Why "What I Eat in a Day” Posts May Do More Harm Than Good
**I want to preface this up front by saying – you should not be getting your nutrition information from any sort of influencer. Please only take advice from credentialed nutrition experts (who can support you in discovering your own inner, innate nutrition expert).**
Whether you’re active on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter or Snapchat (probably missing some here… I can’t keep up with all the platforms) I can guarantee that you’ve run across at least one #Whatieatinaday post. Within the past two years, these posts have taken over social media and for more reasons than not, we need to put a stop to it. To the average consumer, this trend may seem harmless, but when you look a little closer you’ll see how diet culture has intrinsically weaved its way into the picture. While I don’t doubt that some of these posts are intended to serve as healthy inspiration for others, they are doing more harm than good – especially among impressionable teens/ young adults or people with a history of disordered eating. The only role #whatieatinaday plays is supporting the never ending comparison trap of social media and setting unrealistic and superficial eating and body standards.
Before I get into more detail, I should explain what exactly a “What I Eat in a Day” post entails. In theory, it’s just a video chronicling exactly what you ate that day, giving viewers a behind-the-scenes look at your eating habits. However, I preface with “in theory” because (as always) there is much more to the story. *Enter diet culture* Most commonly, you’ll see highly glamorized portrayals of “all” the food and drink that the “wellness” influencer has consumed on that particular day… think smoothies, picturesque avocado toast, elaborate salads and grain bowls, etc. Such posts are often accompanied by #postworkout mirror shots of slim bodies and/or an over-the-top #groceryhaul. So, why do I feel so strongly that we need to put a stop to this?
Eating should not take a one-size-fits-all approach
These posts promote the message of “if you eat like me, you can look like me,” which is fundamentally misleading, as our bodies are incredibly individualized. Even if you ate the same exact food bite for bite, and did the same workouts every day, you still wouldn’t look like your favorite Instagrammer – and that is more than okay! In addition to being the least interesting part of you, your weight and body shape are primarily determined by genetics, not food or exercise. Plus, we all have different energy needs, activity levels, hormone fluctuations, budgets, lifestyles, preferences – so why are we spending all our time trying to perfect someone else’s lifestyle?
Social media doesn’t tell the whole story
These posts are not an accurate or complete representation of what someone typically eats. They might display portions that are smaller than what they actually ate, or intentionally leave out foods that are deemed “unhealthy” by diet culture’s standards. And even if they were truthful, just because your favorite celebrity eats kale smoothies and salads all day doesn’t mean it’s suitable for you. When people watch these videos of overly staged meals, they buy into the idea that this is what they are supposed to eat; it creates the illusion of a perfect day of eating, along with an ideal body size. These posts, like many of the posts filling our feeds, are a highlight reel. Carefully curated and a snapshot in time rather than the complete picture. There is no such thing as perfect eating.
They’re often based on toxic and/or disordered eating habits
The majority of these meals showcase and normalize restrictive eating patterns, such as the infamous 1,200-calorie sample day of eats. As opposed to being descriptive, these videos have become prescriptive, insinuating that you need to eat this way in order to maintain and achieve society’s one-dimensional view of health. We often see red flags for orthorexia (an unhealthy preoccupation with eating “clean”) on these types of posts. From the outside, being concerned with eating “healthy” may seem benign enough, though in reality, obsessing over eating perfectly doesn’t necessarily equate to health, it just makes you obsessed. By the way, spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about food, fawning over it and meticulously curating food photos can be a symptom of disordered eating or eating disorders.
Body diversity is lacking
The majority of the time, these videos are being shared by women who are overwhelmingly young, thin, white, cis, and able-bodied. They endorse the thin ideal and uphold fatphobia, failing to acknowledge that health is achievable at every size and is not quite as narrowly defined as those it is portrayed online. (See also: the social determinants of health)
They scream privilege, but that privilege is never addressed
These videos promote a certain aesthetic that’s unattainable (and often inaccessible) to the vast majority of people. Wellness influencers talk about being healthy and living a “healthy” lifestyle, but in reality, there is great privilege in that. These creators just assume that their audience will have access to high-end organic supermarkets, to refrigerators in their homes, to working stoves, to gleaming granite countertops, to drawers full of blenders and cast iron skillets (you get the gist) – which is not the case. I could write a whole blog post on this in itself, but the sad truth is that access to fresh, healthy food is a privilege attainable to a shrinking number of people. The endless posts of elaborate and carefully curated smoothie bowls (nothing against a good smoothie bowl), carry an undertone of healthism and classism. It can be a signal of virtuosity and having the time and financial security to spend pouring over food presentation and obsessing over the nutritional merits of every morsel of food.
Your relationship with food is arguably more important than what you actually eat
Someone could be eating all the “right” things according to our (whitewashed, diet/wellness culture plagued, fatphobic) conventional views of healthy eating, and still be quite unwell. Having a poor relationship with food that is rooted in fear, restraint, and the pursuit of weight loss is not-so healthy, no matter how “healthy” the food might be from the outside looking in. So, just because someone “looks” healthy and eats “healthy”, doesn’t mean that we are seeing the full picture. Health is soooooo much more than what we eat, what the scale says, or how we move our bodies. When we obsess over food, we can lose sight of all the other things that contribute to overall wellbeing: mental health, emotional health, sleep quality, stress management, social health, safety, access to compassionate healthcare, etc.
Moral of the story: what someone else eats should have nothing to do with what YOU eat in a day. I believe the most helpful message for people is that if anyone you follow causes you to negatively compare yourself to them, then unfollow them. Instead, follow someone that promotes body positivity and food freedom, such as @thenutritiontea, @your.latina.nutritionist, or @dietitiananna.
It's one thing to follow an account for food ideas and inspiration, but if it fosters any feelings of guilt or shame towards your own food choices, if the account is often showcasing their body and insinuating that their food is the “right” way to eat, reconsider why you might be following that person (even if they have good intentions) and how it is impacting your perception of foods and your relationship with food & body.
