Instagram: Your New Personal Trainer?

Sophie Halford ponders whether being bombarded with health and fitness accounts are a help or a hindrance. 

I am a self-confessed Instagram-aholic. Any moment of idleness and I’ve flicked onto the app and am hastily scrolling down the newsfeed of images in a slightly crazed, addicted manner. Nowadays however, a newsfeed that used to enlighten me with what meals my nearest and dearest had just eaten has been completely replaced. It now feels like an achievement if I see an image of someone I actually know. When I log on to my Instagram, I am bombarded with pictures of people doing squats; ‘meal prep’ where people make healthy lunches for their week; and, of course, endless enviably toned tummies.

For about a year now I’ve fallen victim to the habit of following fitness pages. I mean, it’s just so hard not to follow them. You start out innocently enough, looking for tips on how to get that summer bod you’ve never actually achieved but telling yourself this year will be different, and you stumble across a fitness page on Instagram. Healthy meal recipes with a photo? Yes please! Pictures of easy exercises to do at home? Oh yes! Gorgeous bodies to motivate and inspire? Give me more!  But then that fitness account shares another fitness account that tells you they do things ever-so-slightly differently and that you really should follow them too if you want to make that beach bod a reality. Then it happens again, and again, and before you know it you’re following 585 accounts on Instagram all about fitness.

Photo: Flickr/Arya Ziai

I know what you’re thinking, with all these accounts I follow I must surely by now be body-builder-competition-ready. But glancing down at my slightly chunky thighs and weeny bit of muffin-top that’s escaping over my waistband as I write, it’s clear to see that although the mental motivation has been there, it hasn’t actually been enough to make me get fit. In fact, the images that a year ago made me go ‘let’s get to the gym, I want a body like that’ nowadays just make me think ‘that’s a nice body’ before I continue scrolling down, that is, if I even stop at them at all. I seem to have become immune to something that was designed to fuel my fitness fire.

I seem to have become immune to something that was designed to fuel my fitness fire.

Is it just another craze? Or does Instagram actually have the power to motivate someone so much they change their lifestyle? For some people the latter seems to be true. On Instagram, people can hashtag their photos so they are available for anyone who searches that particular hashtag to see. One very popular one is ‘#transformationtuesday’ where people share before and after images of themselves when they’ve lost weight or changed their bodies through fitness and health – be it toning up or getting a smaller waistband – and a lot of accounts seem to credit their success to the pages they follow.

I would argue that although Instagram is a fantastic platform for sharing meal plans and the images that make you want to get fit, pictures on a phone are not enough to make a person actually change, they must already have the desire burning away within them. I know that I myself can be extremely lazy, and whilst half of me wants to get fit and tone up, the other half of me knows there isn’t actually anything wrong with my body the way it is. Simply following a few Instagram fitness pages definitely hasn’t had enough of an impact on me to make a change (yet!).

pictures on a phone are not enough to make a person actually change, they must already have the desire burning away within them. 

So while perhaps it’s not the ultimate fitness accessory which is guaranteed to make you shed the pounds, Instagram does seem to be a really positive environment for those wanting to aid their fitness and health. Hashtags such as ‘#strongnotskinny’ have become very popular amongst young women attempting to strengthen their bodies and be healthy, rather than starve themselves for the once popular model look. In today’s society of eating disorders, obesity and general bad health, this can only be a good thing. But in my own fitness journey, I think I’ll add Instagram to the same discarded pile my previous gym memberships have landed on – nothing is going to make me work except for my own self-motivation.