Even if you don't have an active interest in eating healthy or trying to get fit, chances are your social media feeds are full of bodies.
Bodies trying to get leaner, fitter, healthier and hotter.
People, often unqualified, have built their entire brands and wealth by tapping into this market and giving out health, dietary and fitness advice. Some of it can encourage people to have healthy relationships with food and exercise, for others it has a dangerous influence.
Buying into the dream
Clancy says engaging with fitspiration or #fitspo content took her down a dark rabbit hole.
In 2019 she had returned to Australia from an exciting 18 months travelling and partying in Canada.
She moved to regional Western Australia with her boyfriend at the start of the pandemic.
"I'd gained a lot of weight... I couldn't find a job, I didn't have any friends, I didn't know when I'd see my family in Sydney," the 23-year-old tells Hack.
"It was just a really shit situation."
Clancy wasn't happy mentally or physically. So she tried looking for sources of motivation and came across a fitness influencer called Sarah Stevenson, known online as Sarah's Day.
Sarah's Day has almost three million followers across Instagram and YouTube and describes herself as a "holistic health princess".
She sells skincare products, activewear, exercise programs, cookie dough-flavoured protein powder and a food app.
"She was just a positive force, someone who motivated me to get out of bed and go for a run," says Clancy.
She says she wanted to emulate Sarah's lifestyle.
"I just found it so enticing, she's so pretty, she's so skinny...[I thought] maybe if I do what she's saying I could be like her."
Breaking the illusion
Clancy tried to eat and exercise like Sarah suggested, and even bought some of the products she was advertising on her Instagram.
But after a few months, Clancy realised she was starting to develop some dangerous habits.
"Like putting my body down even more, the purging would start, trying to exercise excessively and eat less," she says.
Clancy has lived with body image issues for most of her life and was diagnosed with a non-specific eating disorder from the ages of 12-17.
She'd worked pretty hard to break out of that mindset, but then it started to creep back in.
But Clancy, who spent years working with a psychologist and studies occupational therapy at university was able to identify the dangerous patterns.
She's at a good place with accepting her body now, but worries about what would have happened if she didn't already have that knowledge.
"I would have relapsed... it would have triggered a whole mental health downward spiral," she says.
"I can't say where I'd be, but it probably wouldn't be a very good place."
Fitpso can be dangerous
Sarah's Day isn't the only influencer out there spruiking fitness regimes, diet culture and beauty products to millions of impressionable followers.
But she did come up a bunch of times in Hack's body image crowdsource investigation as someone who a number of young Aussies have serious concerns about.
Hack reached out to her for comment, but she didn't respond.
Research has shown that looking at fitspiration content on social media increases body dissatisfaction and puts people in a negative mood says Dr Jasmine Fardouly, a research fellow with a focus on social media and body image at Macquarie University's Centre for Emotional Health.
Dr Fardouly says content that motivates people to eat healthily and exercise isn't inherently bad, the issue is that a lot of it isn't really focussed on health.
"The motivation is to look a certain way or to achieve a certain ideal for appearance reasons, rather than health reasons," she says.
"Dietary restraint, and compulsive type exercise, that's not a healthy message to be promoting, especially if it's guilt inducing messages."
Dr Fardouly says young people often trust social media personalities because they have huge followings and not necessarily because they're qualified to give health and food advice.
"People need to be more critical of the kind of motivation that the person has behind the messages they're sending," she says.
For example, they could be trying to sell their own fitness and beauty products.
A 2016 study shows women who post fitspiration content are more likely to engage in compulsive exercise and disordered eating, and at a higher risk of an eating disorder.
Dr Fardouly says it's important to remember that often social media isn't a reflection of reality.
"Sometimes these posts are very much curated and set up... it looks like the person is exercising, but they haven't just gone on a long run, and they're not all sweaty," she says.
"It's a very one-sided version of the person's life."
Thousands of dollars lost to weight-loss 'magic fixes'
Ellie's story is similar in many ways to Clancy, but it took her a decade before she was able to recognise the damage and the harm caused to her by the weight-loss industry.
She was just 13 years old when she bought her first diet pills after seeing them advertised on daytime TV.
"It was a pretty young age, but it was the start of this massive downward spiral of thousands of dollars, dozens of products and a lot of damage," the 27-year-old says.
Over the next decade, Ellie reckons she could have bought her first car with the amount of money she spent on all kinds of weight loss products.
Every time she tried a new product, Ellie says she invested emotionally and was let down when the results never materialised.
"None of these things work. They all work for a month or so. But if you follow the instructions of what it says on the bottle, it's always 'supplementary to diet and exercise', which is where the actual weight loss comes from," Ellie tells Hack.
"The disappointment always falls back on yourself. It's always a blow to your self esteem. And it's never the fault of the product."
How the weight-loss industry is regulated
The Therapeutic Goods Administration oversees the regulation of weight-loss products, however, they are usually classified in the lower risk category that's just checked for safety and quality, but not efficacy.
These products often rely on what experts call 'anecdata' such as personal testimonies and endorsements. Unpaid endorsements are especially hard to regulate because they don't fall under advertising guidelines and can easily sneak into your feed.
Dr Nives Zubcevic-Basic is a senior lecturer in marketing at Swinburne University and focuses on body image, and says there's a patchwork of regulation for the diet industry that covers both the products and how they're advertised.
"Restrictions in Australia for advertising weight loss products include that all advertising and marketing must be truthful and accurate, and must not mislead consumers about the price, the benefits and the need for any weight management products or services," she says.
However, all the experts who spoke to Hack highlighted the challenges for regulators when it's so easy for people to buy weight-loss products online from overseas.
"It's a global issue, body image issues are global, but also the content that we're exposed to is global as well," Dr Zubcevic-Basic says.
Fad diet warning signs
There are a few warnings to look out for when it comes to fad diets or weight loss products, says Clare Collins, an associate professor in nutrition and dietetics at the University of Newcastle and an accredited dietician.
"They often contradict advice from qualified health professionals; they promise it's going to be easy and it's going to be fast; they likely ban whole food groups, like no carbs or no fruit; and the strategy is the same approach for everybody," Professor Collins says.
The products often carry a disclaimer.
"There's a lot of caveats that say, 'this product should be used in association with either a weight loss diet or a healthy lifestyle or physical activity,'" Professor Collins tells Hack.
"So there's big promises, but the devil's in the detail, the fine print is actually what's going to lead to that change in body weight."
Professor Collins wants to see more emphasis on products and diets that have proven results.
"I think there could be stronger regulation. If you're putting a product in the market and it says, 'this product will achieve weight loss'. Well, show us the science."