Commentary: Opportunity influencers are the source of harm – Ithaca College The Ithacan

Editor’s Note: This is a guest comment. Opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the board editor.

In today’s social media landscape, anyone can become a fitness expert. However, this status does not require years of education in science or nutrition training; Doing influence fitness doesn’t even require a personal trainer certification. So how are these impressions qualified for health and fitness information? Reply to Objection 3: There are not many of them. There are those who have education and knowledge and disciplined* correct information to his followers. But many people do more harm than good to the fitness industry.

In my life, I struggled with the relationship between exercise and food until about three years ago, when I started lifting weights and finally found a healthy balance. Despite the progress I’ve made, sometimes a video book that transports me to middle school sitting in my living room, pretending to look in the mirror, “how to lose weight overnight” and hoping to go to bed. to awaken in another body. So I came back and thought something was wrong, because I followed the relevant information from the authors but I didn’t see any changes.

Before I took myself out of fitness and started lifting weights, I wanted to constantly try because I wanted to lose weight. I would do random workouts that I saw on the internet without actually knowing if they were the best ways to reach my goals. At that point in time, I didn’t know much about health and fitness, and I was frustrated with the lack of progress that had always led me to quit.

To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume. This is a simple conceptyou but not what people want to hear, because it is not necessarily easy. Before I understood how weight loss worked, I believed influencers whose videos promised weight loss after just a 10-minute workout. While it doesn’t logically make sense that just 10 minutes of exercise will make any significant changes to your body, I did it anyway because I wanted to believe it was true.

The process of losing fat and building muscle takes time and consistency, and no magic exercise or food that can change that. However, many fitness enthusiasts find ways to kill health and fitness, which is deceptive to men, the beginning of the journeys of fitness, as well as the loss of the mind.

Chloe Ting It’s a prime example of how fitness influences can be deceptive. With over 24 million subscribers on YouTube, 2.8 million on Instagram and over 600 million on TikTok, Ting is one of the biggest fitness influencers of all time. Ting has been content for many years, however, its popularity has grown significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, when gyms were closed and people were doing workouts at home. While the content of Ting’s workouts is good, the problem lies in the video titles. If you watch the Ting YouTube channel, you will see videos like “This is a full body workout that you hate – no tables, no equipment“and”Get Flat Stomach and Abs-10 min. That these advertising videos are not physically possible. For one fat is in no way spot-reduced, and it is very difficult for the alum to have so much weight of work; If Chloe Ting picks up another video, the title most likely contains similar lies.

I believe that any type of exercise that makes you happy and that you can do consistently is worth doing. However, when fitness promoters promote unrealistic goals and spread false information, it leads people to believe that a healthy lifestyle is too difficult or even impossible to achieve. This can contribute to problems such as dysmorphia, anxiety and depression. I think it’s amazing that exposure to fitness content has motivated people to pursue healthier lifestyles; I just recommend that before people follow advice from others on the internet, they do their own research to make sure the source is competent and the information is accurate.

Julia Scott is an Integrated Marketing Communications major. Contact her at jscott5@ithaca.edu.