No butter. No food after 6pm. Everything must be measured. Every macro must be recorded. “If you’re not asking for rest, you’re not doing your best.”
These are rules commonly promoted by today’s athletes.
These tenets sound eerily similar to those posted in the toxic corners of the internet in the early 2010s. These accounts, which took over Tumblr and Pinterest, were banned and denounced for promoting eating disorders. But some say today’s gym-goers are sharing similar content and hiding in plain sight — or maybe not hiding at all.
On TikTok, many fitness enthusiasts are gaining followers by sharing their hard-to-achieve physiques and details of their gym journeys. But among the inspirational videos are clips that promote “clean eating” to the extreme, including skipping meals and over-exercising. Experts say this contributes to a culture of orthorexia, a lesser-known eating disorder that’s quietly plaguing the fitness community.
What is a “gym bro”?
“Gym bros” are those who essentially live and breathe the gym. In some cases, their fitness goals can lead to unhealthy behaviors, a pitfall that has been well-documented in recent times.
Rather than aspiring to bigger thighs, men are turning to online bodybuilders for inspiration, sometimes resorting to dangerous methods to achieve elusive fitness goals.
Unhealthy behaviors may include eating only “safe foods,” weighing foods to lose weight, or exercising too much to the point of injury.
What is “orthorexia”?
Fitness and healthy eating have many benefits for physical and mental health, but when taken to extremes, people often don’t realize they may be suffering from an under-recognized eating disorder called “orthorexia.”
Orthorexia is an obsession with healthy, clean eating that causes the person to feel guilty and ashamed if they deviate from their rigid diet. Because of its restrictive nature, this disorder actually shares many physical consequences with anorexia, including malnutrition, heart failure, inattention, decreased sex hormones, kidney failure, and even death.
Often, men don’t have the information they need to understand that they have an eating disorder, says Sarah Davis, a therapist and certified eating disorder specialist.
“Wellness culture manifests itself in a very toxic way in orthorexia,” Davis says. “In fitness culture, you see a lot of this kind of language around healthy eating. Certain foods are demonized when the goal is to build muscle. That’s how you put it on a pedestal.”
Due to the underrepresentation of male eating disorders and the cultural acceptance of these toxic behaviors, some men do not seek help even when they realize they have a problem.
Body Dysmorphia and Fitness Culture
Noah Sage Zimmerman, 30, a health coach and personal trainer, struggled with body dysmorphia for years before entering the profession.
Growing up in Santa Barbara, he was surrounded by “rich, beautiful families” and felt pressured to look and eat a certain way to fit in. In high school, he felt his friendships and relationships blossomed after he lost weight, which built a core belief that being fit was the key to being liked.
After graduation, he began working with a dietitian to treat his ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease. But Zimmerman began adopting unhealthy eating habits under the guise of a healthier lifestyle.
“I was supposed to eat really healthy for 90 percent of the week, and then one meal a week I could eat whatever I wanted,” he says. “I started going to three to five different restaurants for that meal and eating a disgusting amount of food in one sitting.”
Zimmerman was hitting the gym four to five hours a day to “feed” his eating habits and skipping lunches, cocktail parties and networking events.
“It wasn’t until three or four years ago that I realized there was a problem,” he says. His relationship with food had become as bad, if not worse, than it had been in his teens.
Due to his binge eating and excessive exercise, Zimmerman’s social life and mental health suffered severely.
“I knew it was bad because not only was I harming my body, I was also harming my brain by depriving myself of life experiences,” he says.
Today, he uses his platform to share safer ways to live a healthier lifestyle and speak out against body dysmorphia. But his videos continue to receive toxic comments. “Stop complaining about standards and build the body you want,” wrote one user. “Body dysmorphia is a lack of mental intelligence and a lack of mental discipline,” replied another.
Zimmerman isn’t the only one making his body dysmorphia known. But on TikTok, some gym-goers who post about body dysmorphia are presenting it as a right of passage in the community.
Videos about steroids, Ozempic and viral transformation
What’s the best way to combat misinformation about gym culture? Zimmerman says a good place to start would be for celebrities and influencers to disclose their use of steroids or weight-loss drugs like Ozempic.
“A lot of young people see these people and potentially look up to them,” he says. “I think we wouldn’t have as many problems if they were honest about how they achieve their bodies.”
Viral weight transformation videos can also be harmful, experts say. A simple TikTok search for “trust the bulk” will lead users to thousands of transformation videos, many detailing how they gained a more toned body through binge/purge cycles and excessive exercise.
According to Davis, when regular gym-goers don’t see the same results, body dysmorphia and eating disorders can worsen.
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The pressure to be “big and strong”
Even though female beauty standards favor smaller bodies, there is still a certain amount of shame associated with being “too skinny.” But in dude gym culture, these excessive practices are reaffirmed by male body standards: there is no such thing as “too big” for a man.
Eating disorder advocate William Hornby says toxic masculinity and the media play a huge role in this mindset.
“Straight men tend to attribute these beauty ideals to women’s expectations, when that’s not the case,” Hornby says. “It actually comes from other men’s representations of masculinity.”
Zimmerman agrees: “Ultimately, most people who realize how muscular they are are just other guys.”
From the superhero movies young men watch to the magazines they read, being “big and strong” is also associated with success, admiration, and even “saving the world.”
“Open your phone, watch any kind of movie or TV show, and you’ll see examples of unrealistic standards that people are asked to desire,” Zimmerman says. “You expect, ‘Now that I look a certain way, all these women are going to notice me, like they do in the movies.’ That’s not the case at all.”
Solve the problem
Gym culture is extremely competitive and, for many, can easily spiral out of control. Accounts like Zimmerman and Hornby’s are gaining traction and helping to combat some of these issues.
Davis says there are clear ways to know you have a problem, and getting that message out is key. If you’re missing out on social obligations because of your fitness goals, that’s a good sign things have gotten out of hand.
The extreme measures a person takes, whether it’s an eating disorder or a workout, “are not motivated by the pursuit of health,” Hornby says. “They’re motivated by aesthetics. And aesthetics don’t make you better equipped to deal with an illness.”