What to look out for before handing money over to an Instagram fitness 'expert'

Ashy Bines is blonde and beautiful. 

She's a bikini model and fitness guru with a business empire and close to 4 million followers but is the Gold Coast fitness queen duping her dedicated followers?

The social media star is accused of taking unauthorised payments from her clients credit cards and bank accounts.

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The hash-tag 'eat clean' has 50 million images on Instagram attached to it and that's exactly where many fitness sensations are finding their fame.

Problem is, it's difficult to determine just how qualified they are.

Kali Burns is a 21-year-old from Sydney and offers online coaching programs to her 930,000 social media followers, with one costing $299. 

Kali's website states she's a personal trainer and a health enthusiast but when contacted by ACA for more information on her qualifications, they didn't receive a response.

“I'm not really promoting anything where I would need to have a degree I guess. I'm not really telling people what they should eat or what kind of exercise they should do, I'm just kind of like hey this is what I do, if you want to do it go for it,” she says

Then there’s Leeanne Ratcliffe - You may know her as controversial vegan advocate 'Freelee the Banana Girl'. She's in her late 30's and is a blogger from Queensland. 

Ratcliffe has studied nutrition and fitness at private colleges, but she believes her own research has been far more valuable.

Alex Parker, an accredited, practicing dietician, with a 5-year degree in nutritional science under her belt, says a lot the information we see on social media is simply opinion based.

“If they've got a strong focus on specific nutrients or they're really obsessing over particular foods, that's a big red flag to look out for,” Alex tells ACA. 

“I think it is very dangerous and I think that the sort of programmes that these influencers, or higher profile social media people are touting are quite appealing because they offer amazing, almost too good to be true results,” she adds.