If you’re chronically online and immersed in gym culture like I am, you’ve probably noticed the rise of wellness as a trend. It’s everywhere, marketed as self-care, self-improvement, and the ultimate lifestyle upgrade.

Seems innocent enough, right? Wrong.

Social media has a way of serving you everything you’ve ever shown the slightest interest in, all at once. 

You’ll like one video of a girl crocheting a hat, and suddenly your feed is flooded with content about the best yarn, beginner patterns, and common crochet mistakes. The same algorithm applies when your hobby is fitness; except the stakes feel much higher.

Watch one video about a new yoga pose or click into the comment section of a “What I Eat in a Day” TikTok, and suddenly, your recommended page is overtaken. “10,000 steps MINIMUM!” “You’re not a dog, you don’t need to reward yourself with treats.” And, of course, the age-old classic, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”

Welcome to SkinnyTok.

An entire corner of the internet is dedicated not to health, but to thinness. It’s a place where discipline is often just extreme diet culture in disguise, and where “wellness” morphs into a masked obsession with control. Eating disorders, which were long recognized as dangerous, debilitating illnesses, are suddenly trendy again.

Influencers package disordered behaviors as aspirational lifestyles. They glorify 1,200-calorie meal plans as “just enough” and share workouts designed to burn off every meal. They post “what I eat in a day” videos that feature bone broth for breakfast, a cucumber with cream cheese for lunch, and two hard boiled eggs for dinner. They make starvation look effortless and desirable.

And it’s working.

Young audiences, especially impressionable young teens, consume this content daily. 

They start questioning their hunger cues. They feel guilty for eating normally. They believe that eating less and working out more is the secret to success, when in reality, it’s a gateway to exhaustion, malnutrition, and, in the worst cases, lifelong damage. I saw an 11-year-old posting what she eats in a day on a “calorie deficit,” eating a total of 533 calories in one day. 

The sheer amount of conflicting information posted online about wellness makes it impossible to know what’s real. One fitness influencer swears by eating your bodyweight in protein, while another claims fiber is all that matters. One person insists heavy lifting is the key to getting lean, while the next warns that weights will make you bulky. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? The truth is, most of them are just repeating trends.

I don’t know the exact point of this editorial, but it upsets me seeing the promotion of undereating and extreme fitness as a trend. 

I get it. Even on my good days, my mind is often flooded with similar messages.

Even though I know better and even though I’ve spent years figuring out what works for me, I still struggle and I know that is the case for many.

 It’s hard to trust your body when you’re craving a piece of dark chocolate, but an influencer’s voice in your head whispers, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels as soon as you pick up the fork.

Health is important. But what does that even mean anymore? For some, fitness is about aesthetics. For others, it’s an emotional outlet. And for many, it’s simply a way to move.

For me, it’s all three.

I imagine my future self, 67-year-old Emily, thanking me for building strength so she can bend down without needing help from her granddaughter. She’s grateful for the muscles that let her stay independent. She’s relieved she no longer fears an occasional slice of chocolate cake. And I know she’s happy; still doing yoga, still walking, still feeling good, not because she spent her life under eating but because she chose balance over obsession and starvation.

Wellness shouldn’t be a trend. And eating disorders should never be aspirational.