"Fitspiration" - a healthy lifestyle or a "fit" obsession? Literature review

Abstract

In the modern world, social media plays a major role in shaping the lifestyle of individuals. Excessive disciplining of women’s bodies has led to a situation in which eating disorders have become a civilization’s disease (Wojnarska, 2019). The aim of the article is to present the main conclusions from research on media coverage of the “fitspiration” trend in 2016–2023. The author analyzed peer-reviewed articles in English using the ScienceDirect, EBSCO and Google Scholar databases. Based on the analyzed scientific articles, it can be concluded that “fitspiration” is a developing, dangerous digital trend. Despite the health-promoting assumptions, most studies point to a negative aspect associated with body dissatisfaction and unfavorable eating behaviors of the young female population. Moreover, it was found that the process of self-isolation caused by the pandemic intensified the use of social media promoting negative “fitspiration” content (Cataldo et al., 2022).