No butter. No eating after 6pm. Everything has to be measured. Track all your macros. “If you’re not begging for rest, you’re not doing your best.”
These are rules commonly promoted by gym buddies today.
These beliefs are eerily similar to those posted in toxic corners of the internet in the early 2010s. These accounts, which dominated Tumblr and Pinterest, were banned and criticized for promoting eating disorders. But today’s gym-goers are sharing similar content, some say in plain sight, or not at all.
On TikTok, many fitness enthusiasts build followers by sharing details of their hard-to-get bodies and gym routines. But among the inspirational videos are many clips that take “clean eating” to the extreme, including skipping meals and exercising too much, which experts say is fueling a culture of orthorexia, a little-known eating disorder that’s quietly plaguing the fitness world.
What is “Gymbro”?
“Gym-goers” are people who essentially live and breathe the gym, and in some cases, their fitness goals can lead to unhealthy behaviors, a pitfall that’s been well-documented recently.
Instead of striving for a thigh gap, men are turning to online bodybuilders for inspiration, sometimes resorting to dangerous methods to achieve their elusive fitness goals.
Unhealthy behaviors include:Safe Food“, Weighing food for Weight loss or Excessive exercise Enough to injure.
What is “orthorexia”?
There are many benefits to fitness and healthy eating. Positively impacts mental and physical healthBut when taken to the extreme, people often say,Orthorexia.”
Orthorexia is an obsession with clean, healthy eating, leading to feelings of guilt and shame when one deviates from a strict diet. Because of its restrictive nature, this disorder actually has a lot in common with Physical effects This can lead to loss of appetite, malnutrition, heart failure, inattention, decreased sex hormones, kidney failure, and even death.
Sarah Davis, a therapist and certified eating disorder specialist, said men often don’t have the resources to understand what it’s like to experience an eating disorder.
“Wellness culture manifests itself in a very harmful way in the form of orthorexia,” Davis says. “There’s a lot of that lingo around clean eating in gym-going culture. Certain foods are demonized, and it’s all about building muscle mass. It’s expressed in a worshipful way.”
by Underestimating eating disorders in men Cultural acceptance of these harmful behaviors has led some men to Not asking for help Even if you realize there is a problem.
Body dysmorphic disorder and fitness culture
Health Coach and Personal Trainer Noah Sage ZimmermanThe 30-year-old had struggled with body dysmorphic disorder for years before taking up the profession.
Growing up in Santa Barbara, he was surrounded by “affluent, good-looking families” and felt pressured to look and eat a certain way to fit in. In high school, he felt his friendships and relationships improved after he lost weight, which developed a fundamental belief that being healthy was the key to being well-liked.
After graduating from college, Zimmerman began working with a nutritionist to treat his ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease. But he began adopting bad eating habits under the guise of healthy living.
“I would eat super clean 90% of the time and have one meal a week where I would eat whatever I wanted,” he says. “To do that meal, I would go to three to five restaurants and eat a ridiculous amount of food in one sitting.”
To “nurture” his eating habits, Zimmerman was spending four to five hours a day at the gym and missing lunch meetings, cocktail hours and networking events.
“It wasn’t until about three or four years ago that I realised this was a problem,” he says, adding that his relationship with food was just as bad as it had been in his teens, if not worse.
Overeating and excessive exercise severely affected Zimmerman’s social life and mental health.
“I knew that not only was it damaging my body, but it was also damaging my brain by depriving me of life experiences,” he says.
Now he uses his platform to share safe ways to work towards a healthier lifestyle. Speak Up About body dysmorphic disorder. But in his video Harmful comments Many users are still pouring in. “Stop complaining about the standards and get the body you want,” one user wrote. “Body dysmorphia is a lack of mental intelligence and a lack of mental discipline,” another user replied.
Zimmerman is not the only person to go public with their body dysmorphia, but on TikTok, fellow gym-goers posting about it have expressed it this way: rightPassing Within the community.
Steroids, Ozempic and Virus Transformation Video
What’s the best way to combat misinformation about gym culture? First of all, Zimmerman says it would help if celebrities and influencers came forward to disclose their use of steroids and weight-loss drugs like Ozempic.
“Maybe a lot of young kids will look up to these guys and look up to them,” he says. “If they were honest about how they got the size they are, I don’t think it would be as much of a problem.”
Experts say weight loss videos can also be harmful.Trust the majority ” refers to the user Thousands of transformation videosMany have detailed how they achieved a leaner body. The binge/vomit cycle Excessive exercise.
Davis said body dysmorphia and eating disorders can worsen if people who go to the gym regularly don’t see the same results.
“We’re all overcompensating.”Why do so many members of the LGBTQ community suffer from body dysmorphic disorder?
The pressure to be “bigger and stronger”
Although female beauty standards prioritize a petite figure, being “too skinny” is still considered shameful, but in gym-going culture, these excesses are reaffirmed by male body standards: there is no such thing as being “too strong.”
Eating Disorder Recovery Supporter William Hornby He said toxic masculinity and the media play a key role in this mindset.
“Straight men in particular tend to attribute these beauty ideals to female expectations, but that’s not true,” Hornby says. “It actually comes from a performance of masculinity in relation to other men.”
Zimmerman agrees: “At the end of the day, most guys who are aware of how muscular they are are just like other guys.”
From the superhero movies young men watch to the magazines they read, being “big and strong” is equated with success, admiration, and even “saving the world.”
“Open your phone and watch any kind of movie or TV show and you’ll see examples of the unrealistic standards people are told they want,” Zimmerman says. “They expect, ‘Now that I look a certain way, all the women will be looking at me, like in the movies,’ and that’s simply not the case.”
Addressing the issue
Gym culture is highly competitive and can easily get out of hand for many, and accounts like Zimmerman’s and Hornby’s are gaining attention and helping to combat some of these issues.
Davis says there’s a clear way to know you have a problem, and it’s important to spread the message: If your fitness goals are causing you to miss social obligations, that’s a good sign that things are getting out of hand.
The extreme measures people take, whether it’s eating disorders or going to the gym, “are not a pursuit of health,” Hornby says, “they’re a pursuit of beauty. And beauty doesn’t enhance your ability to deal with illness.”
