The algorithm stole my appetite

How seemingly innocent social media trends normalize unhealthy eating habits

NewsKira Minall — Published October 21, 2025 5 minutes

Content warning: This article contains mentions of restrictive eating and eating disorders.

“I used to believe everything that was on the internet was one-sided,” Leblanc said. “I thought the diet I was being shown was the appropriate one and that I was too fat.” 

She began to follow her own restrictive diet, eating nothing but buttered toast three times a day to avoid gaining weight.

“I ignored every sign that my body was unhealthy, and it wasn’t a good way of living,” Leblanc said.

Lisa-Marie Giorgio, a psychologist at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, works in the eating disorders program. She says that social media trends like “what I eat in a day” or “girl dinner” can become harmful because they camouflage themselves as fun and casual.

“You might see a trend like girl dinner and think, ‘That’s so cute,’” Giorgio said. “But then you might sit back and think, ‘Wait a second, I don’t eat like that. Should I be eating like that?’”

These trends consist of presenting a person’s eating behaviours. “Girl dinner” revolves around eating small portions of snack food as a meal, whereas “what I eat in a day” is exactly what it sounds like—posting all the food a person consumes in one day.

Giorgio also noted that damaging behaviours present themselves within these trends and that they manifest in subtle ways.

“These trends potentially normalize really low calorie intake, and there is a lot of body checking in the content,” she said. “So, it often exists in a way that isn’t so obvious, but it’s still resulting in the same body dissatisfaction.”

Body checking is a behaviour people use to gain information about their bodies. It manifests through an excessive concern with appearance, shape or size, and when done compulsively, experts have found an association with eating disorders. Symptoms of compulsive body checking include obsessively weighing oneself, measuring the size of body parts, and inspecting your body in the mirror, among others. 

According to Giorgio, these trends can often cause uncomfortable feelings about body image and food consumption, and there isn’t enough space to talk about it.

Giorgio also says disordered eating is unhealthy both physically and mentally.

“At the end of the day, if you’re not eating and not supporting yourself in a nutritious, healthy, balanced way, it’s also going to impact the way you feel and has a potential risk on your mental health,” Giorgio said. “And that could be even things like anxiety and depression.”

In June 2025, TikTok blocked #SkinnyTok, which is the term used to describe content that promotes extreme weight loss and tips on “how to be skinny,” from its search results. Liv Schmidt, a controversial weight loss influencer, coined the term.

Schmidt’s content revolves around workout tips for weight loss, extreme low-calorie recipes, and general advice on how to eat less and maintain a slim body shape. She focuses her posts on “living slim in the city.”

In more recent posts, she has offered advice on how to avoid gaining weight during the approaching holiday season. She has been quoted saying slogans such as: “Don’t get fat, get fashionable” and “How to eat candy like a skinny girl.”

Schmidt’s account was banned from TikTok in September 2024 for “violating community guidelines.” Despite this, she continues to post content on other social media platforms like Instagram, though Meta demonetized her account after messages from her exclusive group chat where she encouraged girls not to eat surfaced.

Although TikTok also banned #SkinnyTok, the content is still available without using the hashtag.

Zahavah Suissa, a Montreal-based health and lifestyle social media influencer, believes these kinds of trends have crossed a line.

“It glamorizes girls not eating enough,” Suissa said.

Suissa also says that even as an influencer herself, she has felt pressure from other influencers and social media trends to look a certain way.

“People I’ve seen on social media all have that typical look and [skinny] body shape,” Suissa said. “I wanted to look the same, but as I’ve gone through my own health and wellness journey, I’ve realized what my body can actually look like rather than trying to compare myself to other people.”

She said she avoids posting “what I eat in a day” videos, as she finds food to be a touchy subject. Instead, she said she focuses on talking about her own health choices based on what helped her feel good.

“I always want to make sure that I’m just sharing my own experience, because how people want to look or how they want to get fit or be healthy looks different for everyone,” Suissa said. 

According to Giorgio, one of the best ways to avoid unhealthy content is to simply disengage with it when it starts to feel uncomfortable. 

“You can unfollow accounts, you can tell your algorithm that you don’t like this content,” Giorgio said. “And at the end, if you are still struggling with the content, you should reach out to someone, like a mental health professional, and they will provide you with support.”

Giorgio also emphasizes the importance of thinking twice about social media trends, since they do not always clearly identify their goal.

“It isn’t always explicitly shared that this content is about weight loss, and that’s why we need to consume more critically,” she said.

Leblanc said she still struggles with body image, but that the key to healing is acceptance.

“Your body needs fuel; it needs the calories to function,” Leblanc said. “Listening to what your body needs is the kindest thing you can do for yourself.”

This article originally appeared in Volume 46, Issue 4, published October 21, 2025.