Fitspiration, Thinspiration, & Comparisons (& Shakespeare)
Remember, It's a Lot of Smoke and Mirrors
One universal human condition is the comparison of the self to others.
Even Shakespeare compares himself to others in “Sonnet 29” (or at least the speaker does):
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
In the first line, he wishes he were more like someone who’s optimistic. In the second line, “featured” refers to physical looks; “friends possessed” is about a guy whose friends are crazy about him, probably being loud and making a big deal. The third line is about him wishing his creativity could match someone else’s, and “that man’s scope” is him comparing himself to another guy’s range of accomplishments, possibly influence, creative productivity, even material wealth.
We don’t often think about Shakespeare in these terms—a guy who was down and feeling low, envying the successes and accomplishments of others, feeling unsatisfied with his own skills and abilities, maybe even a little depressed, but he too was a human being who experienced these emotions and psychological games. Although he had already been making a name for himself with some of his plays by this time, he hadn’t achieved the success or status that he later would, and certainly not to any level that he reached posthumously.
He wrote his sonnets over 400 years ago, and he’s not the only historical figure to compare himself to others and their accomplishments. For example, Julius Caesar looked at his own successes and compared them to Alexander the Great’s.
Avoiding this game of comparison is almost impossible anywhere in life, but it can be dangerous ground to tread in our own health and fitness journey.
We may see someone drop a lot of body weight relatively quickly and think, “Why can’t I do that?”
I’ve seen guys half my age in the gym squatting and deadlifting twice what I can. I may have had some down time and phases where I took breaks, but I’ve basically been at it for 20 years, and they might have been at it for three, four, maybe five years.
We may see someone who’s in a similar situation to us—age, fitness level, workouts—and they make miles of progress while we are struggling to squeeze out an extra rep on a movement.
If you walk into any gym, whether you’re looking for these comparisons or not, you’ll inevitably find them. If you constantly compare yourself and your performance to others, it can be deflating. More than that, it can be demotivating.
And then there’s social media.
A common expression is “comparison is the thief of joy”. If that’s true, and it seems to be, then social media is joy’s Terminator.
We all know this already. We intuit it before too long, probably subconsciously within a few minutes the first time we’re on social media, but there seems to be something more potent when we compare our perceived health and fitness to others on social media as opposed to real life.
Social media fitness and physique comparisons have led to movements like “fitspiration” and “thinspiration”. Fitspiration, at least, seemed to have well-intentioned origins, but the outcomes didn’t look so great.
As one paper defines it: “Fitspiration (also known as “fitspo”) aims to inspire individuals to exercise and have healthy habits, but emerging research indicates that exposure to it can have a negative impact on body image.”1
This paper reviewed the available literature on fitspiration between 2000 and 2022 to analyze the relationship between fitspiration content and an individual’s body image. The “results showed that fitspo is associated with negative body image, especially in younger populations that are more exposed to this content.” Moreover, the authors note that most of the studies had been done with female participants, so their conclusion here is mostly demonstrating the relationship of this type of content and young women.
Similarly, another study—a cross-sectional one—looked for associations between fitspiration content and response tendencies, feelings about the self, motivation to be physically active, as well as social comparisons among college students. “Overall, women self-reported significantly more unintentional viewing of fitspiration posts, more negative feelings about the self, greater motivation for physical activity after viewing posts, and greater social comparison orientation, compared with men.”2 However, the authors also note that the young men did report negative feelings after viewing images of muscular men.
Yet another study looked at thinspiration and fitspiration on three specific social media sites: Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter. The authors describe thinspiration as “inspirational messages promoting thinness”.3
They go on to explain that “Existing research has analyzed thinspiration content on SNS [social networking sites] platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. These content analyses have found that thinspiration posts feature images of extremely thin or underweight women, often in sexually suggestive poses focused on the pelvis and abdomen, and the bony features of those parts.” Of course, they also note that this movement “has received criticism for its detrimental effects on body image.”
In their discussion, the authors say that both fitspiration and thinspiration “share a focus on appearance, sexually suggestive images, and restrictive eating. Although relative to fitspiration, thinspiration posts promoted thinness to a greater degree, explicitly encouraged weight loss more frequently, included more objectifying content, and made more references to eating disorders, fitspiration tended to include more messages of guilt about body shape and weight than thinspiration.” And both movements, and thus the social media platforms, display “pathological content”.
Let’s change lanes into mindfulness for a moment. The American Psychological Association defines mindfulness as an “awareness of one’s internal states and surroundings… to help people avoid destructive or automatic habits and responses by learning to observe their thoughts, emotions, and other present-moment experiences without judging or reacting to them.”4
The idea with mindfulness is to develop an awareness of your thoughts, feelings, reactions, and ideas. It’s kind of like trying to get outside of your own head for a moment when you’re experiencing something, almost as if you were witnessing a friend having these experiences.
If we can catch ourselves making these comparisons, and especially if we’re having negative thoughts or feelings about them, we can switch gears. Instead of beating ourselves up, we should be giving ourselves credit for the efforts that we make to improve ourselves.
In my own example in the beginning, about seeing such young guys being so strong, instead of thinking, Damn, I guess I’m pretty weak, I should be saying, That’s great for them, and although I might not be able to be that strong, maybe I’ll get close someday.
And if we can catch ourselves in these moments, it’s a real opportunity to have an honest conversation with ourselves for a second. If we’re not losing the weight we want to, have we given it a solid effort for a month or two? If we do something half-effort, we can expect half of the results. If we’re not making strength gains or putting on muscle, and we’ve been skipping workouts—for whatever reason—we know we have a reasonable explanation as to why we’re not necessarily headed towards where we want to be.
Even these days, when I feel like I’m not making whatever progress I’d like to, especially if I feel like I’m giving something a solid effort, I know that there must be something I’m missing or overlooking. If my rate of weight loss is slower than expected, I must be underestimating something that I’m eating or overestimating my activity level. If my progress is slow or stagnant with my weights, I must be short on recovery or energy. If I feel like I’m stuck in some way, I know that I might need to reach out to someone with more experience to guide me past this roadblock.
Something else that can help us navigate ourselves out of these dark waters is to try and think rationally for a moment about what we’re seeing. First, everyone knows how long it takes to snap a selfie. It’s never one-and-done. It’s a photoshoot: lights/lighting, filters, expressions, body positioning. When we see an image of anything, we must remember that it’s a highly curated, overtly premeditated, and meticulously produced image.
Though I’m not a bodybuilder myself, I follow several and have learned a lot from them over the years. When bodybuilders hit the competition stage, they say that a lot of it is smoke and mirrors. Some have said that the physiques on stage are illusions. Now, these are likely half-truths. Bodybuilders do have more muscle than Average Joes, and they get as lean as possible for their shows, but there are other factors that go into producing those physiques on the stage.
Their show placing can come down to the stage lighting; it can come down to their spray tans; it can come down to their posing and flexing; it can come down to them carbing-up and their hydration levels. (Carbed-up and hydrated muscles are “full”, and more carbs allow for more water in the muscles, but if competitors hydrate too much, they can be “spilled over”—that is, they’re a little more hydrated than they want to be, and the water has then created a layer between their skin and the muscles, obscuring their muscle definition.) Then, they need to pump up, get blood flowing into their muscles, which they do with some bodyweight movements, some exercise bands, and there might be a few dumbbells or some light barbells around; the pump increases the muscle fullness even more, as well as increases their vascularity.
This whole process takes a couple of days and is referred to as “peaking”. Peaking is all about planning and timing, and it’s really easy to miss the mark, either peaking too soon or peaking too late, both of which will mean that the bodybuilder will look smaller on the stage.
All these factors have almost nothing to do with all the previous years of work of putting on muscle nor the previous months of dieting off the fat. They have the foundation of their physique, but they must present it in the best package: lighting, tanning, carbs, hydration, muscle pumps, and posing. These points make or break any competitive bodybuilder on show day. Having a lean and muscular physique are the table stakes.
And the funny thing is that bodybuilders can only maintain their peaked physique for a couple of hours. Everyone in this arena knows it, which is the difference between the rest of us on social media, but that’s how we need to think about these images when we see them—as carefully planned, prepared, and produced. What we see is literally the final presentation of a detailed production process.
Also, we should remember that many images we see are, unfortunately, coming from people who feel worse about themselves than we do, that they are often taking extreme measure to appear aesthetic at the expense of their health and wellbeing, which is exactly what every bodybuilder says about show day. On that day, they are their unhealthiest.
Moreover, if we see an image of someone that genuinely appears fit and healthy, if we see someone lifting some weight or doing a movement we’d like to be able to do, we should be inspired and motivated by seeing in action the heights that we aspire to reach; seeing it should make us realize that we can achieve something similar—maybe not that specific thing manifested on or through that person that we see but certainly our own version of it.
Imagine if Shakespeare had written “Sonnet 29” and thought, Well, this sucks. None of this or anything else I do is as good as those other guys. I quit.
If he was like us, I’m sure the thought may have entered his mind, but obviously, it didn’t stick. He got back to work, did his best, and we all know the rest.
Making comparisons is inevitable, but if you find yourself doing it often, try to catch it when it happens and remind yourself what’s happening. Don’t let the negativity creep in and depress the motivation to work towards your own goals just because a painstaking and laborious snapshot of a moment in time appears.
Remember, it’s a lot of smoke and mirrors.
Jerónimo F, Carraça EV. Effects of fitspiration content on body image: a systematic review. Eat Weight Disord. 2022 Dec; 27(8):3017-3035. doi: 10.1007/s40519-022-01505-4. Epub 2022 Nov 18. PMID: 36401082; PMCID: PMC9676749.
Pasko K, Arigo D. The Roles of Social Comparison Orientation and Regulatory Focus in College Students' Responses to Fitspiration Posts on Social Media: Cross-sectional Study. JMIR Ment Health. 2021 Sep 15;8(9):e26204. doi: 10.2196/26204. PMID: 34524965; PMCID: PMC8482245.
Alberga AS, Withnell SJ, von Ranson KM. Fitspiration and thinspiration: a comparison across three social networking sites. J Eat Disord. 2018 Nov 26;6:39. doi: 10.1186/s40337-018-0227-x. PMID: 30534376; PMCID: PMC6260773.