Your Friday Five: What Social Media Isn’t Telling You

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Transcript

0:28

Welcome back to another, your Friday five. Today I wanted to talk just a little bit about how comparison really kills our results, but I wanna give you a very specific example to make it a little bit more granular, because I feel like when I say that don't compare yourself to others and stay in your own lane. People say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that. But then. You still end up comparing. So something that I see really commonly, especially in the clinic, is that people will say, well, I and, and it's all very well intentioned, right? And trust me, I do the same thing too. I'm preaching to myself at the same time that I'm saying this. They will come in and say, well, you know, I have a neighbor that went on the same medication that I'm on, but in the first three months they lost 50 pounds. And why am I not following that? And I'll talk to them and I say, listen, I have no idea what's going on with that person. They could be depressed and not eating. They could be massively undereating. That could be a good result for them. I don't know where their weight set point is. That might be entirely appropriate over 15 pounds per month. That might be appropriate if their weight set point is significantly elevated when they start. Because it's percentage body weight loss that we're following weekly. They could have an eating disorder. They could be over exercising. I have no idea. They could be taking excess amounts of medication. That what's so sad that's happening right now because the medications are so overpriced. People are going onto what's called the gray market, which is where they're buying random stuff from, non-licensed. It's not coming from a pharmacy. It's not FDA approved. They're just taking literally random stuff that they're getting mailed to the home. No. Clinician supervision, so you have no idea. Are they saying that they're taking what you're on, but really they're taking like three times the amount of something totally random. You don't know, okay? There's just way too many unknowns. There are genetics, all of it. You're comparing to this person and that's not the norm. It might not be the safe route, but yet you sit there and you think that something's wrong with you because they got that result and you are where you are. Something that I wanted to bring up with this is a lot of this comparison not only comes from friends, family, neighbors, but also from social media. I attended a conference here recently. It was really interesting they brought up the numbers with social media because, we all think, oh, it's been around forever. It has not, right? So I wanna bring up these numbers to you to just clarify something. Okay, so this is fascinating. So just go with me. By the way, this is a very important episode. I should have made this a whole regular episode. So social media adoption in the United States. There was a study they showed that. In 2005, only 7% of the population was on social media by 20 12, 50 2%. So half of the people right by 20 24, 80 5% are on social media. Alright, so here's the deal that we've not had social media that long, think about it, okay? It's been the past 20 years, when people have significantly increased using this. And what social media does is it increases the scope of who you can compare yourself to. Am I the only one that thinks this? You never used to be able to know what some random person in another state, another country, there were not influencers there, there was not constantly feeling bad about yourself. What this brings in though is the ability of people to create a very narrow scope of what they're sharing. They're deciding very intentionally what they share, what they don't share. They're only sharing the highlight reel. And then you think, well, I should have the same results as them. But again, they're leaving out a lot of it. So I wanna give a very concrete example. There was an influencer here recently, and I love her channel, by the way. This is not a dig on her. Her name's Janelle. She's a nurse. She has been documenting her weight loss journey for years and recently. The controversy that came around with her is that people had noticed that in the past six plus months, she'd had a really rapid transformation and they started to say, are you on a GLP one? And she hadn't addressed them. And then she finally said, yes. For the past nine months, I've started to bring in a GLP one. And people were not mad about that. They were mad that she hadn't disclosed it because she sells a macro counting course, and people were under the incorrect assumption that if they did exactly what she said, that they would get her results how she looks physically. And the reality is. That number one, she owes us nothing to tell us about her medical history, but number two, this assumption that if I take this little clippet of what I'm seeing online, if I eat this and I do that, that I'm gonna look exactly the same. That's insanity. I. It's absolute insanity. We don't know anything else. Maybe she's on 50 supplements maybe she exercises multiple hours a day. Like you just don't know all the variables. And so to think I, again, I feel bad for people that bought that course thinking that, and then disappointed when they're not getting her results. But the fact that we think that it's a singular fix is also a problem. But the point is that people were following her and thinking that they would have these same results. No. Everyone online, consider that everyone is lying to you. Consider that they're not sharing 95% of the picture. It's very abnormal what we're doing here, where we're talking reality. It's kind of depressing sometimes, right? Because I'm like, look, not everybody's gonna get these amazing results, and if it's slower, it's okay. But here's what it also could look like. This is not the, like I would say it's not the sexy version, what we're talking about, because we're actually talking reality and we're not an N of one giving this far out example. But the reality is people were sitting there thinking she was doing it through whatever means, and yet she'd added in another tool, and they weren't ready to hear it. Realize that everyone online, it's an incomplete picture. They're choosing what they share with you. So you have to be careful with this comparison thing. Now I think it's human. I think you're gonna do it. I don't think there's avoiding it. So here would be my recommendation. Your brain's gonna do it naturally, but you very quickly let that be the trigger to pull yourself back to. Alright. Comparison's not gonna help though. What can I focus on? What are my unique body needs? What's possible in my life? And you get back to, okay, what exercise can I do? What nutrition can I work on? Things like that. And so stop focusing so much on these other people if you need to. Go and do a social media cleanup. Okay? Go through your feed, stop following people if they make you feel less than. Also work on some body diversity in your portfolio of who you're following. And if you need me ever to suggest ideas, let me know. But there are channels that I follow where people are of all sizes exercising and doing amazing things. I need to see that. I think it's really important to have diversity in what you're seeing so that you're not so focused in on this one creator and thinking that, I'm gonna be like her. I'm gonna do the things like her. Stop it. You're not gonna be like anyone else. Don't eat exactly what they eat in a day. Don't, don't do any of that. It's not, you're not gonna get the same results. You need to figure things out for yourself, so take inspiration from these things. I love the recipes that she makes, and every so often I'm like, oh, I have that stuff in the house. Let me see how it works for me. But I'm not sitting there trying to exactly replicate what she's putting online. That's absolute insanity. So I wanted to just bring this as an example that, we all know that, like we've all heard this before. I feel like every other week there's a scandal online and I, I'm not really about cancel culture. I think when I've been benefiting from someone's content for years, I'm gonna stick around. Also I'm increasingly becoming happy that people are even bringing it up. Because they don't need to disclose anything. And again, I valid if you feel like you were duped, but it's, no one's right to know what medications you're on. It's just I don't know where we've gotten to this in society where like everything needs to be disclosed all the time. No, you do get to pick and choose you need to guard yourself more. Need to guard who you're following, what influence they're having on you. Do you like it? Do you wanna be in that orbit or do you wanna maybe release that person? You think it's not helpful for you to continue to be, to have unrealistic body images shown to you, it does influence things. Hopefully this was helpful to see that. Look, we haven't had social media that long. This comparison is wild. People lie to you, and at the end of the day, you have to stay focused on your own stuff. So this is maybe a little bit of a Debbie Downer, but I hope that this episode is helpful because I just see this too often where people are getting discouraged because of looking around them. And if we were to really, if we were to sit in what I'm gonna call the realistic room and we were all to talk about it, you would see that we are all much more similar than you realize. And these outliers are always glorified and, spoken of in such high context when they are an outlier and. That's not who I think should get all the attention. I don't think that just because someone got fast results, it's, oh, what did they do? Let's do what they do. I no. Because we don't know what they're doing to get that. I'll never forget, there was this YouTube video that I saw in this. She said she lost a hundred pounds in three months and I just sat there and I thought, even if that's true, I feel so bad what happened and of course there were like the highest amount of views ever and it was like sold as some like keto magic trick. And I just sat there and I thought, oh, there's no universe where. If that happened, and, and by the way, this person was starting at a weight of like two 50 going down to one 50, right? It wasn't someone maybe potentially starting at a much higher weight set point where mass amounts of weight loss per week and month would make sense, right? So anyway, these are all stories. We could talk for days, but stay in your own lane. When you notice yourself comparing, let it be a trigger to come back to. Alright, but that's not helpful. There are many different types of bodies, many different journeys, many different physiologies, and what in my world do I need to work on and not be so concerned with everyone else? Alright, I hope you have a great Friday and we'll talk soon.