Hi,my name is Anthony Cuevas,and I’m tired of social media. I’m tired of algorithms trying to dictate what I'm supposed to like because of one post I just happen to glance at. I’m tired of fitness and social media, a bunch of uncertified right wing manosphere meatheads selling me everything from cold tubs to brain pills, telling others what exercise is “optimal” and how 6 minutes in a cold tub while reading Aristotle heals cancer. The narcissistic behavior in today’s fitness space makes me want to go inside a delorean, go back to 2005 where life was simpler and my biggest worry was who should be on my myspace top 8 and what I’m going to do for my summer vacation? Alas I can’t have such dreams and I'm a trainer stuck in the same fitness space as these narcissistic A-holes.

Why is fitness so plastic?

Today’s fitness space is plastic and toxic. We have a severe case of impostor syndrome and body dysmorphia.

Impostor Syndrome is defined as self doubt of intellect, skills or accomplishments.

Impostor syndrome is running on social media at an all time high. The main culprit of impostor syndrome is the “for you” sections of social media. This section of social media allows us to scroll through random pages and a lot of people spend hours a day comparing our lives to the lives of someone with 100,000 or more followers. We have to remember that social media is a highlight reel of someone’s life in bite size increments, we don’t know a person’s life outside of what we are allowed to see. The people who curate these pages will never let you see the whole movie, just the trailer.

Body dysmorphia is defined as an excessive obsession of perceived flaws in one’s body and this can be triggered by the people you follow on social media.

This is not a new concept, before we had any form of social media, we had a curated “for you” section. This generation has social media, Millennials had wall collages filled with covers of fitness and sports magazines of our favorite athletes, models or bodybuilders that we aspired to look like. Body dysmorphia is at a high as well because we can’t escape it due to the fact that our phones are in our pockets every day and we are mindlessly scrolling while we are working out and comparing every flaw next to a flawless photo that is likely heavily edited and filtered to death.

This is especially becoming an issue with teenage boys and young adults. Instead of building muscle using what they have naturally being endless energy and testosterone at an all time high. They resort to performance enhancers like SARMs to build their dream physique as quickly as possible to seek validation from people they don’t know.

What are SARMs and why has this drug gained popularity in the social media space?

SARM stands for selective androgen receptors modulator and it’s become a very popular performance enhancer amongst teenagers in social media. If you look up teenagers and SARMs in social media or on any search engine. This will lead you to a rabbit hole of 16 year old teens who have better bodies than most seasoned athletes or bodybuilders. These drugs you can’t find through GNC or vitamin shops because they are not legally distributed by the FDA. The main distribution comes from social media influencers who market it as a safe,quick and effective way to build muscle along with no warning label to presume that they are safe. However the opposite is true, SARMs are chemical substances that mimic steroids in the way of building muscle with very harmful side effects.

Side effects include

-Increased risk of heart attack

-Psychosis/hallucinations

-Acute liver failure

-Testicular Shrinkage

I didn’t get much information on the pay scale,these drugs do cost at a range of $100 to $400 a bottle and these influencers sell SARMs through affiliate brand marketing based on commission on sales and tiered pricing.

Sales Commission: Influencers use discount codes and can earn up to 30% per sale on commission.

Tiered Pricing: This model is based on follower count and high engagement. The higher the follow count and engagement rate, the more money in the influencers pocket.

The obsession we have for likes and constant engagement has left me feeling disengaged with the current fitness space. I can imagine that fitness and social media at its best intentions should be a space where we can learn from certified trainers and nutritionists about living a healthy lifestyle, but we are currently at its worst form where we have snake oil salesmen selling us on false hope and quick fixes in every corner and people keep spending because they would rather have the quick fix and adoration of random strangers than to work on themselves physically and mentally in a slow well thought out process.

*Sigh* This is why I wish I was back in 2005.

If you are at the end of the blog, Thank you for reading and I hope you learned something today and always remember

The Winner Is You!!!

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