Ep 73- Is It Healthy or Disordered? Breaking Down SkinnyTok Weight Loss Tips

July 03, 2025

Skinny culture is making a comeback. How do you know what’s diet culture and what’s healthy advice? Are these tips just pro-eating disorder content or could they be useful to stop binge eating?

Today I’ll cover…

• What is skinnytok?

• Why the thin ideal is re-emerging

• My list of hit or miss “skinny tips”

• How to protect yourself when harmful tips come across your algorithm

TRANSCRIPT:

Hey, confident Eaters. Today we are going to break down Skinny Talk or Skinny TikTok. Now if you're not familiar with Skinny Talk, we'll go over what that is, but this episode will also just help you discern what information out there is actually healthy and helpful to help you stop binge eating, and what information is just disordered eating and is gonna take you further down the rabbit hole?

Because whether you're on TikTok, on Instagram, listening to other podcasts, following other influencers, there's gonna be a variety of information out there, and I want you to be able to tell, is this something that's going to further my journey towards recovery and becoming a normal confident eater, or is this some advice that's going to set me backwards and lean me back into what got me into this whole mess in the first place?

So if you're not familiar with Skinny Talk, it is this trend on TikTok that promotes content around being ultra thin. So there's a lot of what I eat in a day, videos, low calorie recipes. There's this sense of like a hustle culture of doing better, trying harder, staying motivated. A lot of thin inspiration or thin inspiration and  TikTok has actually banned the words Skinny Talk now because it has turned into something that has been a new form of essentially promoting anorexia and eating disorders.

It has been reinforcing this idea that women must shrink in order to be worthy and loved and happy. And you know, diet culture has always been around, but every couple of years it starts to look a little different.  And a lot of things that start out as looking like they're just healthy tips can sometimes spiral into more of this eating disorder territory.

And if anyone was here for the pro andana content in the 2010s, skinny talk sounds a lot like copy and paste from those pages. It is all just recycled eating disorder content. And we'll go over today which tips might actually be helpful to help you lose weight because there are some of them. It's not all bad.

But there  are just going to perpetuate the binge restrict cycle and not going to be helpful for you in your journey.

So let's first think about why skinny culture is starting to reemerge in the first place. Because I feel like, you know, before a couple years ago, we were really so big into the body positivity and anti-D diet culture, and now we've kind of seen this trend back into wanting to be skinny and there's nothing wrong. Let me clarify, with wanting to lose weight, but there's becoming this sort of obsession with this hyper thinness that I feel like wasn't really there a couple years ago. Of course, one of the biggest new things that's come about in the past couple years is Ozempic. We go V, all of these GLP ones that were not mainstream a couple years ago. Now, yes, I know these drugs can be lifesaving for people with diabetics, but it's also become so normalized for everyday use and cosmetic weight loss too, where people are taking these just for the heck of it.  I know someone in my life who has literally been thin her entire life, like 115 pounds. You know, I'm not gonna say whether or not she's had eating disorder or not. I don't know people's stories, but she started taking Ozempic because she just wanted a quote, easy way to keep the weight off and to not have to worry about it.

So it's become, you know, so normalize for reasons beyond health too. And if you think about it, you're literally shooting a pharmaceutical drug into you. So of course there's going to be negative side effects and it's not gonna be effective long term. There has been studies coming out that show that 95% of people who have lost weight on a GLP one have gained it back after they stopped taking it.

And this is a very similar statistics to diets. Where 95% of people who lose weight on diets will gain all back or more. So this is not a whole episode on ozempic today, but just know the influx of it, I think has definitely contributed to this desire to be ultra thin again, and using these extreme methods to do it.

Then of course there's social media and AI that has grown in recent years. So if you think about it like tiktoks beauty filter itself, it automatically slims your face. If you do a little Instagram filter thing, I'm guessing they probably automatically slim your face too. I don't know. I don't use them that often, but there's these things that are unconsciously putting into our brain, Hey, you better be slim. You better wanna lose weight because this is what you need to do to be accepted into, say, in today's society.

AI can generate these quote perfect models where it's so unrealistic, but these people aren't real. And I don't know if you've seen how crazy AI can get with the videos. Like I keep on getting these whale videos on my feed that they're like cleaning off a whale and they look so real, but it's fake. It's all fake. And so there's so much AI content out there now too that they can make someone look perfectly thin with no cellulite and perfectly toned and carved out muscles that just not realistic.

We also see celebrities online that are returning to this heroin chic ideal from like the nineties and the early two thousands. It is not news that bodies are trends. They have been this way for the past a hundred years. Of course, I do not think bodies should be trends, but if you look like every decade or so, bodies go in and out of trends and in and out of style.

Then of course, there's more influencers that are using the words around skinny and thin. It's moved away from this weight loss and has really been focused on this really specific look of the body.

And finally with the current political situation happening, there's been a switch to more conservative ideas and a lot of women wanting to be in more of these traditional women roles. So there's this term of being a trad wife or a traditional life where some women are wanting to leave the workforce  and be stay-at-home moms. They're wanting to cook and clean, and anytime we see these political beliefs start to come into view a bit more it has been shown that thinness starts to become more idealized. Models start to look thinner, instagram influencers start to promote thinness, celebrities move to this thin ideal and this is not to say that wanting to be this traditional woman that we've been taught to stay at home, take care of the kids, cook and clean, it's not a bad thing, but it is definitely a form of the patriarchy where men have all the power and women are focusing on their bodies and keeping the house clean and not able to step into their power.

Hating your body is a form of self oppression. It is you giving in to these societal beliefs that you must be a certain way in order to be loved and worthy. And when we create a society where women spend all their time thinking about food in their bodies, it is an effective and simple way to oppress them. Ask yourself who benefits? When women are obsessed with food, calories and size, I can tell you it is definitely not the woman themself. And a lot of times these skin ideal models are white, straight woman with no appreciation or inclusion of diversity within that, not everyone's body is going to look like a white straight woman. We have so many different body types that all exist and are all worthy and valuable in this world and all normal too. Just because you are not a size zero does not mean something is wrong with you or you need to lose weight. That could literally just be your genetic body type, and when you try to change it, that is when your body backlashes against you and is the start of an eating disorder.

Okay, so I now wanna go over some of these tips that I found online, and if you have any other crazy unhinged hacks and tips that you've come across, feel free to DM me them on Instagram or send me an email because I love to kind of dissect with you whether or not you think it's helpful or not and whether what my thoughts are on it.

so this is Amber's hit or miss skinny tips that I've come across and why they are disordered, or why they can be healthy and helpful.

So first we have a cup of green tea a day makes the belly fat go away. This one really made me LOL, like literally laugh out loud when I saw it's a good ring to it. A cup of green tea today makes the belly fat go away. Yes, green tea, it has caffeine in it, which can help suppress our hunger, but it is not a magical solution that is going to melt your belly fat off. That is just not true.

And the thing about caffeine is yes, what contemporarily Dole your hunger. It is not a long-term solution because what will happen is you'll go throughout your day and because caffeine, the molecule is like a hunger blocker. Your hunger it doesn't go away. It's still there. It just can't get through to communicate to you what it's trying to say. So then as the caffeine wears off through the day, this hunger signal shoots through the roof and you're either super hungry or you just have this extreme desire to eat at the end of the day. So this is, if I see a lot of my client's drinking a lot of coffee early in the morning, and then they have a lot of troubles with afternoon snacking or late night snacking, I often recommend them to decrease their amount of caffeine. So if you love green tea and you find it delicious, awesome. Drink it. And if you feel like it helps you with your cravings, awesome, drink it. But just know it is a bandaid solution can work for a little bit, but it's not really addressing the root cause of why you're wanting to overeat in the first place.

Along with this one is you're not hungry, you're just thirsty. Most of us could drink more water. Okay. Most of the US is chronically dehydrated. This is not to say do not drink more water. I absolutely think majority of people drink more water. Unless you were me, any of my clients probably think I'm crazy on our calls because I will constantly be drinking water. I do have no problem drinking water nowadays, but most of us, yes, okay, drink more water. That is definitely a healthy thing. I think it's a good idea,  but it is not true that you're not hungry, you're thirsty. There are a lot of times where you probably are actually hungry. Now what you can try is having like a glass of water and your hunger might go away for a little bit if you feel like it's truly not hunger, but if you are hungry and you try to drink water, it's going to artificially fill your body temporarily and the hunger is going to come back later on with a vengeance and possibly lead to a binge because you didn't listen to that true hunger and you just gave it water. Your body's not asking for water when it's hungry it's asking for calories, so it needs food. This is also promoting frequently ignoring your hunger signals  and anytime someone recommends that, that should be a little red flag in your brain.

It's okay to feel hunger. Hunger is not a problem. I sit with hunger multiple times a day, every day. But if you are constantly pushing it off and you know, Hey, it's been like four or five hours since I've eaten and I'm hungry right now, but I'm not gonna allow myself to eat because I'm trying to lose weight that is disordered. If you start to wake up in the middle of the night hungry, you are not eating enough. If you are feeling really low energy and fatigued, you need to stop ignoring your hunger. If your workout performance is dropping, these are all signs that you're not eating enough. Also keep an eye out for anything that's promoting ultra low calories, which I would say is anything 1200 calories or below 1200 calories a day is how much a 2-year-old toddler needs, not a grown adult woman. So if you see anything that's like ultra low calorie, that should also be a big red flag of this is not gonna be healthy and sustainable.

Okay, next with hunger we have, if you're not hungry for an apple, you're not hungry at all. This one I think, is partially true. There is something to be said that if you are only craving something specific, like if you are thinking, I only want a bar of chocolate right now, and I would absolutely not want to eat anything else, that is probably more of a craving or an urge and not something that you need to act on, but it's normal to have cravings for things other than apples in your day. Like I might be truly hungry for lunch, but I might not want an apple for lunch. I might be craving a sandwich and chips that's normal because our body has so much wisdom inside of us to let us know what nutrients we need throughout our day. And so if we're getting a craving for something specific on, you know, a cold day, we crave soup because that warms us up. Maybe you're craving a big old steak because you're low on iron. These cravings are important to look at allow, because our body might actually need that. So if you don't want an apple, it's not the end of the world. That doesn't mean you're not hungry. You could still be hungry. It could just be you're craving something else but I would look out for those hyper-specific cravings and like even if I would prefer having a steak or some soup for lunch, I would be okay eating something different if I'm truly hungry.

Okay. Who's heard this one? This one is like tale as old as time. Nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels. Oh my gosh rolling my eyeballs. Like get out of diet culture already. Okay. This is the number one red flag that something is disordered. If there is this hyper focus on the look of the body.

And skinny is not a feeling, okay? Feeling thin and feeling fat those are not feelings. Those are not emotions. An emotion could be, I'm feeling confident when I feel like I'm properly nourishing my body and I'm at my natural weight. Sure you could feel confident then, but to say nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, I mean, come on. I promise you there are plenty of miserable, skinny people. It does not unlock this magic portal to love happiness, success, money, that is an inside job. All of those things are based on your thoughts, not how your body looks.

This is like trying to shop your way to confidence. Just always buying new clothes, never feeling like it's enough, always wanting the latest and greatest. It's never going to work for long-term sustainable confidence because you're not solving the root problem of why you're not confident in the first place.

And I promise you, I know you might think it has everything to do with your body, but it doesn't. It has everything to do with how you're choosing to think about yourself. And we know this because there are people in larger bodies and at different sizes who do feel confident, who do feel sexy, who do feel empowered, and it's because they're thinking differently about themselves. You cannot shrink yourself into self-love and confidence. It's not how it's going to work.

Okay. This one is so bad. When you want to eat something, try on an outfit. See how un cute you look in it, and then realize that you don't want to eat anything anymore. There was also one of, imagine you're gonna run into your ex at a pool party later this week. How would you eat then? These are coming from a place of shame and fear.

Shame and fear can work temporarily. I'm not saying it doesn't work in that moment. You might decide you don't want to eat something because you have shamed yourself into it, but this is not gonna work long term for confidence. This is gonna make you so much more insecure than you can ever imagine.

I used to have this pair of shorts and I saw some advice like this, like, Ooh, this is a pair of shorts I wanna fit back into. And I hung them on the back of my door and I'd try to look at them every day to motivate myself to lose weight. And every single day I look at them, I would just feel like shit about myself.

I would be so sad about where my body is right now. I would pinch the sides of my skin. I would tell myself how horrible I looked and you know what I would do then I would get an urge later that day to binge, and I would binge because I just thought, it doesn't matter. I don't even care if I'm fat anymore.

It just creates this hopelessness and this despair, almost this depression around yourself because again, we're hyper-focusing on our body and anytime we hope hyper-focus on our body, what we're not doing is looking at the actual habits we need to shift and change. It's just not the right focus.

Weight loss is always a long-term result, and if we get too caught up on it, we're gonna get discouraged. We need to think about how can we feel best in our body today, and that means giving ourself clothes and outfits that we feel good in now, if you try something on and you hate how you look in it, get rid of it. Do not keep that outfit. Go find yourself a new hot outfit that you do like. I promise you they're out there.

All right, next we have,  It is not that your metabolism is slow, it's that your excuses are fast. I love this one actually. Now, this is not to blame yourself for your excuses, but so many people I see blaming their metabolism, oh, I just have a slow metabolism, when instead there's so much else that they're just not taking responsibility for in their actions.

So stop blaming your metabolism all the time. Yes, there might be something going on in your metabolism, like an underlying thing, but for most people it is that they haven't taken a deep enough look at their eating habits and the psychology behind them to understand why they're binge eating and how to stop it.

Next, you either pay to be healthy now, or you pay the doctors later. I also love this one. This is the thought of when people are like, I don't pay for the gym. I don't wanna pay for the Whole Foods. Fast food is so much cheaper. Coaching is so expensive. Like all of these things. Yes, the gym does cost money. Yes, sometimes buying the whole Foods or the healthier option or getting some meal prep service or delivery does cost a little bit more. Sometimes you do need to invest in coaching to get to where you wanna be. But if you do not pay to be healthy now, you are going to pay for that in doctor's bills later.

And I would much rather pay to get this solved all right now and to be my healthiest self than having to not only pay doctors, but having to deal with the health consequences that come from binge eating. I just did an episode, I believe it came out last week, with the long-term consequences of binge eating. They do exist, and there's definitely a cost to them.

Okay. How about trying to get a kid's meal or to split your meal with friends? I also think this is not a bad idea. This is a good idea. Can help you save money For sure. And the portions in the US have gotten so big. The research has literally shown that our portion sizes have tripled, at least tripled depending on where you got.

But our body sizes, well, I mean, we could say our body sizes in the US have also tripled, but our body's needs have not tripled. In fact, our bodies needs have probably gotten down with how sedentary we have gotten. So I think it is an awesome idea to. If only something looks good on the kids' menu to get something from that.

If you're like, no, but I really want something off the adult menu, get that and split it with friends or learn how to take food home and have it for later. That's the best money saving hack ever is when you get three meals out of one dinner.

Okay, and the final one I'm gonna go over today, is eat five bites of dessert, then throw it away. I also saw one that's like take three bites of dessert, where the first bite is bliss. The second bite is good, and the third bite is the finale. It's like a three bite rule. I don't think this is a totally bad idea. It can help give you a little guideline, but do not turn this into a hard and fast rule because that's where it usually creates more of an obsession and a longing around food over time. And this is what we wanna look for in any sort of advice that's given to us. If there is any rigidity or rules around it, these words around always do this, never do this. You must do this, you absolutely cannot. Or these rules around you have to eat this many calories. Don't go over like any of this sort of rigidity. That is gonna be a sign that you're getting into disordered eating territory. And when you create these strict rules, like I can only have five bites of dessert, you're not learning to honor your body's cues and needs because sometimes you might just want one bite and that might be what's best for you.

Sometimes it's the whole dessert. Sometimes it's like Christmas and you wanna have two or three desserts. Anytime you have these strict rules that can go into all or nothing thinking, and then eventually down the line you might have six bites and you say, screw it, I'm just gonna eat it all. Or your brain might learn, well, I'm just gonna take five bigger bites now.

Let me tell you guys a little secret. I could make a lot more money than I am right now if I told you absolute rules and these people and influencers, they know that. When someone tells you no eating after eight, only have one piece of bread, you must wa walk 10,000 steps a day, always have tea before and after you eat.

Our brain likes that because it's a clear, hard and fast rule. We don't have to decide so much, but the truth is normal eaters don't have rules like this. They might have guidelines, of course but it's always nuanced, and that's the approach I take here on this platform and in my work where it is not this way or that way. It is not only this rule or nothing at all, because that is not sustainable. That is something I have tried. I've tried the rules. I tried doing no sugar. I tried doing intermittent fasting, but they didn't last. Because you need to learn how to find the middle ground with these things. You need to learn how to use your brain and get out of the black and white thinking.

So to wrap up today, I got this question written in that said, how do we protect our minds and spirits when we don't always choose what our algorithm gives us? So if you've listened to this episode today and you're like, yes, I know some of these tips might be a little toxic, but in today's world, like TikTok just shows you things and Instagram now just shows you things. Facebook just shows you things.

So there's a few things you can do. First, know that the more you engage with anything on social media, the more it will show you.  The more that you like, comment, save, watch for longer times on these videos and post the more social's gonna think, oh, you like this, and it's gonna show you more of it.

So do your best to not engage with it at all. Scroll right past it. On TikTok, there's a little button that says, I'm not interested on this. I think there's one on Instagram too. Hmm. And on the flip side, engage with things that do support your values and goals. Engage with my Confident, engage with my Instagram Shameless plug, go follow me on the Confident Eater on Instagram if you're not already.

And. Did you know I have a free Facebook support group? You can also friend me on Facebook and I post lots of things there to surround yourself with people that are actually talking about what you want to hear and are giving you this nuance.

Then as you're scrolling, I want you to check in with your body. Whenever you start to get that icky feeling, you know what I'm talking about. When you scroll past something that just makes you feel like shit about yourself or that makes you feel like, you know, I don't think this is quite healthy. I think this might be getting into a little bit of anorexic territory. Check in with your body and just really take a moment to be with yourself and be like, what's coming up?

Questioning the information that you see, not just believing everything as truth. There's so many random people, like  anyone can share anything on the internet. There's not a filter for that. So make sure you're checking in that the person that you're getting advice from is actually someone that you know and trust. Put on your critical thinking hat.

And lastly, I just wanna remind you that there is so much more to life than trying to be the smallest version of yourself. I always get emotional when I talk about this because I remember writing in my journal I would do anything to be thin. Like literally every week, I don't care what I have to do. I just wanna be thin.

But you are not put on this planet with the purpose of shrinking yourself forever. You are meant for so much more than this, and it's okay to wanna lose weight. It's okay to wanna change your eating habits. There is nothing wrong with that. But if there's anything that you can get  from today. I beg you to stop making your number one priority in your life, how you look, that will make your life very small, very purposeless, and there's just so much more joys to experience beyond that when you can let go of all the time and energy you're spending on your body. Love you guys so much. Thanks for tuning in today. This is such an important topic. I'll talk to you next week.