No butter. No food after 6 p.m. Everything must be measured. Every macro recorded. “If you aren’t begging for rest, then you aren’t trying your best.”
These are rules commonly promoted by gym bros today.
They’re also tenets that read eerily similar to those posted in toxic corners of the internet in the early 2010s. Those accounts, which took over Tumblr and Pinterest, were banned and denounced for promoting disordered eating. But some say today’s gym bros are sharing similar content and hiding in plain sight − or maybe not even hiding at all.
On TikTok, many fitness fanatics amass followers by sharing their tough-to-achieve physiques and details of their gym journeys. But among the inspiring videos there’s no shortage of clips that promote “clean eating” to an extreme, skipping meals and over-exercising. Experts say this is contributing to a culture of orthorexia, a lesser-known eating disorder that’s quietly plaguing the fitness community.
What is a ‘gym bro’?
“Gym bros” are those who essentially live and breathe the gym. In some cases, their fitness goals can lead to unhealthy behaviors, a pitfall that’s been well-documented as of late.
Rather than aspiring for thigh gaps, men look to bodybuilders online for inspiration, sometimes resorting to dangerous methods to reach hard-to-achieve fitness goals.
Unhealthy behaviors can include only eating “safe foods,” weighing food for weight loss or over-exercising to the point of injury.
