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katherine's avatar

This is a tough one for me. I was an unathletic kid and felt totally discouraged by the adults around me from pursuing sports or fitness because I “wasn’t good at it.” It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized I could actually learn and improve at various exercise activities on my own terms and for my own benefit, even if I was never going to be “the best” at anything athletic. I do credit social media a lot for helping me find find fun and safe ways to exercise and helping me change my thoughts around food and fitness (Casey Johnston is a favorite follow of mine!), and I love seeing people find joy and fulfillment in exercise. So many hobbies have kind of weird virtue stuff wrapped up in them — side hustles, reading challenges, that kind of thing — and while I do think exercise has more baggage attached, I think it’s something we should really actively be trying to separate from food and thinness on social media, rather than erasing fitness content from social media until we can make the necessary cultural changes for it to be okay again. I agree with one of the other posters here that the issue is more with the algorithms and the platforms than with individual users.

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Anna K's avatar

Like you have been reading my mind. A friend/former colleague on Instagram started posting pictures of her epic walks. Just feet or scenery. But I started waiting..knowing it would come. Because she had lost a lot of weight several years ago, then gained a lot back with two kids, and I just knew this was going to be the start of weight loss posts. After several months it finally came a week or so ago. It was staggering how much it hurt. All the “congrats” with the body picture and weight loss number. And I was like: I genuinely have to unfollow this. And of course the chorus in my mind singing: see, if you just tried harder…

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