Be #fitspo or go home
Do you post photos of your ‘clean’ food on social media? Or even a photo of you at the gym? Maybe a motivating quote about fitness? Sounds like you have a case of the #fitspo craze that has recently taken over Australia this year.
The ever growing fitness craze that has recently taken storm over a now healthy driven Australia in 2015 has sparked that of the hashtag, #fitspo. The term fitspo is derived from the word ‘fitspiration’, which includes images of active, strong and fit women and men that promote proper exercise and diet.
With many debates over whether the #fitspo trend is a positive or negative inspiration, it has however seen the rise in popular personal trainer, Kayla Itsines. Kayla Itsines is a 24 year old personal trainer from Adelaide who has overwhelmed the world of women with her 12 week bikini body workout and diet guide. Itsines soon became part of the #fitspo craze after achieving a guide that targeted most girls ‘problem areas’.
“Before I knew it, I had developed workouts and cardio techniques, mixed with nutrition planning that achieved a certain result: a bikini body confidence,” Itsines quoted on her website.
With 3.7 million followers on Instagram and 2,737,133 likes on Facebook and 244,433 followers on Twitter, it is no wonder why so many women turn to Itsines when looking for their daily #fitspo.
In this age of fitspo, what do we consider healthy and unhealthy? According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, a staggering 62.8% of Australians aged 18 years and over were considered overweight or obese, with only 35.5% consisting of a normal healthy weight. Almost two in three adults in Australia are overweight or obese, being the 2nd highest contributor to burden of disease. Furthermore, in a research conducted by the National Heart Foundation in 2011/12, they found that in each state that 60 percent or more of Australian adults were overweight or obese.
So is this new fitness inspiration so bad when more than half of Australia’s adult population is overweight or obese? I think not.
How did fitspo become the new fad one might ask? You can thank social media for this latest fetish. The rising social media hashtag has over 100 Twitter accounts, 21,260,332 Instagram posts, which continues to increase every day and 7,909,223 hashtags on Facebook, proving to be the driving force behind this fitness epidemic taking over not just Australia, but world wide.
If promoting pictures of clean food and gym tight abs didn’t sell it for you, the trending mantra, “strong is the new skinny” might…well, mainly among female gym devotees. The new brand of body fixation isn’t just about thick or thin, being healthy has most obviously caught the eyes of social media, potentially being the best thing since being thin was the be end and all end. Fed through a diet of health blogs and images labelled ‘fitspo’, the definition of healthy can be lost through what is considered healthy and what attracts the most social media activity.
Whilst social media users may see their #fitspo photos, quotes and anything else they consider fitspiration to get them up and off the couch, many experts have concerns about the health of the thousands of women and men cashing in on the growing fitness phenomenon.
According to a researcher at the Melbourne-based Burnet Institute, Dr Megan Lim, she has recently conducted a research of young people who followed or liked the fitspo epidemic. The survey included that of 1000 young people who used social media and were asked if they followed sites resembling fitspo, dieting or detox sites.
Dr Lim came to the conclusion that 38 percent of young people followed those pages, being more common among young women. That being, 57 percent were actually teenage girls who reported they had liked or followed those pages.
It’s beautiful, its’s attractive, it’s dangerous, it’s fitspo. Dominating Instagram news feeds and any other mainstream social media outlets, fitspo is probably the screen-saver of nearly one in five women you know. This epidemic can boast positivity, but also has the capacity to hold traits that are harmful to ones self, a movement that triggers obsessive behaviour and creates yet another body standard for women and men to compete and compare themselves to.
Another fitness craze to take over Australia in 2015 is high intensity interval training (HIIT), being more popular than ever. HIIT has been renewed over the past year as popular due to its low-cost ways to get into shape, a way to relieve stress and workout frustrations and having big results for such little time. This fitness obsession also has great health benefits, such as burning more fat, increasing metabolism and helping your heart become stronger through creating ventricular remodelling and promoting faster cardiac output.
A brief video of a HIIT instructor, Emmy Bull, from the La Trobe Sports Centre Bundoora, explains what HIIT is and what occurs in her daily class.
However, whilst there are the positives of HIIT, it also has its lows. The risk of injury is much higher, with orthopaedic injuries and cardiovascular complications being the most common. Overall, HIIT is part of the fitspo craze that has more and more personal trainers and fitspo lovers using HIIT to lose weight, get fit and of course for their fitspiration.
The clothing brand Lorna Jane has recently taken off globally, seeing women around the world wearing active wear as everyday clothing, joining in on the fitspo epidemic. After Lorna Jane’s 25th anniversary last year (2014), the store’s owner and creator, Lorna Jane Clarkson, introduced a clothing range that would allow active wear to be worn in the gym to the office.
The range labelled, ‘Uniquely’ by Lorna Jane, was designed for the modern woman who wants her wardrobe to connect with her everyday busy lifestyle. The line oozes sportswear as well as luxe fashion fabrics, being the ultimate gym wear and beyond. Hence, the days of activewear only being for the gym have vanished since the rise of fitspiration.
Whilst Lorna Jane vow for activewear to be worn everywhere, a group of Sydney comics, Skit Box, have introduced the internet to a parody, ‘mocking girls who wear activewear, to do not-active things.’ With over 1.4 million views on their Youtube channel, the video takes viewers through a normal day where every girl wears activewear and have no intention of going to the gym. This latest fitness outbreak of fitspo is only mocked within this parody, taking a bite out of this crazy social media driven fitness fascination.
If you love to mock women who wear activewear everywhere, than this is the video for you.
Overall, the fitness craze, in particular that of fitspo, has evidently had an impact globally, motivating people to sweat, eat healthy and improve their general health, but at the same time also creating obsessive self behaviour and another body image to compete with. However, the reality is, social media today, no matter what the latest fitness inspiration is, will fuel the amount of attention it will get and have the last say on whether it will be the newest fitness epidemic.
