A recent report commissioned by Lululemon – an activewear brand known for its now-exiled founder’s hatred of fat people – suggests “the constant pressure to improve our wellbeing is actually making us less well”. Its 2024 Global Wellbeing Report finds that nearly two-thirds of Australians are struggling with societal demands to maintain wellbeing “in specific ways”. Almost half of us, it says, feel pressure to pretend to be happy when we’re not.
It does feel as though we have approximately a zillion reasons to feel like garbage, and some have suggested social media is responsible. Physical wellbeing is represented online by staged, well-lit selfies, endless Strava updates and choreographed videos of perfect squats. But for me, in a world where pretty much everything has gone to hell, there’s joy to be found in those posts.
It wasn’t always this way. Like so many people born in the 1980s – especially women – I was taught that physical activity wasn’t meant for me. PE class was hell. Even when we did something I liked, my body was wrong or I had BO or my period. Sport was for other people. By the time I was in my 30s, the idea of choosing to participate in sport was ridiculous and “wellbeing” looked like giving my children to someone else so I could go to a spa.
I occasionally saw friends’ posts about their exercise regimes. Usually, I thought, “That’s offensive to me specifically.” There was no reason, in my mind, to share a workout except to make me feel bad for not doing my own workout. Appalled by their hate crime (posting stats from their run), I unfollowed them and went back to my favourite activity (feeling bad).
It’s hard to explain how committed to not going to the gym I was. There were days when my phone registered less than 100 steps. But one day I was struggling to get off the floor after retrieving the remote and suddenly realised, I’m almost 40. I thought, maybe I should do literally any movement.
I had been taught to fear the gym. I imagined being openly ridiculed by ripped young people in influencer gear. They would probably record my terrible efforts and disgusting body for content. I would go home, log on and discover I’d gone viral for trying to do a single RDL while middle-aged.
Because I had become one with my indoor clothes, social media algorithms didn’t show me wellbeing content. I got videos of cats falling off benches and 38 ways of cooking a potato. If I was comparing myself to anyone, it was the people with enough money to try every snack from Costco.
Social media wasn’t deterring me from exercise. It was fear, guilt and my imagination.
I was too embarrassed to try in public, so I turned to YouTube. Bypassing its recommendation of “Is it an H-bomb or cake?” I typed in “home exercise routine” and off I went. I did one short workout. The algorithm immediately decided I should do many more workouts. All my feeds flooded with gym content.
It was nothing like what I imagined. People of all levels, shapes and enthusiasms made gym content. I scrolled through sweat, tears, achievements, failures. I saw butt-scrunch shorts and women lifting 100kg over their heads and people doing yoga with their dogs. I watched a woman who could run for 24 hours solid and a man whose goal was to stand upright for a full minute.
The message had shifted a lot since my year 10 PE class: there were all kinds of ways to move and feel good. I was sold. I could definitely go to the gym if I could be an uncoordinated, red-faced sweat monster. So I did. The people I met were mostly like me: keen, middling and happy to be there. I tried weightlifting, running, boxing, pilates. Every time I went, I shared my little Garmin chart on my Insta stories. Occasionally, a reply guy did a fire react. I was proud. More importantly, my wellbeing massively, rapidly improved.
Lululemon’s report recommends we “release the pressure to be well and focus on our own journey”. But it also reports the overwhelming loneliness many of us are feeling. It cites community connection as improving our sense of purpose. If, as it suggests, 21% of people who “feel a sense of belonging when they work out with other people” also report higher wellbeing, then perhaps it’s not the sharing that is the problem.
It’s easy to point at social media and call it “pressure”, and for some people it can be. But it can also be a source of connection. We’re trying to achieve Peak Wellbeing in the context of some of history’s greatest failures, looking for balance amid a cost-of-living crisis, genocide, isolation and climate catastrophe. My younger self might have seen Paula’s posts about her half-marathon training and taken it as a personal insult. But now I think: what a legend. Maybe our friends’ running stories are smug. Or, maybe, they’re just easier to blame than the intangible devastation of our everyday.
The truth is, very few people go to the gym to think about someone else. Almost no one takes a selfie of a fake workout. They hardly ever post on Strava to make others feel bad. The vast, vast majority of wellbeing posters are not fitspo influencers. They’re just people going, “Hey, check it out. I tried hard, in spite of everything.”
