One of my New Year’s resolutions this year was to focus more on my physical wellness. My body has been through a lot of ups and downs over the last couple of years, so I’ve gone into 2025 with a new respect for what it’s capable of. I’m taking more workout classes, eating food that nourishes my body and prioritizing a healthy sleep schedule.
Though I tried to hold true to these intentions, my TikTok For You page — like the creepy, omnipresent spy it is — quickly started presenting me with content surrounding these goals. Within days, my feed was flooded with videos of “wellness” influencers sharing their favorite workout classes, “easy and healthy” meals and other tips and tricks that were often not nearly as helpful to me as these influencers thought they might be. Amongst this wellness content lives another kind of video: the dreaded “What I Eat in a Day.”
These minute-long vlogs consist of influencers sharing everything they eat in a day, from the moment they wake up until they get into bed at night. Content creators film themselves cooking and share the thought process behind each food choice — often a breakfast with lots of protein, a light lunch and a dinner that is “easy but nutrient rich.”
This content is not unique to TikTok. The sharing of food and exercise routines dates back to the early 20th century, when celebrities were often pressured to share their wellness regimens in magazines and newspapers to “inspire” their fans. The trend quickly moved to YouTube in the 2010s, with popular vloggers — whose audiences often consisted of young, impressionable women — filming their daily food intake and racking up millions of views. Now, in the year 2025, this notorious content has found a new home on TikTok.
On the surface, these videos seem harmless. They can give viewers recipe ideas and help college students or young professionals coping with a busy schedule plan meals ahead of time. Their usefulness ends there.
What you’ll find scrolling through these videos is that many of them open with a signature “ab shot.” These body checks, usually no more than a couple seconds long, often happen in a full-length mirror in the creator’s bedroom or living room. Though the person behind the camera may not have intended any malice by including such an image, the shot communicates a harmful message — if you eat like me, you’ll look like me.
As we know, this is indisputably wrong. I could follow my favorite influencer’s meal plan to a T, and my body would still look different from theirs. The exact same diet for two people yields different results — it’s science. Yet the influencers behind these videos seem to be sending a different message, disillusioning their followers into believing that their own daily diets are somehow “wrong” or “worse” simply because they are higher calorie or not as balanced.
Conveniently, most of these vlogs are missing critical information, such as the creator’s activity level, metabolism or underlying health issues that may impact their food choices. They also present an idealized picture of what eating looks like on a day-to-day basis. The influencer in question likely decided to pick up their camera that day because they had healthy, balanced meals planned out in advance. What they ate on that particular day is not necessarily reflective of their daily diet and can often serve to make their followers feel bad about themselves.
There are some influencers who have broken out of this mold. Their “What I Eat in a Day” videos feature non-restrictive meals, frequent snacking and — thank god — not a single body check. Instead of encouraging diet culture, they actively deconstruct it, embracing food that makes them feel nourished and energized, not what will yield the best physical results. TikTok creator Spencer Barbosa is a standout in this regard. She not only encourages her viewers to embrace their bodies, but displays a level of honesty and transparency about the food she eats that is rarely seen amongst “wellness” influencers. Nor does she frame this food as healthy or unhealthy — it is simply what she ate and enjoyed that day, no strings attached.
Unfortunately, these videos are few and far between and leave users in a sticky spot: If they engage with this content, the algorithm will likely flood them with other food and meal videos that are not nearly as well-intentioned, encouraging some pretty dangerous lines of thinking.
It’s no secret that social media encourages comparison and perfectionism. Specifically on a medium like TikTok, short-form video content gives us nothing more than a glimpse into the lives of our favorite influencers — a highlight reel. We see them cooking, working out and mastering productivity, leaving us to assume that our own daily routines must pale in comparison. Many times, I’ve found myself watching a video from the comfort of my bed and being made to feel bad about my own habits. Why am I not up and about, getting three weeks ahead on my homework and doing crunches before I go to sleep?
But this is not reality. Behind the scenes, these influencers are running around their house, setting up tripods and adjusting the lighting until it compliments them in just the right way. It may be their “daily routine,” but it’s shown to us through rose-colored glasses.
Though this may seem like an obvious conclusion, in the case of “What I Eat in a Day” videos, there is a more concerning line to be crossed. In an online world of bikini pictures and “10 ways to get that Spring Break bod” videos, social media has become a recipe for disordered eating and poor body image. Daily meal and diet content only feeds into these habits, encouraging viewers to overthink their food consumption and possibly fall back into old patterns they have worked hard to overcome. While not all users are predisposed to such triggers, it is important to recognize that even if you put a “What I Eat in a Day” video out into the world without any ill intentions, there may be someone behind the screen interpreting it as fact, not fiction. Planting these seeds of doubt can cause users to lose sight of important truths: Food and diet are highly personal, what is healthy for one person may not be healthy for another and — most importantly — social media is rarely an accurate reflection of reality.
It is for these reasons that I will be clicking “not interested” on any future “What I Eat in a Day” videos that come up on my For You page, and I invite you to do the same. On an app that already encourages so much social comparison, “What I Eat in a Day” videos only fuel the fire, triggering an onslaught of self-deprecating thoughts that rarely hold any validity. It is more than possible to live a healthy lifestyle without engaging in restrictive food habits, no matter what your favorite “wellness” influencer may be telling you.
Daily Arts Writer Rebecca Smith can be reached at rebash@umich.edu.
