Marie Claire Blogger Article – Let’s talk about it

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Here is the article that is referenced.

Filed Under: Blog, Fit Living Tagged With: ,
  • http://www.honoringhealth.com Christie – Honoring Health

    I couldn’t agree more. I wrote my own post about it this morning and I agree that as bloggers we have a responsibility to our readers, especially the young ones who are just being molded about our society.

  • http://www.nomorebacon.com Ryan @NoMoreBacon

    I’ve been watching that community from afar for quite some time now. As a guy I’ve never really “got it.” I didn’t understand the HUGE traffic and subscriber numbers when it seemed like the majority of what was being posted was simply food and running pictures.

    Then it hit me!

    So many people read these blogs because in a way these girls are living “the ideal life.” Now I’m not about to say that they don’t work hard or they don’t have problems because that’s clearly not the case, but looking from the outside, people who have frequent social gatherings, eat at beautiful restaurants, complete amazing athletic feats, and have the ability to travel the world are something that most women their age don’t even dream of experiencing.

    For that reason so much of what they put on their blogs is interpreted by young women as “this is how you live healthy,” even if it’s not the intended message.

    I took the long way around, but the point is I believe we do have a responsibility to our readership whether we realize it or not.

    Thanks for starting the discussion!

  • http://weightfordeb.wordpress.com deb roby

    I’ve noticed that when I started reading fitness/diet blogs near the end of my weight loss journey, my reaction to a number of them tripped me into disordered eating thinking. I finally chose to not read that many of those bloggers. I mean, how could I have survived 55 years without any kind of eating disorder and then develop one when I got back to eating healthy?

    I do not read the mentioned bloggers, so I checked their blogs out. I saw nothing inherently wrong with they way they blogged, I was not compelled to return their blogs on my own. (yeah, much of that was running bent of some of the blogs, but I also did not find the writing compelling. And FOR ME it’s all about the quality of the writing).

    I do not believe that showing that you ate 2 bites of a cookie and left the rest is a good thing. A healthy eater -especially one running major races- is quite capable of eating a whole cookie without doing damage to her weight or her metabolism. If I looked more closely, I’d probably “feel” some disorder in reading some of these blogs.

  • http://quickfitaq.blogspot.com/ Amy @ Quickfit

    I think this article could have been written in away that was not so attacking of these 6 bloggers. First it made the “Healthy Living Summit” look like a group of crazy carb hating, aneroxic women. It was almost like Kate Drummond, is a blogger and had been kick out out of the “Big 6″ and is taking revenge on these girls!

    All women have done crazy crash diets, worked out like mad, sabatoged their desert (side note: I put musatrd on my food all the time so I dont finish it) and even tried to eat little or no calories some days. Being a blogger and an honest one, you blog about your everyday life you end up sharing these crazy things that we all have done! There are a lot of other things she points out in the aricle that upset me but I wont go on and on here.

    As our responsiblity being a “healthy blogger” is to be giving out truthful and healthy information. We all know for example running a marathon on NO food is unhealthy but if we blog that we are doing that and readers try to copy then that is scary. Being a Health and Fitness professional and a retired professional athlete I have worked with some of the world’s best nutritionists, trainers, and coaches. I personally know how to train myself and others in a healthy way. I get very nervous when people give out advice that might not be qualified too. Then again that is the risk we all need to understand when reading information from the internet!

    I think this article could have been written in a more postive light and still got the same point across.

  • http://fitarella.com Fitarella

    Christie & Ryan – Thank you both for commenting. I agree, we do have a responsibility to our readers. That doesn’t mean we have to be perfect all the time and do no wrong, put maybe just try to think about how what we are posting may be taken in my the person reading, especially when it comes to health/fitness/food.

  • http://fitarella.com Fitarella

    Deb – Thank you so much for sharing that experience, I’ve heard a lot of stories like that. We need to be careful :-)

    Amy -Thank you for commenting. I didn’t attend the summit and I don’t know the 6 bloggers well enough to comment on the “slant” of the article. I disagree however, that “We all know for example running a marathon on NO food is unhealthy”, no, not everybody does know that. Until I trained for my own marathon I had NO IDEA how marathoners ate or didn’t eat. And there in lies the issue, we can’t just assume that everyone knows or has common sense, because they don’t. You have a fitness & nutrition background so you know better, but many do not. Only 1 of the 6 bloggers mentioned have a college level foundation in nutrition and their readers are taking what they say as “healthy advice”. Yes, we know people need to be careful of information on the internet, but the people that put it out there need to be careful too. It works both ways.

  • http://www.skinnyemmie.com Skinny Emmie

    As a reader of many fitness/healthy living blogs (and occasionally of a couple of those mentioned), I’ve noticed things in the past that make me go “hmmm.” Whether it’s the way people talk about food or the way they train, I can see where it could come across to some impressionable people as THE way to do things and “be healthy.” As a blogger, I try not to write too much about how I eat, I don’t journal my foods or take pictures of everything. If I talk about my workouts, I try to keep it in generalities and give more “you can do it too” advice instead of “this is how you do it” talk.
    I receive emails from readers of my blog asking exactly what I eat and how I exercise- all in detail. I always have to write back to tell them that everyone has to find what works best for them, and what I’m doing might not be what they should be doing. I try not to share too many specifics because I simply don’t have all the answers.
    I’m rambling now, but what I want to say is that YES we have a responsibility to our readers, but we also as bloggers have the right to discuss what we wish to on our blogs. It’s a fine line. An interesting conversation, for sure.

  • http://www.fitwoman.com Marsha @ Green Mountain at Fox Run

    Agree with you. So glad to see this conversation taking place.

  • http://www.foodfoodbodybody.wordpress.com Foodie McBody

    So fascinating!!! I have so many thoughts right now. So… for me, I’m one of those food journalers/photographers/writerdowners. (LOL) For me, this level of accountability works and is necessary, and it doesn’t feel obsessive or disordered. For me, it’s a way of being Awake to myself.

    I think that disordered eating falls along a wide spectrum. For some people, their ED looks like obsessiveness and tilting toward anorexia. For those people, the idea of journaling or taking pictures of their food could definitely trigger those tendencies.

    I was on the OPPOSITE side of that spectrum. My disordered eating looked like: fingers in ears, going “lalalalala I’m not going to THINK about what I’m eating! It’s all good! It’s all OK! I need it all!” or some such. So for me, I HAD to start paying attention to my food in order to be healthy. For me, the idea of “intuitive eating” is a trigger to going back to my old compulsive eating ways. Does that make sense? I feel triggered when I read blogs that say “just listen to your body” because that is in part what got me in trouble to begin with. My body was insisting that it “needed” mac and cheese and brownies in order to survive.

    Some people are vegans. Some people eat raw food only. Some people believe in not eating entire categories of food (sugar/gluten/meat/dairy etc) and that is what they choose and what works. I myself get triggered by the idea of too much rigidity so I find myself tuning out bloggers who restrict their diets a lot. But that’s just me.

    I think that healthy living bloggers have a responsibility to blog honestly about what works for them. Journaling and more recently, photo-blogging, have been very helpful for me. I can TOTALLY understand that it may not work for many people.

    I advocate self-knowledge, self-understanding, honesty and compassion for one’s own journey. If I were to advocate ANYthing it would be: “Know yourself and be kind to yourself, and do WHAT WORKS for you.”

  • http://kclanderson.com/before-and-after KCLAnderson (Karen)

    I echo what Christie and Ryan wrote. Although I am somewhat aware of these blogs, I don’t read them and so don’t really have an opinion about them…they just aren’t on my radar. Maybe it’s because I’m “older” or maybe it’s because the focus of my own blog is more about the emotional aspect of the healthy living journey.

    Based on my initial read of the article, and on reading some of the responses and rebuttals, I think the article itself was unfair and sensational. And it points to a much larger issue that goes way beyond blogging and food and body image…the whole celebrity culture, creating controversy to get attention, which is instigated by big media, “preying” on regular people in order to make more money and become more powerful. I mean, yes, these girls are making a living doing what they’re doing, but big media is “using” them. It’s like the whole diet company thing…”before and after” has become such big business, not just for the diet companies, but also for big media. The regular person who happened to lose XX pounds and who has this new-found-but-still-shaky self confidence and wants the limelight…wants to share their story…be an inspiration!! I know because I was that person.

    And while I believe in the personal responsibility aspect of it, of understanding what you’re getting yourself into, at the same time I think it’s impossible to know what it will actually be like, and those big companies are oh-so-clever and spend so much money to market their products and their messages. These bloggers are being rewarded handsomely with money and fame!! That’s powerful stuff! I am sure they didn’t start off blogging thinking this would happen…but once it did, I am sure it was exciting and I am sure they wanted more. And I don’t blame them.

    I think we have to look at intention, as well. These young women started out doing what they’re doing, most likely with the best of intentions. But now that the conversation is happening, it will be interesting to see if anything changes.

    The whole question of blogger responsibility is interesting too…just because you can doesn’t mean you should (and that can be said of anyone). When I started blogging I made a choice to make it about me and not a “how to” for anything. Do I get asked for my advice? Sometimes…but more and more I reply that the person asking has to find the answers within themselves. And as I write this, I remember how I felt when I initially lost weight and became a success story with my picture on the cover of a magazine, and was in a commercial. I thought…”oh wow, now I can help others.” But what I found more compelling in the end was that as long as I keep it about me, I am a better “teacher” than when I try to tell others how to do it. I hope this makes sense…it’s rather rambly.

  • http://www.shrinkingsisters.com Gail @ Shrinking Sisters

    Do you think the writer would have come down so hard on the bloggers if they weren’t thin?

    I ask that because I’m in a different boat than the so-called “Big 6″ — I write about weight loss for Examiner.com and I have a personal weight-loss blog, but I’m in the middle. Not a “Before” and not an “After.” I’m a “During.”

    I’m not looking to get skinny. I’m shooting for a healthier BMI, which for me will probably always put me in the overweight category (I wear size 11 shoes). The responsibility I have to my readers at both places is to make weight loss realistic.

    I also choose to not write about some size 2 model/actress/celebrity who’s following a miracle ice-cube diet to get down to a size 0. Sure, I lose pageviews to other writers who live for that crap, but the only time I write about celebrities is when the person felt that they were at an unhealthy weight, got to a happy weight and now lives a healthy life. And there are plenty of non-Kardashians out there.

    As for Shrinking Sisters, I don’t post any food journals but I sometimes post photos of food, mostly because what I made was so awesome that I felt the need to share the recipe. I also write about what a pain in the ass it is to lose weight after age 40, which I know a lot of people can relate to. I have paired back a lot of obsessive thinking about my food over the past year. It’s all strictly calories in/calories out. I keep my food whole and healthy and the carb/fat/protein ratio will be just fine.

    I haven’t seen any disordered eating from any of the bloggers in the article. (I spent the summer learning all about disordered eating at a Cleveland Clinic non-surgical weight-loss program.) They’re runners, for cryin’ out loud. And if you run a lot you’re not fat. Runners care about training and the fuel they use for their sport/pastime.

    I don’t quite know what to make of the Marie Claire article. It seemed like the writer saw what she wanted to see to fit her preconceived angle.

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  • http://lisajohnsonfitness.com Lisa Johnson

    Great ideas :-) I’m glad you’re getting this conversation out there and bringing the underground conversation to light. In the end I think the whole blogging community will be better for it.

    Lisa

  • http://www.yumyucky.com Yum Yucky

    I’ve visited the Big Six (and I hate that it’s even referred to as that), but not on a regular basis. Food blogs in general of this kind have actually inspired me to healthier eating and trying new foods that I otherwise would not have. Marie Claire is on crack and so is their Katie chick.

    I’m not swayed negatively by any blog. If I feel the blog is out of line, I don’t visit it anymore. I have done that. But they have no responsibility to me as their reader. We’re all grown ups here, after all.

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  • http://www.fosterfitness.blogspot.com Alison Foster

    Jacqueline,

    Such a great and honest post. I read the article and was a little surprised that so many people put so much stock in a blog as fact. My own blog is just my opinion and I certainly never feel that people do what I do– that is why I don’t write about what you should do. I don’t even really write about what I do, either! My own personal eating habits are just that- personal! I am a certified personal trainer and it is not within my scope of practice to share nutrition information because I am not certified to do so. I love to comment on the world of health and fitness through my own eyes, but I never want anyone to feel like I am telling them to do anything.

    I don’t take photos of my food and write about dieting because I find it to be so personal for the person involved. What worked for me in the past and what I am doing now may not jive with a reader. I also find “diet journals” really boring to read! That is just me. :) Why do I want to read about what you ate for breakfast? If it is a new recipie to share, that is another matter entirely, but taking photos of a half eaten piece of toast is entirely alien to me.

    I do think the article was a little mean spirited. It’s almost as if the author had a cross to burn with these ladies. I got the same feeling when I commented on the Huffington Post last week about a plus size woman in a fashion show and got cyber slapped by women that are fat acceptance advocates. Weight is so polarizing and diet is such a hot topic you forget that there are many sides to the argument!

    The bottom line is blogs are blogs and not facts and people really should read all with a grain of salt. Even the most professional dietician is still a person capable of making human errors. And just because a blogger is having “success” living their life a particular way doesn’t mean the reader will also share that success.

    Alison :)

  • http://samanthasday-erinsgobragh.blogspot.com/ Erin

    Ok I’ve never even heard of these women before. But I just checked them out and from what I read they do show some eat/fitness disordered behavior. I showed the same back in high school. Working out excessively everyday counting every minuscule calorie.

    But does reading the blogs make me want to go back to that life style, no! I think it is the responsibility of both the reader to not take a blog like a cult. Just cause I like a blogger if she jumps off a cliff doesn’t mean I’m going to, and the responsibility of the blogger to not post things that are outrageous that can sway a woman/teen girl to an unhealthy life style.

  • http://www.CurvyGoddessLounge.com The Curvy Goddess

    I coincidentally read the Marie Claire article late last night. There was so much anger expressed in the responses.

    I agree with you that finally someone was brave enough to just get it out there in the open. There is so much obsession around food and dieting and exercise and I believe that as bloggers we are potential role models for many who follow us.

    But as a woman who has had a skewed vision of her body from being obese and overweight while working in the fitness industry as a certified personal trainer I, Diane Williams, want to be real and express myself to my audience, clients, and readers that I’m like them. I believe that is important.

    Sometimes it can be difficult because I’m human but I’ve also stepped to the plate and proclaiming that I’m a leader too. I’m still figuring out how to create a balance and a symbiotic relationship with these sometimes very contrasting roles.