I knew it wasn't authentic, it was touched up, and magazines were more money than I thought they were worth anyway. I only ever picked one up while waiting in the dentist's office. People have been discussing unrealistic standards in beauty for as long as I can remember, but it wasn't until Instagram before I truly saw unrealistic standards and more portrayed as being attainable.

As for what we can do, I think we shouldn't compare ourselves to what we find on the internet so often. I've learned it's much better to compare myself today to myself yesterday. Seeing progress with myself is usually way more motivating than trying to reach the standard of someone who's been doing this 10 more years than I have. Additionally, the online fitness community can do more to be open and honest about the amount of work it actually takes to get somewhere. A couple of such people I follow do, which is a good start.