Just stop it. Stop pretending you are actually ‘Totally loving this new kale, wheatgrass and Syrian refugee tears smoothie!’ You’re not. You hate it and you hate yourself. You hate everyone else who’s posting this stuff too. It tastes like arse. It looks like a 70 year old vegan named Cyril threw up in a glass and farted on it for good measure.
Stop taking pictures of yourself at the gym and stop the candid shots of your Sunday morning runs as well. This is painful. You don’t live in California no matter how much you wish you did.
I don’t know how you’ve all done this but you’ve managed to take the noble and pure pursuit of health and fitness and turn it into your own personal vanity kick. It’s become an echo chamber of people with poor self esteem looking for self approval from people they hate or don’t care about. The only reason your doing this is because it’s currently popular with the social media generation and will get likes. The worst part is that whenever you see other people sharing these photos, even though you ‘like’ them the only thing going through your head is how much of a tool you think they are. Everyone who sees your photos is thinking the exact same thing as you do when you see their photos.
But deep down you know this. You know how everyone, even people involved in this, hate it. You know that social media is a festering pit of vanity, narcissism, petty jealousy and low cunning. It’s a clique of American High School girls from all those rubbish films and shows who all hate each other and are in a never ending competition with one and other. You are part of that clique. You are actively participating. But you ignore it. You pretend you’re not a hypocrite. You tell yourself that you really are in this for the health and fitness benefits and it’s everyone else who is being shallow. Of course it’s all a lie, because every time you share a picture and it doesn’t get the requisite number of likes a pit opens in your stomach and you feel like it was all for nothing. And then you see that your friend, who you hate as well, called Olivia shared a picture of her organic, free range, vintage Herbalife InstaFitShake and got 37 likes on it. You look at the picture. How was it different to mine? Maybe it was the caption? Maybe it was the filter? What time did she upload it? Is that a rustic oak table that glass is on? Maybe she’s just prettier than me. You base your next picture around the one she did in the hope your likes will go up.
See as much as you won’t admit it this all has nothing to do with you suddenly developing a deep interest in your own health and fitness. Frankly if it was you’d be going about the whole thing completely different. This is a modern fad and one that’s very popular. It’s the one the ‘in’ people are doing and you always wanted to be one of them. You’re in your 20’s now and you still have the mentality of a high schooler. This has less to do with you wanting to feel better and more to do with you wanting to look better.
You see it’s completely empty. If this was only about fitness why would you post the whole thing onto facebook and instagram? Why did you feel the need to let everyone know you had poached eggs and avocado for breakfast? You people think you invented avocados. The avocado will be outlive all of us.
The fact is if you wanted to just be healthy and fit you wouldn’t try and take any shortcuts. These supplements, detox pills and 4 week fitness plans? 95% malarkey designed to take your money. You know it too, just like you know those pop up ads telling you that you can make $2437 a day is bull. You know you can’t trick the body into good health. You know the only real long term solution is a balanced, healthy diet and frequent exercise. But this isn’t about genuine results. It’s about looking the part. It’s about your self esteem, which has already been hollowed out by your unhealthy obsession with social media. And now of course you’re trying to claw it all back from the very same thing.
This is the biggest irony, because this behaviour isn’t healthy at all. Your pursuit of health of the body has led to a deterioration of the health of the mind and the health of your own self perception. Your building the new foundations for your self esteem on quick sand and as the weight piles on you will inevitably only sink deeper.
By all means, try and become healthier and fitter, but please – for the love of god – stop posting pictures of your damn smoothies.
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