Part 3 of a 3 part series: Changemakers in Sport
Ten years ago, at just 17 years old, Valerie Gruest, PhD, OLY made history as the first Guatemalan swimmer to compete in the Olympic Games.
Fast-forward to today, and Valerie is using her lived experience in sport to make an even bigger splash—this time through academia. As an Assistant Professor at New Mexico State University, she is helping people become more informed, empowered, and embodied media users while raising awareness about the potential harms of “fitspiration” content.
In today’s episode, Kara Bazzi, LMFT, Clinical Director and Co-Founder of Opal, sits down with Valerie as part of our 3-episode series featuring changemakers in sport.
Valerie’s passion, dedication, and drive to create meaningful, lasting change are truly inspiring.
Tune in—you won’t want to miss this conversation!
Find Valerie:
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Website (currently under construction)
Other links:
Lifting the Screen on Fitspiration: A Meta-Analysis by Valerie Gruest
The ‘fitfluencer’ community is growing. What are the dangers? | NPR Illinois
Connect with Opal:
Thank you to our team…
Editing by David Bazzi
Music by Aaron Davidson: https://soundcloud.com/diet75/
Sound engineering by Ayesha Ubayatilaka at Jack Straw Studios
Transcription provided by Rev.com
Kara Bazzi (00:06):
Hello and welcome to The Appetite, a podcast brought to you by Opal Food and Body Wisdom, an eating disorder treatment clinic in Seattle, Washington. It is a podcast about all things food, body, movement, and mental health. I’m Kara Bazzi, co-founder, clinical director, and director of the exercise and sport program at Opal, as well as your host for today. Today’s episode is part of a three episode series that’s titled Changemakers in Sport, where we will be interviewing guests that are making a positive impact in the sports world. On today’s episode, I’ll be having a conversation with Valerie Grust, a former Olympic swimmer representing her home country of Guatemala, who received her PhD at Northwestern University where she researched how social media influences body image and eating disorders, how fitness related content affects wellbeing, and how marginalized identities are represented in digital spaces. Welcome, Valerie.
Valerie Gruest (01:03):
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here with you all and have this conversation.
Kara Bazzi (01:07):
Yeah, we are excited too. To get us going, Valerie, I would love for you to share with the listeners a bit about your lived experience in athletics that led you to doing what you’re doing today.
Valerie Gruest (01:21):
Absolutely. And let me start off with saying the great work that you all do, and that’s exactly why this kind of conversation and why pushing the work is so important. And going to your question, I started in swimming when I was really, really young. My first international meet was when I was four years old. And from there it was full on commitment to one day reaching the Olympics. And actually, this is really special because this is actually the 10-year anniversary of me competing at the 2016 Olympics. So really looking back at the journey and really what it takes to be a professional athlete, and especially in my case at such a young age, I was 17 when I competed at the Olympics, I was under a lot of pressure and I was in an environment where it’s really tough. And now the conversations around body image, eating disorders and injury prevention are very prevalent.
(02:15):
In my time, it really wasn’t. So I really saw firsthand how taxing it is on athletes to not have the support systems that they really need, even through guidance in a lot of these things. How do you stay healthy through competition? How do you stay active, performing well, but also happy in the sport? And I think that’s really what we’re aiming for our athletes nowadays. But I was very, very, very fortunate to have a great career from the get-go. I competed at the national level, very quickly raced to the international level, was several times Central American Caribbean Games champion, and then competed at the Pan-American Games, Olympic Games, Youth Olympic Games, and then had the great honor also of representing not only my home country of Guatemala, but also Northwestern University on the varsity team and competing at NCAAs, making it to that high level as well.
(03:12):
So really seeing all the facets of sport and my experiences in it, I was very unfortunate. I suffered a lot of injuries, which ultimately ended my career, but I can be very content with the performances that I had and the legacy for our countries. I’m originally from Guatemala, as you mentioned, and showing that it is possible to reach an incredibly high level if you really put your mind to it and bringing people up as well, which has been incredible to see in our region, the strengthening of aquatics overall and the level of competition we have, which is incredible to see. I couldn’t be happier with that. So happy to have been part of that wave of athletes that really put the new standard on what can be done in the region and how to also give back to that region as we learned through it with the resources we had, and then getting into the reality checks, especially coming into the US system of athletics and being like, “Oh, this is how things should be done,” and understanding really the impact that it can have on an athlete’s health to not have the support systems that they need.
(04:25):
But all in all, all of this really inspired my work currently and really what drives me to do the research and not only understanding media ecologies as a systematic approach to our lived experience as humans, but also on the athlete side and how that impacts not only very elite athletes, but also very active people, which is really important in understanding how the types of content that we consume online have an impact on our health and wellbeing and our perceptions of health, sport, movement and our relationship with food and eating as well. So happy to dig into the
Kara Bazzi (05:04):
Conversation,
Valerie Gruest (05:05):
But really that’s where the motivation came from with the research and truly seeing the possibilities of what can happen when this kind of open discussion emerges and the different directions we can take with it, not only to put out really important scholarship, but also making sure that the impact of that scholarship is felt in the communities that it’s meant to serve.
Kara Bazzi (05:32):
Amazing. Oh my gosh. Okay. Before we get more into the research that you’ve done, I want to hear a little bit more about your sport experience. So it sounds like you had a lot of positive support as an athlete coming through at the high level. And so yeah, what was that like to be in your relationship with your body as an athlete coming up, especially through puberty and being so young? And I’d be so curious too about the different experiences both in Guatemala and then coming over to the US and competing at Northwestern.
Valerie Gruest (06:06):
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a great question. I think from my experience in athletics, it was very much a belief in self amongst all things, which I guess is really what pushed me through a lot of injuries and a lot of setbacks. My first shoulder surgery was when I was 10 years old, I was already over training. So I would say maybe not the best support systems per se, but just a lot of hard work. That is how I would describe my athletic career, very much kind of rolling through the punches, putting in the work, putting in the hours, and then utmost belief on what was possible. Because at the time, no man or woman in Guatemala had ever qualified to an Olympic Games with an A cut. And I remember being 11 years old and saying, “I’m going to be that person.” And six years after that became a reality.
(07:00):
So it’s very much that approach in no matter the amount of resources, it’s allowed in American country, resources are limited. I was grateful for the opportunities I was given, of course. We had training camps and we had access to the world’s best biomechanics at world championships. But in order to get that access, there was a lot that had to be done to reach that level without that level of support and guidance. So that was a really tough part, but I would say very grateful once those connections started to come out, definitely making the most out of those opportunities was really great. But for me, I really always, and just me as an individual, because the coaching system really wasn’t in tune with that at the time, I just read a lot. As an athlete, I really informed myself in understanding sports physiology, psychology, nutrition, even though I struggled with a lot of food issues as all athletes do.
(07:57):
We know that especially swimmers, at least 50% struggle with an eating disorder, and that was very prevalent in the aquatic community, especially at my time when we were coming up, just this idea that you had to be skinny to be high performing, and they would tell us just don’t eat. There was no guidance on how to eat appropriately or how to really nourish yourself. And that was what was pushed through even nutritionists at the National Olympic Committee and coaches. So I was always aware that that wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I knew that the over-training wasn’t the route to go. I knew that the food situation, I was like, “I need energy. I just feel depleted. I’m training so many hours a day and I can’t eat. That just doesn’t match up.” So I took it upon myself to really read and get informed and actually get educated on all of these things to really work on the essentials on my end of things.
(08:57):
And that’s what I always advocate for athletes now. You need to know all these topics because even if you have a great support system, you have a voice and you have a direction and you can ask the right questions and you can have the right conversations about your performance and development as an athlete. So that was a really big push for me and really understanding sport mechanics and biomechanics and really understanding the performance side of things, even energy levels and what my body needed at very different times because a lot of these times I was traveling alone and I was a minor. I was 14, 15 trying to navigate all these big context situations being thrown into world championships and big meets and having all these pressures around as well, both for media and society. So that for me was really important and that was growing up.
(09:53):
Once I got to Northwestern and really understanding, oh, there’s a sports performance team that puts things together for you, that put it into perspective of like, oh wow, now the possibilities are even bigger. How do I make the most of this experience and really taking my performance to the next level? So really working with sports psych and nutrition and actually fueling my body and feeling stronger and working with different strength coaches. We had a lot of dry land as swimmers working in different types of training groups. I was always distanced and I was just told just swim for forever. I was at the pool forever. I was there for four hours every day just at the pool, not counting everything else that made up the 10 hours of practice a day. But it was a really different approach for me and a really different team environment.
(10:55):
I always trained on my own in Guatemala and having then a team of 60 people, we’re all in this together and feeling a sense of purpose in that way. For me, having the great honor of representing Guatemala in the Olympics was such a prideful thing for me. And then going to Northwestern and feeling that same sense of pride really, but now it’s not just me. Now it’s for everyone. We’re doing this together as a team and having a different approach to the vision and goal that you had in the sport was a really cool thing. So unfortunately, I medically retired. My body really couldn’t hold up after so much training for so many years, but I had a good run. I had a great first season as a freshman from dual meets to big 10s NCAAs. And almost right after NCAAs, just having total shoulder reconstruction kind of also put it into perspective how much I was pushing for the team.
(11:59):
I was like, okay, it’s in my hands and I’m going to do whatever’s in my power to get us there. So it really just taught me that mentality of an athlete. And nowadays we can talk how healthy those boundaries really should be. It shouldn’t have reached that point, but it really teaches you when you put your mind to something, your body’s so powerful and that’s why it’s so important to take care of it, to really now talk to the next generation. And this is not the way, the way it’s always been done. You can have a long career, you can have a career where you really enjoy it. And yes, there’s pressure, but you’ll learn how to handle it. And that’s a lot of what we’ve been doing on the athletes committee side because I’m the chair of the Panama Aquatics Athletes Committee and really having these conversations with athletes, sharing our experiences, guiding them, mentoring them in order for them to be not only really good advocates for their own performance and wellbeing, but also to champion those that come after them as well.
Kara Bazzi (13:05):
Wow. Yeah. How did you decide to go into the research side? So you talk about the support team you had at Northwestern, the dieticians, the mental coaches, the physiology side. What led you to wanting to focus on the research side, the digital spaces? Yeah, I feel curious about that.
Valerie Gruest (13:25):
Yeah, that’s a great question actually. It actually came about when I medically retired. I suddenly had 40, 50, 60 hours a week on my hands and I didn’t know what to do with that time. And I’m the kind of person that always has to be involved in something and doing something. So I was like, let me see what’s happening around campus and we’ll see. And I started seeing all the advertisements of, come into the psychology lab, help this study. We would love to see how you think about this topic. I started doing all of those in the psychology department, in sociology, in the school of communication. And I love to talk to people. So I was just chatting with everyone about the work and I was like, oh, that’s so cool. That’s so interesting. But I had no clue. I came into Northwestern saying, I’m going to be a professional athlete.
(14:17):
Yes, I’m going to get a great education. I’m going to make the most out of it. And I never, never thought I was going to pursue a career in academia, which has been a blessing in disguise. So that’s how I really got interested in research itself. I really didn’t even know the possibilities of it. And in one of those opportunities, one of the grad students that was running their study was like, “You’re asking actually really great questions about this study. Would you like to come on and be a research assistant in the lab?” And I was like, “Sure, why not?” And then that’s how I started filling up my time basically. But I really fell in love with research in the process and I had great people to guide me in the correct direction, especially the grad students sharing their experiences. And actually the program where they were doing their PhD, I ended up applying and getting in immediately after undergrad.
(15:14):
So I started my PhD. I did my master’s on the way to the PhD, and now here we are almost eight years later. But throughout the process, I changed my research a bunch of times. And I think a lot of that also came from when you retire from the sport, we always have this conversation of you lose your identity completely. Now what? And for me, it ended so abruptly. It wasn’t like, oh, I know after my four years of college, I can prep myself. I know what to do and I can start putting those blocks together in place. For me, it ended from one day to the next. I had already qualified for the next Olympic Games. I already had, I think, two world championships fully secured. I was really on that path to do really well at the NCAA level. I think throughout the season, I was ranked third in the country and all the injuries, I just didn’t get there at the end of the season.
(16:13):
And I had so much left in the tank, maybe emotionally and spiritually, but not physically, which I had to respect, but it took me a long time to accept that.
(16:25):
But through all of this, I was really resisting the idea of being associated as the athlete. I was pushing so hard because every time it was like, oh, this is Val, she’s the swimmer, or this is Val, she’s the Olympian. I was like, no, no, no, this is Val trying to do research here. All good. Now I’m just a student. But I fought it so, so hard for so long, and it’s because I didn’t have that time to process and really understand the value of being an athlete and how to find my space. And throughout the PhD, I started doing shared leadership research, multi-team system leadership, which was awesome. And it got my foot in and it taught me the basis of research and managing really big grants. We were working with NASA and doing really great work with astronaut crews and team compositions. But then I was like, I keep going back to swimming for some reason.
(17:23):
My mind was still in it. I did two majors in undergrad. I did art theory and practice, which was art history and art practice applied and communications. So I was like, my thesis in art was all about, it was when I was retiring, so it’s kind of my way of processing as well. It was about movement and it was about injury and it was about pain and it was about all these big things and it was about an introspective into the fashion industry and eating disorders. And I was talking to one of my advisors at the time, who’s now my advisor and was on my committee for my dissertation. He was like, “Fal, why are you fighting this so hard? The answer is right in front of you. This is the exact research you should be doing. Why are you fighting it?” And I think after that conversation with him, I left the office with this is the plan going forward and this is kind of my research line, which carried all the way to the dissertation.
(18:24):
And now as I start as a professor at New Mexico State. So it’s incredible where life led and I’m so grateful for that mentor who’s now my co-author and I’m so incredibly grateful to him, Dr. Nathan Walter at Northwestern University and our co-author, my co-author in this piece that we’re discussing today as well. So it’s really full circle in how those experiences really informed my way of seeing not only sport, but also just general conversations around health and wellbeing, especially when it comes to sport. And then really understanding it from the media perspective, because a lot of the influences that I noticed as an athlete, it was very much informed by what people were consuming on social media, what people were experiencing in online debates as well, critiques or information they were trying to get from other sources that perhaps weren’t the best sources and getting their information from there.
(19:29):
So truly that was the launch into research and how that connection came about, but it took a very long time. One would think it’s so straightforward, but something I love that my advisor really mentioned was find your voice because once you find where your voice that is so strong as an athlete, how do you transfer that into research and all the other things that you do, because I’m also on the strategic communication side of things also, that’s where your power lies. And once you can really tap into that, that is where the magic can happen. And I’m so, so grateful that I found that because now I can speak to everything I do in a very connected way from a very academic perspective, but also from the experience perspective and also from the applied perspective, which is kind of a whole circle moment that I’m extremely grateful for, but definitely going through it did not feel like it was going to connect at some point, but I’m really glad that it did.
Kara Bazzi (20:34):
Yeah. Oh, that’s really neat to hear. When I’m hearing you share that story, I’m thinking of that abrupt loss of identity and almost like the grief process of that identity ultimately led you to doing the research that you’re doing, kind of allowed you to open up to that possibility and with the encouragement of your mentor. I love that. And now this is so meaningful what you’re doing. It connects on all these different parts of yourself. So let’s talk a bit about then the dissertation, the article, the recent published article called Lifting the Screen on Fitspiration and Meta-Analysis. Yes, share with the listeners about that and what you discovered, maybe even for the listeners, what is a meta-analysis and then what the findings are from that article and then we’ll talk about what that’s meant. Yeah.
Valerie Gruest (21:29):
Yes, absolutely. So this paper was extremely exciting to work on. So through these conversations with Dr. Walter, we were really thinking through, okay, what is so prevalent in social media, in media environments more generally that we really don’t know a lot about, but we know that it’s an ongoing conversation as to things we have to keep a lookout for. Because when we think of social media, we typically just think the typical content just created by regular influencers or the more model-like kind of content that is usually referenced in academic publications as those types of imagery that can lead to body image issues, social comparisons, et cetera. So I had been fascinated with Fitspiration content since I was an athlete actually, and that’s why this came about. So Fitspiration content is extremely widespread across social media platforms. So it’s very much a type of whether that’s video, photo, content that showcases fitness imagery that is very closely intertwined with beauty ideals and basically inspiring individuals to be active and fit.
(22:45):
But given the history of Fitspiration content online, it goes back all the way to the 2000s, when it really emerged within eating disorder communities online as a way to maintain structure and very rigid boundaries for eating disorder sufferers to maintain an eating disorder, develop and maintain an eating disorder. So it was very much regimented around the amount of exercise you had to do to lose weight or remain very, very, very thin. It encouraged anorexic eating patterns as well as bulimia, but intertwined with this idea of extreme exercise to maintain control over your body. So once that started to become very much blocked on social media, well, in that case hadn’t even gone to social media, it started with restrictions on websites, on blogs, et cetera. They emerged from those ecologies into social media platforms, so starting with Tumblr, Facebook more at the start. So I was fascinated with that content because its evolution is so interesting to how it looks like now.
(24:00):
It started with those blogs, very explicit, very harsh rules around exercise and body, body compositions and how to control those. And its emergence into social media became a very fastly growing aesthetic to aspire to. So now we not only have the emaciated bodies that were also shown in thinspiration content, it was just very thin bodies that people were aspiring to have, which we can identify with high fashion models, et cetera. Now there was an idea of you not only have to be the skinny, now you also have to be toned. And in that moment, the muscle part hadn’t come in, that’s more recent now. But all of this conversation around extreme control over bodies, extreme control over dieting, extreme control over exercising to attain a basically unattainable physique, it’s not sustainable, it’s not healthy, those conversations started spreading on social media and then it evolved from Tumblr to Pinterest, to Facebook, to Snapchat, to Twitter, to now as we see it on Instagram, which is very much this wellness, fitness, influence or aesthetic, which depending on how it’s used, it is concerning, but ultimately its roots are in eating disorder communities, and that’s where the intrigue for me really started.
(25:29):
So in these conversations, we started thinking through, okay, there’s this phenomenon that is very prevalent. The majority of the scholarship has reported on what this content looks like, exactly what I just mentioned, how it has evolved, what are the different characteristics of it? Now, what do we do to really understand the impact that it’s having on users because the literature was torn? So that’s where we came in and said, this is exactly where we can make an impact with a meta-analysis. So a meta-analysis is a type of statistical analysis where you combine all the types of, well, literally all the types of academic literature that have been published around the topic that fit a particular criteria. For us, it was very much looking at experiments that had directly seen the impact of seeing a Fitspiration image and the effect it has on your health immediately.
(26:23):
So that was our main concern for this project. So we really were trying to address this question of synthesizing the growing body of causal evidence that was published, that has been published to this day. And in that examination, we really found that it’s a pretty dire image that this is painting. Exposure to Fitspiration content among specifically young adults leads to increased social comparisons on healthy dieting and exercise motivations, and it can have that influence and direct influence because this is causal evidence that we have and compiled. It’s really influencing negatively self-esteem, body image, appearance satisfaction, and even affect. And that’s a really important finding because not only does it make you feel worse about yourself, it also decreases how positively you feel about yourself. So we found affect in two different directions to be significant. So this really set the stage for not only this type of research and Fitspiration content, but really opening the doors for future research in really an area that has been under theorized and providing this push forward for us to really understand, in this particular case, the causal impact of Fitspiration on users’ health and wellbeing and really opens a conversation to the challenges that we’re running against, especially for these new generations that are growing up in today’s social media landscape.
(27:58):
So incredibly eye-opening because our hypotheses were very much, we kind of expect this to be negative. We kind of didn’t know in some areas based on the literature if it were going to be neutral at some points or even positive, but the fact that across all fronts it was negative, it is very concerning and it opens the conversation and it pushes the way for future research as well.
Kara Bazzi (28:24):
And I also, when you’re talking about it, I’m thinking about the more recent advertisements of high profile athletes with GLP-1s. And I imagine that’s even increasing this level of impact, negative impact to all of us, right? Was that part included? I guess that probably wasn’t included in the meta-analysis, some of the more recent GLP-1 advertisements.
Valerie Gruest (28:52):
Yeah, that wasn’t included. These were specifically, since it was experiments that they were exposed to very specific Fitspiration content, it went through all of our analysis of the papers that had been written on it have very specific criteria for what Fitspiration content really was. So it was very highly aestheticized images of men and women that were extremely fit, extremely thin, and very, very toned, which is what defines Fitspiration content. There is that ongoing conversation of where do athletes fit into this and the type of content that they do. Definitely fitness influencers go on the side of Fitspiration. I feel like athletes have done a really good job in separating from, this is not an objectifying thing. Yes, this is my body, but this is my body as is, and it’s not trying to push a specific agenda, but what you mentioned, an agenda in terms of you should look this way to be considered in this category, but what you mentioned…
(30:00):
Of the advertisements with GLP-1s. Now it is pushing in that direction. It’s giving a specific motive because it’s very much the concern with Fitzpiration content when it’s a very aestheticized portrayal of fitness and health. And it’s provided with a simple, do this exercise 10 minutes a day and you’ll have the body of your dreams kind of thing. And that pushes into relying on other compensation methods, whether it’s with food or exercise to reach those ideals. But now we enter this conversation, which is not new. This has happened with a lot of diet pills in the past. This has happened with a lot of supplement brands that athletes endorse. But we were really getting into this age, day and age that we’re going back to the skinny aesthetic as the primary one and the fact that athletes are hopping on the messaging of it and whether they use it for health reasons, et cetera, that’s on an individual basis.
(31:01):
But I think the public perception, again, lies under the same principles. Here’s this pathway where you will attain this physique, but of course the physique that is being shown is a physique of an athlete that has been working at this for 20 plus years and the demands of the sport is completely different. So definitely opens a whole other conversation on that. But I think it’s really important for people to be very aware of the messaging. The primary thing, if we’re talking about inspiration, if we’re talking about fitness related content and how that impacts users’ health, I think the first thing to ask is, does this align with my lifestyle? Does this align with my values, ideals, goals in life? And then how do you define a healthy balanced lifestyle in terms of the balance between exercise, food, lifestyle, demands, responsibilities? Because we’ve very much gone into a day and age where we compare ourselves at every point in time and social media just amplifies that.
(32:10):
And understanding the power that a health message has on any media platform is extremely powerful to public perceptions and exactly what this research shows. A very short encounter can have very dire or very consequential influences on psychobehavioral considerations for people as well as generally how they approach their wellness.
Kara Bazzi (32:40):
So what are you hoping for would come from the outcomes of this? Are you hoping to, or I guess what you might even be pursuing in terms of making change more broadly towards some of these efforts on the social media front or helping with media literacy for the users, both? I guess with recognizing these really negative outcomes, what efforts are you wanting to see happen?
Valerie Gruest (33:15):
Absolutely. This is very much an ongoing pathway, especially for research. I think the first step that I am personally taking with this is fully pushing the conversation academically and really understanding the phenomenon itself before we even get to the more applied portion. So it really will take, and right now it’s in the works, this whole pipeline of research in this area, really setting a pathway forward for this specific kind of research because it is not only interdisciplinary, but it’s also very much rooted in media psychology, which provides us with a really deep understanding of the possibilities of this, but we really don’t understand it yet entirely. So my approach is I’m building a really robust research program around this particular phenomenon and really understanding the structure of it to really be able to confidently identify. And the first step was my dissertation and really understanding this from a meta-analytic perspective, understanding it from both a causal and correlational perspective, which is the next paper that hopefully will come out soon, as well as talking to users, talking to users, understanding how they are negotiating these ideals, how they are encountering this content and what ways they’re using it, because that really lets us understand more deeply what are we facing here and what are potential ways to tackle it?
(34:53):
And we won’t be able to start that research on how do we tackle this until we fully understand the phenomenon on its usage itself. And also making it very aware, this content doesn’t become harmful on its own. It’s not, oh, people are just being exposed to this on social media. Users do have agency on how they engage with this content, how do they consume it, how do they seek it? And the fact that it’s one of those types of content that is very seekable and people really enjoy watching and it is often seen as like, oh, it’s just trying to encourage me to be more active, but really understanding the underlying mechanisms of this type of content is extremely important. So doing this line of work and being able to put forth a really strong theoretical agenda for the phenomenon itself and the different psychobehavioral aspects of it attached will be extremely important for us to really reach a very nuanced and more cohesive and comprehensive understanding of it.
(35:57):
These are kind of the first pushes into trying to understand this phenomenon more largely and more deeply. So I’m really excited about that and I’m really excited that this is what I get to do every day. And I’m so grateful now starting here at New Mexico State, just the possibilities of the direction of this work. And I’m really excited and passionate about what’s to come as well.
Kara Bazzi (36:23):
Well, I am excited too. This is amazing that you’re pursuing this. And again, it’s like your full self is in this and it’s so needed, it’s so necessary, and I’m thrilled to learn more about what you’re doing and where you’re at in your process. For the listeners, I appreciate you setting up this as sort of the path forward and it’s going to take time. Is there anything you would say now though that in terms of our listeners as social media users, any things you would suggest, recommend, tips you’d give in terms of how people are consuming their social media content when it comes to fitspiration?
Valerie Gruest (37:10):
Yes, and I can definitely even speak about it from a research perspective. That was the third study in my dissertation and the conclusions on managing this is really be in tune with yourself. That’s my best recommendation in terms of how do you see, understand, want your wellness, fitness, nutrition triage to be working in your favor and on a daily basis? How does it align with your lifestyle? First, understanding that very widely is the first step, at least for me, and that’s what I recommend always. It’s how do you value and conceptualize these ideas in your life? And then taking a really hard look at the things that you’re consuming online. Sometimes we say, “Oh, these things pop up on my feed,” but there’s a reason why that’s popping up on your feed. You’re either looking at very similar kinds of content or even searches that you’re doing for things.
(38:08):
So being very mindful of what you’re currently following and doing a really hard assessment. And that’s what I found with users that were identifying Fitspiration as an issue in their daily life. And they were like, “Yeah, I really had to take a hard look at what I’m valuing in life versus what I’m valuing on social media and finding that connection and that harmony between both because you can’t be having these specific goals in your life and then contradicting that with what you’re putting forth on the content that you’re following and engaging with. So that is the first step and really understanding that and being very conscious about it when you are consuming content on social media, because then it’s a really powerful distinction between,” Oh, I’m going to look at this particular post about a fitness influencer. “And the first reaction always that I heard from interviewees was,” Oh my gosh, I want to look like that.
(39:07):
“The first reaction. And then the more you can counteract that in being, one, aware that not everything is real on social media, two, hard assessments, how much of that is really edited and posed. Not everyone, and even you see elite athletes, the majority don’t have that physique that that’s just not a healthy way, that’s not a sustainable way of living. And even I appreciate some of those content creators that are coming out and saying,” I don’t look like this the whole year. “They do a lot and they use a lot of other mechanisms. Us as athletes, we couldn’t use any substances to enhance our bodies, our physiques. And a lot of these users are, and thankfully they’re starting to admit that and opening that conversation because a regular body does not look like that. And even a regular, active, strong, high performance body typically does not look like that.
(40:04):
I think for users, it’s really important that awareness first and foremost, and then really navigating social media in a way where they’re very aware of the content that they’re consuming and using the tools available. If there’s something that really didn’t make them feel good about themselves, sparked a particular thought about changing their diet or changing their lifestyle, changing their eating habits in order to look a certain way, taking a hard look at the situation and being like, okay, do I really need to be consuming this content? And either on following, either using the tools like, I don’t want to see this kind of content on my feed, and really assessing. And something that a lot of users mentioned that was helpful to them is seeking out those stories and those types of content that do serve them well. Whether that’s in a specific role in life, like some mentioned, especially 25-year-old women, 26-year-old women were saying, I really like to follow active mothers on social media that are very real about their experiences instead of someone that just promotes a particular aesthetic and shows that life is perfect and no realness behind it.
(41:18):
So I think understanding your values and how that aligns with your social media consumption is extremely important. And also from the creator side, I think it’s really important. We have micro-creators, we have macro creators. Even the content that you put forth on social media is so important to the larger ecosystem and the messaging that is being put out there. How are we discussing mental health, physical health, nutrition? How are we openly talking about experiences with eating disorders, with struggles with body image, which is so real. And the more that these experiences can be put forth and this literally what we call the paper, lifting that screen on really what is real and meaningful and sustainable for the average individual is the most important path forward.
Kara Bazzi (42:12):
Yes. Okay. Well, I know we’re kind of getting close to time, so is there anything else you feel like you would like to say to the listeners before we are wrapping up this conversation?
Valerie Gruest (42:24):
Yes, I think it’s really important for us to really examine how social circles move around these conversations as well. Something that is really important, and especially for you guys that you’re very much in the nutrition and movement space, I think it’s so important to discuss healthy media adoptions and healthy media usage in that goal. And I go beyond social media on this one and even incorporate trackers, use of technology to improve your processes day-to-day. I think the more we can strive to being more connected to our bodies, more self-aware of our bodies, and that’s what we learn as athletes, the more in tune you can be, the more you can understand yourself and your body, the better. The more that you’re relying on external forces on representations of what for someone is an ideal, and most likely that’s a social construction and not an individual desire.
(43:28):
The more we can really get to that point as a collective, I think that’s the path forward in these types of conversations because now eating disorders are not as discussed, but they’re very, very on the rise still since the peak in 2017, 2018. And it’s a really important conversation to have. And more and more, the younger generations are exposed to social media and this type of imagery at a younger and younger age. We’re now seeing an age difference of about six years prior being introduced to these types of imagery and content. So that’s six extra years and incredibly crucial developmental years that these ideas of body conceptualization, body image development, and where the formation of an individual’s process and desire towards a healthy lifestyle is really being impacted. So from very early adolescence now, which was late adolescence 10 years ago. So the more we can put these types of conversations out there and for people to really understand, it’s not just content on social media, it goes way deeper than that.
(44:47):
And I think that’s where the conversation should be going and efforts across all areas, both research, academic, applied, and also very much standards and industries of responsible advertising and health messaging is really what I would push forth as the path forward.
Kara Bazzi (45:08):
Yeah. It makes me think of the work that we’re doing with that. Our tagline is food and body wisdom of how do we help our clients get reconnected to their own preferences, their own pleasures, their own appetites for both food and movement in the midst of all of this external noise that we’re faced with all day long. So it is very aligned with what you’re talking about. Yeah, so cool. Well, where can our listeners find your work? Is there anything you want to highlight in terms of what you’re doing if listeners want to track what you’re doing?
Valerie Gruest (45:47):
Yes, thank you so much. They can definitely check out the new paper that just came out, this Lifting the Screen of Inspiration. It was published in the Journal of Health Communication. I also have some papers in the International Journal of Communication, some new that have come out recently as well, but definitely can find everything on my website and social media platforms as well. And I will continue to put this information out there in a way that is also more digestible for people to really understand these bigger research findings as well and put it more consumable to the individual. But I will definitely be sharing those insights soon as well.
Kara Bazzi (46:30):
Okay. And we will link the article and your website in the show notes. So that will be good for the listeners. Well, Valerie, it’s really been awesome to talk with you today. You are truly a change maker. I’m really excited about what you’re doing, what you’re pursuing, and I know that I’ll be following your work. So thank you so much for being here this morning.
Valerie Gruest (46:54):
Thank you so much. I so appreciate you taking the time for this conversation, and I look forward to staying in touch and continuing this work.
Kara Bazzi (47:03):
If you are interested in opal and you want to learn more, please visit us at opalfoodandbody.com. Thanks to David Bazzi for editing, Jack Straw Cultural Center for Sound Engineering, and Aaron Davidson for the Appetite’s Original Music. See you next time.
