As a young woman in college, I have had the struggle of maintaining a healthy weight–as many collegiettes do. With classes, homework, extracurricular activities, and part-time or full-time jobs it is not always easy for college students to maintain a healthy diet and fitness routine on top of it all. With so much stress, it is not uncommon to turn to “thinspiration” for some motivation, but what exactly is thinspiration? Thinspiration takes the form of pictures, lyrics, quotes, and even short videos that are used to inspire people to become “skinny.” What most girls don’t realize is that the women in these pictures are not just “skinny,” they are underweight and often are anorexic or bulimic. The women featured in thinspiration are not healthy and are encouraging eating disorders to inspire girls to reach and maintain unhealthy weights.
Thinspiration is all over the web! It is constantly being posted and re-posted on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram. After I saw an article featured on Cosmopolitan.com about a study done to see how encouraging photos of thin women really are, I wasn’t surprised. When thinspiration first took off, I hated the idea of it. I always felt that the pictures were far from motivating. I would see a photo of a very thin girl and think, “It doesn’t matter how much I work out and eat right, my body just physically can’t look like that.” Turns out, I was right. After learning that thinspiration often featured women with eating disorders and then reading the study on Cosmopolitan, I posted my own questions on Yahoo Answers for some anonymous opinions. When asked how women felt about thinspiration, one woman said: “I am anorexic and I am severely overweight. Thinspiration really encourages me to lose weight.” I felt sorry for this person, because thinspiration may be inspiring her to lose weight, but not in the right way–not in a healthy way.
With so many expectations from society and media to fit the perfect picture of how a woman should look, act and feel, it can be overwhelming and hard to resist temptation to turn to thinspiration. So, what do you do now that you know to avoid thinspiration? It’s easy–it’s time to unfollow and unfriend anyone or anything that is toxic to your health. Find new people who track their success and earn that success through healthy dieting and fitness. Once you find healthy motivation, start your path to a new you! USF, and most other universities, offer group fitness classes and gyms with innovative equipment. Start taking advantage of this. Regardless to how often and how long you exercise, you won’t get the best results possible without a healthy diet. While thinspiration may encourage starving yourself or purging, the best (and safest!) way to be healthy is to eat! Eat healthy foods like protein and vegetables. Find quick and easy snacks that are also healthy so you aren’t tempted to hit the vending machine between classes. Eat regularly, three meals each day and snacks in between meals. Most importantly, remember that even if you hit your goal weight by exercising and eating healthy, you may still not look like the supermodels on the runway. Everyone is different and one thing that you can’t change is your genetics. You may naturally be curvy and big-boned, but just remember that you are beautiful because you are healthy.
Photo Sources:
Pinterest Screenshot
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