Hey loves,

I’ve recently noticed how normalized it has become to compare ourselves to other people online.

Where there used to be a tendency to hold back and be more neutral, we’ve become much more of an introspective species, magnifying our flaws while competing with complete strangers.

Women are constantly exposed to “perfect” bodies, transformations and fitness routines. It almost feels like we fall short when we don’t have the perfect routine or even physique.

Social media has distorted what healthy, realistic fitness progress actually looks like.

We’re Comparing Ourselves to Highlight Reels

Most creators post in perfect lighting with the right angles and pumps. They also edit their photos and post on their best days only. They don’t post the ugly, flawed and imperfect stuff.

What about days where they’re bloated? Under stress? Having a bad workout? With our hormonal fluctuations, our bodies definitely take a ride aesthetically. With leanness one day and a belly or love handles the next one.

What about how normal bodies sitting down look? This creates almost impossible beauty standards. We are chasing something that doesn’t even exist.

Social Media Made Women Expect Instant Results

Most people expect results like getting abs in 3 weeks, glutes growth in 1 month, cellulite-free skin and rapid fat loss.

The reality is that real body recomposition takes time, muscle growth is slow and that consistency matters more than intensity.

Fitness will always be more about “boring consistency” than dramatic transformation.

The Rise of “Perfect” Fitness Influencer Bodies

Perfect influencer bodies mostly consist of filters, cosmetic procedures, editing apps, performance enhancers and great genetics.

It isn’t a bitter reality but it’s the reality of it. There are so many BBL’s being passed off as hard work at the gym or editing softwares used to shrink the influencer’s waist as they train.

Women often blame themselves for not achieving results that may not even be natural or attainable.

Social Media Confused Beauty With Health

Looking lean does not always mean healthy. Being tiny is not automatically “fit.”

Under-eating will almost always lead to a skinny fat physique. A skinny fat physique is a physique with low muscle mass and a higher body fat percentage underneath.

The physique often looks soft and untoned due to a lack of strength training, poor nutrition, or not building enough lean muscle.

An overtrained physique is not ideal either. It can lead us to suffer from a lot of health and mental issues such as burn out and the OCD spectrum.

True health is about having:

• energy
• strength
• good sleep
• confidence
• longevity

Women Started Training Out of Self-Hatred Instead of Self-Respect

We, as women, need to eradicate punishment workouts. Those workouts that are typically reserved after a night of overindulgence need to soften up.

So does our guilt around food! We need to chill out if we eat an unhealthy meal. We should focus on the big picture and just move on to our next healthier meal.

We need to stop body checking and obsessing over flaws as well. Nobody is perfect! We were never meant to be perfect either, God made us in his image. Our strength and grace should be in accepting our flaws.

Finally, fitness should improve your life, not consume it. Too much of a good thing can easily become something bad.

What Real Fitness Progress Actually Looks Like

• Better mood
• Better posture
• Better energy
• Increased strength
• Confidence
• Healthier relationship with food
• Gradual body changes
• Becoming mentally stronger

How to Protect Your Mind While Using Fitness Social Media

Some good tips on how to protect our mind while using social media is to curate our feeds, to follow unfollow triggering accounts and to stop comparing timelines.

Other tips are to focus on performance goals, to take progress photos less obsessively and to remember that lighting and posing change everything.

Conclusion

Your body is not failing because it doesn’t look like a filtered 10-second clip online. Real fitness is slower, quieter, healthier, and far more sustainable than social media makes it seem.

Femininity, confidence, strength, and building a life should be at the forefront of our fitness journeys and not just our bodies.

I hope that you enjoyed this blog post on How Social Media Ruined Women’s Expectations of Fitness Results, please let me know what you thought about it in the comments section below!