Someone I follow on IG and sometimes chat in DMs, not an influencer, just an ordinary guy in my area, started going to the gym not so long ago and keeps posting on Stories about lengths of his workouts, and how many calories he's burnt etc, and quite frankly I find it a bit triggering. I'm not in the right mind space to take up proper exercise but I cycle to work and go for walks with friends etc but you know when you just feel like you're not doing enough? Anyway, I've muted his stories so I don't get triggered
I think it's absolutely fine if fitness is your hobby. I get it, I swim, I weightlift, I go through phases where i do lots, phases I do nothing at all. It's a problem when the rest of your life takes a back seat. When you can't give yourself a lie in after a night out. Can't have a big piece of cake at lunch wth friends without "running it off" afterwards. Every holiday is a mountainous hike. It's fine to track how heavy you lift or how far you run if you have a goal to get better or stronger, but calories are absolute bullshit. People doing fitness things as an actual lifestyle, like bodybuilders or bikini models (or actual pro athletes) will have a professional monitoring them counting their calories and they do not maintain that every day of the year, they deliberately factor an off-season where their diet loosens. And of course, people looking to lose weight- but one of the reasons most diets fail is because, without support, maintaining a calorie controlled diet long-term is just not sustainable.
Cycling and walking ARE proper exercise. Exercise, by definition, is anything that gets your heartrate up. And you only really need to do 30 mins of "moderate" exercise a day, so basically just a medium walk. People like Zanna are not making fitness accessible like they claim, they're gatekeeping. People like you ARE doing as much exercise as you need to be to stay healthy, and if you're being made to feel like it's not good enough. Most people, when they feel they can't do enough, or be "perfect", are put off from doing anything at all. I talk to women all the time who are too scared to try lifting weights because they're "too weak". Well of course you are, you're too scared to do the thing that will actually make you strong because you see all these women online and think you're just meant to BE strong already. Screw those people.
Take a walk and have a chat with your mates. Cycle to have a picnic. Splash around a lake and have a cake with the people you meet afterwards. Take an online yoga class and enjoy lying down in the quiet when they do a tricky pose you don't fancy.
My nan is 88, and she wanted to "get fit like me" in lockdown, so we'd skype, and she'd ask me to show her the stuff I did in the gym. i'd show her my arm exercises, and she'd use tins of beans as weights. She bloody loved it. She broke her arm in a fall recently, and the doctors said that her weightlifting had made her recovery much easier and quicker. If 15 mins of chucking tins of beans above your head 5 nights a week can make it noticeable that your body can recover better from injury, it really is all you need to be healthy.