TRUE beauty

Angelica Mendez | Reviews Editor

By February, many New Year’s resolutions are hanging on by a thin thread and in most cases, that resolution is to go to the gym to grind for that “ideal body.” Whether it is a guy trying to bulk up or a girl trying to get an hourglass shape, everyone is working to achieve body goals, and there is one main reason everyone is working towards these highly desirable looks.

Diet culture’s influence on exercise

For Emily*, the trap was overexercising and falling for the online workout videos that promised results in two weeks. Workout programs like ‘Chloe Ting: two week shred challenge’ and ‘Blogilates 14-day quarantine challenge’ took over the internet during quarantine. Created by different influencers and featuring different workouts, these videos had one thing in common: they promised weight loss.

Most days, she would do an hour of cardio and an hour and a half of these popular workout videos. One of the most common ones she did was the Alexis Ren ab workout, which is a model’s go-to ab exercises that promises a quick and effective ab routine.

“I know myself and a lot of people over quarantine were kind of on this health kick, and we would all over exercise, under eat and follow all trends that we would see,” Emily said.

Emily was not alone when it came to the health-crazed quarantine year. Many people hopped onto workout plans all to work off that dreaded

“quarantine 15.”

The “quarantine 15” is essentially the college “freshman 15.” It stood for the additional 15 pounds everyone thought they would gain, so while the world was suffering from a global pandemic, a lot of people were worrying about that dreaded weight gain, turning to diet culture’s “quick fixes” to prevent it.

“The quarantine 15 negatively affected many people, but it is just a strategy they used to make us want to buy weight prevention stuff, and we all fell for it,” Emily said. “It made me feel like I had to do all these things just not to gain a little weight.”

For Emily, the quick weight loss “remedies” were apple cider vinegar pills and the Olly probiotic and prebiotic gummies. She hoped that these two pills would help her looked toned and help her lose weight faster. But many of the “quick fixes” marketed to prevent weight gain are all used to reach the ideal body goal diet culture has set up for people.

Products like apple cider vinegar vitamins, waist trainers and steroids only successfully sell because people are told they can lose weight and look a certain way by using them. According to Marketing Week, marketers know that consumers associate the goal of weight loss with failure, guilt and frustration, feelings created by diet culture’s body standards.

But over time, the excessive workout plan and quick fix pills did not work for Emily and she decided to ask her mom for help. She and her mom then formed a healthier workout plan and went to the gym together, as well as worked on fixing their diets to incorporate all the nutrients they needed to be healthy without the diet pills and vitamins.

Diet culture’s influence on food

With social media feed constantly full of influencers and famous people, Sarah* started to compare herself to these people every day. From 2020 to 2022, she began to struggle with her eating. While the struggle started off small with cutting out junk food , it progressed to where she could barely eat healthy stuff.

“I just could not eat without regretting and wanting to get rid of food I ate,” Sarah said. “It got to the point where I was on vacation and got a salad, ate half then got really upset and felt guilty, [and thought] I should not have eaten that.”

As her condition worsened, she was worried that her condition was becoming an eating disorder and decided to talk to her brother, who helped her have a “social media detox.”

“He just kept checking up on me and making sure I was eating and would tell me to stay off [social media],” Sarah said. “It just kind of helped having someone to talk to, who made sure I was doing okay and made sure I was not comparing myself to others.”

Getting past diet culture

Finding the perfect medium for clean eating before it gets excessive and a good amount of exercise are key to stopping diet culture.

“You have to know that what’s on the inside matters,” junior Alana Hunt said. “Appearance is not something that holds as much weight as who you are as a person and what you do with your life.”

*names changed for privacy