Getting a “Summer Body” is Overrated — and Possibly even Dangerous
Photo by Jennifer Burk on Unsplash
Every year before summer, it seems that weight loss becomes the topic on many people’s minds. The pressure to attain a desirable “summer body” can drive some to go on a diet or seek out a new exercise regimen in the months leading up to the season. When done in a safe and sustainable way, improving your health can have a multitude of positive effects, both physically and mentally. However, people often opt for quick fixes over consistent growth when it comes to their health — a problem that has only been exacerbated by social media.
Diet culture, which refers to the discourse around body size and weight loss, often toxically promotes quick weight loss through fads and disordered habits with the promise of attaining a body type that may be unrealistic. What’s worrisome is that university students are one of the most susceptible demographics when it comes to unhealthy eating and exercise habits, given that many are young adults and teenagers under pressure from school, social media, and life in general. In fact, the Child Mind Institute reports that between 10-20% of women and 4-10% of men in college suffer from an eating disorder, a staggering statistic that is still on the rise. It’s not hard to see why following diet culture manifests into eating disorders in so many young people, as restricting food and maintaining rigorous exercise are portrayed as viable ways to look and feel your best.
One app where toxic messages about food and dieting are especially prevalent is TikTok. The astounding amount of content promoting weight loss on TikTok poses a big threat to the well-being of young people, as people under 30 make up the biggest majority of people who use the platform by far. A very popular food-related trend on TikTok over the past few months has been to post “what I eat in a day” videos, which showcase everything that someone eats in a day (though this is often idealized) alongside calorie counts or nutritional information.
Some of these TikToks actually provide viewers with an insight into healthy, balanced diets, which can allow people to draw valuable inspiration for their own health and wellness journeys. However, many of the videos advertise fat-shredding diets that consist of 1200-1500 calories a day or less, which is often not enough to properly fuel a child, let alone a teen or adult. Trends like these normalize undereating and idealize restrictive practices, setting a dangerous precedent for those who look to these videos as legitimate guides for weight loss. Yet the pervasive nature of these types of trends on TikTok – as shown by other videos such as those promoting the low-calorie, water-based alternative to traditional cereal called “nature’s cereal” – make it so these harmful messages about food are hard to escape, even if you are not explicitly looking to TikTok for diet and health advice.
YouTube is another app where diet culture is rampant. Although YouTube is much less youth-centric than TikTok, millions of teens and young adults are still consuming its videos every day, meaning much of the content on the platform is geared towards a younger demographic. Since COVID-19 has taken hold over the world, exercise videos have skyrocketed in popularity on YouTube. At first glance, it is hard to see how this could be negative, as it points to the fact that the pandemic has motivated many to get fit at home. However, adopting a more critical view of these videos reveals a number of issues with the way that bodies are portrayed and advertised.
One of the most popular fitness YouTubers, Chloe Ting, who currently has 20.5 million subscribers, creates workout and diet videos for beginners looking to start their fitness journey. The appeal of Chloe Ting’s videos lies in the fact that her workouts are accessible and require little to no equipment — I have done some of her workouts myself since the pandemic started and found them quite enjoyable. Nevertheless, the way that Chloe Ting promotes her workouts with video titles like “Abs in 2 Weeks” and “SHREDDED ABS Workout” is extremely problematic, as not only do titles like these advocate for rapid and unsustainable weight loss, they also support the idea that to be healthy, you need to be lean. Not only is this mentality towards fitness unhealthy, but it is also unrealistic; not many people could become “shredded” solely using Chloe Ting’s workouts, no matter how much work they put in.
Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash
Social media has become a place where misinformation and ill-informed advice spread like wildfire. This is always dangerous, but when it comes to young people and how they treat their own bodies, weight-loss fads can have serious long-term physical and mental effects, such as forming an eating disorder. Looking to social media and diet culture to attain the coveted “summer body” can be the first stage in developing a disordered relationship with food and exercise for many, who will go on to adopt the mentality that it is better to push yourself to be thin rather than accepting your body as is. This is the real issue with diet culture on the internet — it spreads the belief that lean, fit bodies are somehow more valuable and worthy than bodies that do not adhere to this strict standard, which can ironically cause more harm than good.
Now, more than ever, we should be looking to counter this way of thinking, given the tumult that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought into all of our lives. Our bodies have done so much to simply keep us going through these tough times filled with economic uncertainty, political upheaval, and personal loss that we should be extra loving and forgiving towards them, not harsh and punitive. Achieving peace with your self-image will never happen by forcing yourself to achieve someone else’s idea of a desirable body, it will only happen when you become healthy in a way that is sustainable for you by treating yourself with respect. If you do choose to look to social media for health and wellness inspiration, be sure to do so through a critical and informed lens. So, next time you hear or see someone talking about attaining a “summer body”, remember that your health and wellness, and ultimately, your happiness, is about more than achieving an idealistic body type through drastic measures.