episode 243: instagram is not the boss of you
Ever feel like everyone on Instagram is living a perfectly reset, “glowed-up” fall while you’re just trying to survive the back-to-school chaos?
Same.
This week, I’m breaking down:
Why your fall doesn’t need a glow-up, no matter what social media says
How influencers make change look effortless… when it’s actually anything but
The viral reel about weighted vests that had me yelling at my phone
A simple way to stop internalizing every piece of wellness advice you see online
This is part rant, part reality check, and part reminder that what’s “best” isn’t universal—it’s personal. And just because you saw it on Instagram doesn't make it true.
-
243
[00:00:00] Hello friends. Let's see. I'm just checking something on this to making sure it's recording. Um, hopefully we're all good. Um, I'm recording this on Tuesday, September 2nd. This is pretty far out from when this is gonna air because I, I skipped a week just 'cause of, I was trying to kind of, you know, give myself a little bit of break with the end of summer.
Um, and so funny, whenever I record episodes this far out, it's like, oh, is I'm recording this Like two weeks before it's gonna air, is it still gonna be relevant? But I think it's gonna be, and honestly, today is kind of like a talk show episode, is what I'm calling it. Um, we start school on Thursday the fourth.
By, by the time you hear this, obviously school will be well underway, which is always weird about recording these in advance. But today as I'm sitting here, I'm like really struggling where this is like these last two days, which I'm happy to have. But it's also like this just long Sunday scary thing where it's just like anticipating getting back into the [00:01:00] routine and what's the school year gonna be like and how are classes gonna go?
And our middle school has this new like rotating schedule. Um, what's, you know, eighth grade homework, all this stuff. Um, so there's just like the anticipation of all of that. And I have a lot of time today to get work done and I'm just feeling so much resistance to it. I'm trying to work on this big project that I'm working on and I'm literally looking and I'm reading the words and it like, might as well be in a different language.
'cause I'm reading things that I wrote and I know what I need to do, but my brain will not absorb anything. It's like, there's like a brick wall right behind my eyes, between my eyes and my brain is what it feels like. But what I did feel like I had the energy to do was record a podcast and just talk. So that is what I am doing.
Um, and I think there's like a little bit of like a meta lesson there, which I wasn't intending to share, which is like when you are feeling resistance to doing things you know you need to do, sometimes we have to push through a thousand percent. A lot of times we have to push through. But [00:02:00] are there ways to work with it?
Is there some minimum viable amount of the thing that you are supposed to do that you can do instead? Right? Can you water it down? Can you do less? Can you make it easier? Can you rearrange things right? Can you do something you had planned for a different day? I had not planned to record this today. I don't know when I was gonna record it.
I think actually early next week, like can you shift things around to meet yourself a little bit more Where you are at that you're not throwing up your hands and saying, fuck it, I'm gonna do nothing. But you are rearranging things a little bit. Sometimes that's gonna be possible. Sometimes it's not gonna be possible.
But what I will say is I feel like there's very often. I'm not gonna say always, but a way to turn the volume up or turn the volume down on a given thing. Right? Whether it's about getting work done or cooking food, or going to the gym or going to sleep, or, um, sometimes even like dealing with your kids, right?
Whereas sometimes we have more capacity to deal with our kids. Sometimes we have less and sometimes [00:03:00] it's like, okay, fine. Yeah, just sit there and. Go on your iPad or go on social media or do this or go like watch a show when, you know, when we feel like we just need more, we don't have the time, space, or energy necessarily to deal with things.
Right. And I'm going a little bit off on a tangent here, right? Does that bring up like guilt and all these things, but sometimes meeting ourselves where we're at and looking for ways to do that is really helpful. So. I had not planned to talk about this. I'm, I'm, hopefully I'm not rambling too much. I'm not gonna keep going down this conversation path because I had a couple things I just thought I would chat about.
And again, talk, show episode, right? I'm not really sharing any big, like, life nuggets here or skills or things for you to do. Um, so I don't know if you'll enjoy this or not, but this is what you're getting today and if you wanna shut it off, obviously that's your prerogative. Um, but I am gonna share what I think will be some.
Hopefully helpful [00:04:00] insights. Um, I was thinking about whether or not I wanted to talk about the Serena Williams stuff, for lack of a better term. And I actually don't think I'm gonna get into that. I think I will talk about it, but, um, I. I'm still giving that a lot of thought and there's a lot of noise out there right now about it anyway, and I just don't really necessarily feel like kind of adding to that.
I wanna sit with it and keep thinking about it. Um, and I also have my client, Nicole, coming onto the podcast in, well by the time you hear this, I think we're gonna be recording it this week. So it's gonna air in the next couple of weeks talking about her experience with GLP ones and so I think it'll be really helpful and fun and interesting and useful and all the things for you to hear it, no pun intended.
Um, like straight from the person's mouth. Um, someone who has been on one for a year and done alongside coaching and what that experience has been like, um, and the reasons why she did it. And maybe then I'll revisit the [00:05:00] Serena Williams thing. So two things I wanted to talk about today. And as I'm doing this, I'm like, God, does anyone wanna listen to this?
But this is what's happening today. I follow this girl on Instagram, so I'm barely on TikTok. I follow like. Barely anyone on TikTok, and I rarely go on, but there's this girl that I follow, her name's Ashley Page. She's like a straight up influencer. Um, and I realized that she was also on Instagram, like, I'm just gonna follow her on Instagram because I don't have to go on TikTok.
And I don't know how old she's, I think she's around 30. Um, and she really is like pure straight up influencer. Um, she lives alone and she does like. Beauty stuff, lifestyle stuff, you know, kind of across the board or products and things that she's talking about. And there, it's this thing where like sometimes like I can't look away.
Like sometimes the way she portrays her life and the things that she does, I'm like, is this real? Like, is she really do this stuff? And I will say she lost her home in the Palisades fire in January, and I actually [00:06:00] discovered her around that time. So this girl has been through some shit. Um, and she talked about that and she talked about the process of finding a new home and replacing things, and there definitely was a lot of realness that came through with with some of that stuff.
But the thing I wanted to talk about is she posted this three day series called like a Fall Glow up, and each day had a theme. One was like, I think Wellness one was Beauty one was like home and like Your space, and she talked for probably, I don't know, three, four, maybe five minutes in each of these videos.
And, um, she, in each one she listed off like 10 things. So of a course of three days, these three videos, there's 30 different things that she's recommending you do for your fall. Glow up things from like. You know, making a cozier morning routine to exercising, to meal prepping, to putting on makeup, to changing your sheets every Sunday, to creating a new Sunday routine to, um, I can't even remember all the [00:07:00] other things.
And I watch these videos through and I'm like, she's talking about doing these things as if it's like as easy as. Scrolling social media all day, right? To take some of the, to take a behavior. That's probably the easiest behavior in the world for a human to do, is to sit and scroll social media. She's talking about all these things as if it's just like no big deal.
Like here are these 10, 10 things to do, actually, 30 things to do to glow up your fall. And it just got me thinking about so many things. But one is that she is. Unmarried and doesn't have any kids. It's not a judgment on her that it's just an observation, factual statements. And it was a reminder that we do not all have the same 24 hours in a day.
And that is not to say that someone who is not married and doesn't have kids, um, has an easier life than someone who is married and does have kids. That's completely not at all why I'm saying, I'm simply making the statement that we have different types and, uh, levels of [00:08:00] responsibilities and obligations.
And also the type of her job, right? She doesn't have an office job. I don't have an office job and I have one kid, so my life is different than a mom who maybe has two or three kids and works full time in an office, right? We don't have the same 24 hours in a day. And I think that's just something that gets so overlooked with social media stuff.
Like I'm watching this and I've got a pretty good like filter on things where I. Really, like I'm pretty good at saying that's not realistic. Just because she's saying, this doesn't mean I have to do it. My life is not going to be better if I do these things. My life is very different than hers. I don't have to compare myself, but certain stuff, I'm really good with that, and I was really good as I was watching it.
But I wanted to talk about it here because there's just, right now I feel like there's so much content out there about fall and fall being like a glow up and a reset and all this. And I get that a change of seasons and especially fall because of Back to School, does feel, have that fresh start feeling.
And if a fresh start feeling is something that works for you, great, lean into that. It's not something [00:09:00] that has ever worked for me. I'm not a January 1st person. I'm not a, oh, like it's back. It's fall. I'm gonna start a new routine and rehab, redo my morning. I like. I'm just trying to like get through each day right now with the start of school and like, what's that gonna be like?
I can't even think about starting like some fall glow up. It's like that is such a foreign concept to me. Same thing happens with January one. Like I'm so sad that the holiday winter break is over. I'm like, I just gotta get through each day for the next week to 10 days. Um. But this is all, we're all different in this way.
But the point me bringing this up is there's so much content about like fall refreshes and fall resets, and fall is a time to start a new routine and all this that may or may not work for you. And just because everyone out there on social media is fucking talking about it endlessly doesn't mean that you have to do that.
It doesn't mean that that's something that has to resonate with you. Maybe I'm sample size of one here. It doesn't resonate with me at all, and I can't think of anything that feels actually more confronting than all of this content around this because it just [00:10:00] reminds me of how, not much anxiety, but how unsettled I feel right now.
Um, and I'm just literally trying to like, okay, get into the start of school. What's the new routine and all this, and sports practices and, and rejiggering all the things that have not been a part of our life since summer. Um, I'm gonna make things as easy as possible. I'm not into cooking new recipes and finding new fall things, and like.
You know, putting a new Sunday routine into place, I'm like, I'm gonna keep food as easy as possible. I'm going to eat shit on repeat. I'm gonna do the same workouts I've been doing. I might even dial back on workouts a little bit right now and just do like more of my weighted vest walks. I'm gonna make stuff, wanna repeat the things I know have been working.
I don't want to start anything new right now. So reminder this. I made a post about this and maybe I'll do a separate podcast, although this kind of leans into it just because. A shit ton of people out there are saying, or into their new fall routine and are telling you, oh, here's 10 ways to glow up your fall.
Doesn't mean you have to do that. Doesn't mean that [00:11:00] like you have to even like care about that. Um, I just think it's gotten, it's gotten so hard to start to differentiate what actually feels good. Works for us from what we are being told should feel good and should work for us. I think it's getting harder and harder to distinguish that, to figure out what we like and what we're being told to, like I did a post on this around like the best, the best fall routine, the best genes, the best protein powder, the best skincare, the must have this, the must have that like that's, it's all bullshit.
It's not about what is the best, it's about what is best for you and. Being able to pull that apart I think is getting harder and harder because it's, there's so much in our face about what the best is, and I, I am sure I know I have shared content like that in the past. It is been a while and I, I am truthfully like not going to do that ever again because it's just, that's not how life is.
What's the best for one [00:12:00] person might be terrible for someone else, and vice versa. That's normal. But yet we forget about that and we think, well, this is, this person said it's the best. Well, it must be the best. So I have to buy this. I have to do this routine, I have to do this. Like, no, you have to figure out what works for you.
And so this glow up thing. It really got me thinking about that stuff. But then it also got me thinking just around like how unrealistic the stuff that she was sharing is. She was talking about some of these things, each one of these 30 things she talked about over the course of three days. Require incredible amounts of behavior change skills.
And she's talking about it like, it's like just sit on the bag and like eat a bag of cookies, right? Or scroll social media. Like it would be that easy to do something. So she's saying these things and then you try to do them. And not only is it the volume of things she's talking about, it's the nature of the things and you're like, oh my God, is this what I need to do to have a good fall?
Is this what I need to do to like be a good person, to be a healthier person, a happier person, a more [00:13:00] well-rounded person? And then you try to do those things and you can't do any of them for more than like five seconds because she's just telling you it like as if it's no big deal. When really getting, trying to do any of these things, you'd have to break each one of you pick one or two at a time and break them down into all these component parts.
And it's actually such a complicated process to really do any of the stuff that she's talking about. And she's listing it off like. Like ladi da, just like revamp your morning routine and revamp your Sunday routine and meal prep and get to the gym and do this workout and workout with friends and clean out your closet and clean out your makeup drawer and clean out your pantry and go to the farmer's market.
Like literally, this is all the shit she's talking about. And I'm like, whoa, lady. I understand you're doing this with the best of intentions, but do you have any idea like what you are telling people to do? And then we absorb all that and then we think we're less than people when we can't do any of that.
And that is just not the case at all. And I actually really enjoy following her. There's something about like her demeanor that's kind of like calming and soothing in a [00:14:00] way. So this is really like, I don't, I feel like I'm ripping into this girl and I don't actually want to do that because I think this is like a bigger problem with content and social media in general about how oversimplified.
People make things, and I think this is a big thing in the influencer category where they want you to do this thing because it's going to help them sell a product and they don't have any way to help you actually learn how to do that thing. That's what behavior change is about. And I think it's a problem 'cause then I think it ends up, ultimately we try to do these things that we think are gonna make us feel good.
'cause this person told us it's gonna make you feel good. But then because we don't have the skills and the support to follow through on it actually ends up making us feel shitty. And then we feel even worse than we did at the beginning. So there's that. Then I was on social media yesterday. And I'm clicking over.
I got this random reel like in my feed. You know, Instagram just does that. It serves you shit. And it was about how it was this [00:15:00] total, I'm gonna actually pull it up, um, so I can, because I took a screenshot. It was like one of these like five second reels where it just has one headline. Millennial women are out here wearing weighted vests and I'm inclined walking while scanning spines with bulging discs.
Do not wear weighted vests. Gravity is doing you enough favors. And I'm like, what the fuck is this? Who is this person? So I tap on her profile. She has 20 total posts, 163 followers, and her profile says, counterculture woman in love with growing older, slow down and smile. Lifestyle, no Botox, no filler, and sometimes no SPF, not someone who has any credibility to make a statement such as, do not wear weighted vests.
Gravity. Gravity is doing you enough favors. And then in the caption she says. I said what? I said, incline walking makes you engage your core and targets your hamstrings while not adding strain to your joints and spine. Gravity is pushing down on our bodies. We don't need any more of that. [00:16:00] So she has a hashtag that she's, um, an MRI tech, so she reads MRIs.
And so she's extrapolating that to make a claim that has no scientific research, proof evidence whatsoever. And then the crazy thing is this woman only has 20 posts. And this reel went quote viral and at the time when I took the screenshot, had 718,000 views. Her other content, which is nothing related to any of this.
I didn't watch any of it, but I just kind of looking at it, have like views in the hundreds. So this woman who has no credibility to make a statement like this says something provocative. The algorithm picks up on it. It goes viral, shows up in my feed because the feed is picking up probably unweighted vest stuff and then I'm like, holy shit, this woman is scaring the shit out of people saying something that is totally not true, that wearing a weighted vest is going to compress your [00:17:00] spine and give you bulging discs and make you shorter over time.
Like that is just, there's no evidence for that. And so. What I wanted to talk about is how we see shit. We're scrolling and we read something and then we just like intake that information and then it sits in our brain. We are not filtering it for who is the person that said this? Is there any research behind this?
What is her credibility to say something like this? What is the larger context in which she's talking about this? We just see that and we're like, holy shit. And I read some of the comments and some of the comments people are going like, oh my God, I've never heard this before. I'm I'm, I may stop wearing my weighted vest.
I need to learn more about this. I can't believe this. I've never heard this before. Well, that's because it's not fucking true. So again, this goes back to like. How we use and consume social media and the way we just take things at face value. And I'm not saying that I'm not guilty of this because there are many times where I have, but this was something that was so glaring to me and so egregious and so wrong.
[00:18:00] And I don't know why this woman is saying this or why she thinks she has. She has the credibility to say this, and she might truly believe this. And if she wants to believe that, fine. She doesn't have to wear a weighted vest. But social media exists in such a way that anyone can just go on and say their opinion and, and then in fact, millions of people start seeing it, right, with no validation, no research, no credibility, no education to say such things.
And then we, the viewers, the consumers read that, see that, and we intake that and we internalize that information. And then what do we do with it? It is fucking crazy when you think about that as a process and the extent to which that happens every day, right? 'cause this is just one example of how we intake information from people who are just sharing their opinion, which could be totally fucking ridiculous and unfounded.
Whether it's about weighted vests or makeup or nutrition, or weight loss, [00:19:00] or healthcare or exercise or anything. And then we internalize that information and it becomes part of the way that we are then absorbing other pieces of information, making decisions, both consciously and subconsciously. And this just stopped me in my tracks.
I was like, holy shit. And then I saw how many views it had. 'cause I'm like, why is this showing up in my feet? And I tapped on one viral and then I read some of the comments and I'm like, holy fucking shit. And so really this is just me talking about like social media. There are obviously wonderful things about it, but there, and we know this, I'm not saying anything new here, but the extent to which the scary and bad side of things continues to grow really astonishes me.
And this really just, I mean, I, I just, I was, I was like, shell, shell-shocked by this, by what she said, by the amount of people that had seen it, by the comments, people's [00:20:00] reactions. It just got me thinking and I wanted to talk about it. Um, I'll try to share a link to the post in the show notes. Hopefully I'll remember to do that.
Um, by the time this airs, who knows how many views it will have had, uh, just 'cause I can find her, um, because I took a screenshot to see what her screen name was. So again, talk, show, episode, really just stuff to get you thinking, things to be aware of, things to pay attention to. Um, that's what I got for you today.
I'll be back next week. And, uh, thank you for being here. Thank you for listening.