Dear Fit Fam

Dear Fit Fam,

That’s enough. Please stop broadcasting your diet and workout plans relentlessly.

I enjoy all aspects of health and fitness – everything from recipes to running. Chia seeds and quinoa are real things that I sometimes ingest and I do crank out the odd workout.

However, I do not support the extreme propagation of this lifestyle, especially via social media. In real, regular life, I would never approach someone and flex, or show them my Eagle Pose in the middle of the day. I doubt I’d rock up to some strangers and say, “Hey, guess what? I had quinoa pancakes and three tablespoons of fish oil for breakfast,” followed by, “Hashtag eat clean train dirty, hashtag fit fam, hashtag results, hashtag motivation. Good talk. Well, see you later.”

What is that? Seriously, what the hell is going on? Cult. Behaviour.

The world doesn’t need a status update every four hours about portion-control, sore muscles, 1200 calorie diets or post-workout smoothies. And we certainly don’t hanker for your six-pack selfie from the gym, or a video of you lifting a kettle-bell, as though you are the first person in the entire world to have succeeded in this improbable act.

Maybe I’m just feeling inadequate, but I long for the days of Mad Men, when people ate sandwiches, drank at work and didn’t obsess about their bodies.

A few questions: Why is this happening? When did this become so popular? Am I supposed to feel badly for eating toast with my eggs? Is it sacrilegious to put cream in one’s coffee? When did the line between vanity and health become so horribly blurred?

I would rather sit in wet clothes and watch The Shawshank Redemption than read one more status about “Fitsporation.”

I will stubbornly sit and wait now, for a time machine to transport to me back to the sixties.