Throughout the majority of social media platforms, the term fitspiration is very common. You may or may not have heard of this, and if not then let me care to explain; it is the two words fitness and inspiration put together to create a new term to easily determine what kind of inspiration something has given you. Pretty simple, right? Wrong.
The Urban Dictionary defines fitspiration as:
A healthier alternative to thinspiration, fitspiration is using examples of good fitness as inspiration to attain a fitness goal.
Now, this may all seem rather positive; a term constantly used online to promote good health and fitness. Surely there’s nothing wrong with that? Well, this is where technology has let the notion of health and fitness lose a bit of its great credibility. Looking back at Urban Dictionary’s definition, it describes it as a healthier version to ‘thinspiration’, a very dangerous tag that circulates the internet to promote unrealistic expectations of body image. This in turn has been a factor of causing anorexia and body dysmorphia through dedicated social media accounts promoting these unhealthy thinspiration messages and images.
So, you’re probably wondering what this now has to do with fitspiration. Similarly, accounts have been made specifically to support this term too. It may seem like it’s a step in the right direction, to promote a healthy lifestyle and body. But, it can also create the exact same effect that thinspiration causes. People may not always take the healthy route to achieve their dream body that they are seeing online. They may expect to see results in a matter of weeks, when the body they are seeing online took years to accomplish. Others may look in the mirror and suddenly feel not good enough because of how much attention these bodies receive online. People need to understand that these bodies are online. They do not define who people are and they do not define their progress.
However, it’s very hard to get this message across when the comments on these fitspiration accounts are filled with users oogling them and saying how amazing they are. Which is understandable if these are people that others aspire to. It’s just a shame how health and fitness, as a result of technology, has lost a part of its pure meaning. It has become a trend that people feel they need to conform to. When I say conform, I mean, look to be conforming to. How many people do you really know that have killer abs and do meal prep every week? Not that many I’m imagining.
Okay, so let’s be less cynical about this. Fitspiration is something that has come from healthy attitudes. People who create fitspiration accounts usually show their before and after pictures to tell people that it really is possible to change when you thought it was impossible. They can also show healthy recipes, their workout regimes and all sorts of motivational tips, tricks and morale boosts.
Even I have fallen victim to following these accounts to give myself a bit of motivation from time to time. And yes, it can make you feel a bit rubbish when you’ve eaten a million cookies and suddenly turned over to Instagram to see a bunch of people in their workout gear achieving goals, while you feel like a sack of potatoes. But hey, that’s life! You’re always going to have your off-days! Just let these accounts give you the drive to get up and go the next morning, rather than bring you down.
This is quite a debatable topic. In the idea that if technology and social media has brought a good or bad change to health and fitness. However, there are two sides to every argument so it would be unusual for this one to be any different. The downside to these accounts are undeniable, yet the advantage of giving people the drive to move and be healthy is extremely valuable in a generation that is constantly looking at their phones. So, how do you see the world of fitspiration?
Katy xo
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