Why Instagram's #fitspo trend could be doing more harm than good

I’ll admit it… I’ve spent a lazy Sunday scrolling through Instagram looking at the fitness elite.

Those gorgeous women with their hair up in pony tails, posing in their activewear and spilling their fitness secrets.

It’s addictive and it makes us ordinary folk feel like looking that way is achievable.

A quick search of the hash-tag "fitspo" and you see a plethora of phrases, including: "strong is the new skinny" and "fit in the new thin".

Instagram sensations Base Body Babes Diana and Falicia promote a healthy and strong ideal on their account.  "We’re more concerned about the numbers on the barbell than we are about the numbers on the scale," Felicia tells A Current Affair.

Celebrity trainer and founder of TiffXo Tiffiny Hall tells me when she started out "it was all about having your clavicle showing and hip bones… now it’s about achieving a big Kardashian butt".

But are these mantras and aspiration to be toned any less harmful than the old Kate Moss quote: "nothing feels as good as skinny feels"?

One study by Griffith University researchers has revealed potentially not.

They found that buying into the "fit ideal" or wanting to be both thin and muscular at the same time, is associated with body dissatisfaction, depression, anxiety and stress.

So the idea that "fit" is somehow healthier than "thinness" doesn’t appear to be true.

"I think it's quite harmful, I think it's very detrimental to people," says Body Positive Australia director Sarah Harry.

She recommends people take up the challenge over overhauling their Insta.

"Every time they feel, they look at something and it makes them either compare themselves or feel bad or want to look different, or go back to eating disorder behaviour, it's out."

Tiffiny Hall also says the craze of having a buxom bottom could actually be causing more physical issues for women.

"If you're going after a Kardashian butt and you spend all your time doing squats, then you're actually ignoring the front bottom which is your quads and your hip flexors. And you create an imbalance in your body that can lead to weaknesses such as your lower back," she says.  

What’s key is not following people blindly and realising what qualifications, if any, these fitspo queens have.

Tiffiny adds: "bodies are amazing… they're meant to work hard… but you do need to find the right experts that are going to give you healthy advice."