Ever started a programme in a bid to look like the influencer flogging it? Ever quit because you still don’t look like that person after months… despite doing everything they told you to do? With home workouts being more popular than ever, now’s the time to ask ourselves the question: Are we being sold a lie?

Thanks to Covid, more of us are lifting weights, smashing push-ups and following online yoga classes in our living rooms than ever before. While national fitness heroes like Joe Wicks have guided us through successive lockdowns, helping people to move better in their living rooms, other influencers have seen this as the perfect opportunity to promote exercise plans and apps geared to home workouts. That’s a good thing! you might think – and you’d largely be right – but do we really know what we’re being sold? 

At the start of the first lockdown, 23-year-old Robyn downloaded a fitness app created and marketed by a well-known influencer who has around one million followers on Instagram. Famed as much for her svelte frame as she is for her no-nonsense approach to gaining muscle, her fitness app is geared towards body image goals, with workout titles like “sculpting the peach” luring punters in with the promise of bigger glutes. Despite her initial scepticism, Robyn downloaded the app because it had “great reviews” and “the branding was so pretty”. However, it wasn’t long before Robyn “realised that the app is nothing special” because she wasn’t getting the results she’d expected – despite following the programme to the T.