How to recognize what is just a marketing ploy of an influencer? Nicola Vachová can help you with that

In this day and age of social media and influencers, it's quite common for all of us to like someone who is the imaginary face of what we love. It could be sports, fashion, cosmetics or anything else. But all industries have one thing in common - dozens of different Instagram profiles, websites offering products or services and promoting an endless variety of different brands, eating styles, fat or carb based diets, powdered snacks etc. But what is really right and what specifically is appropriate for our goal? Can we really trust the advertised services or recommended cosmetics? How can we discern what is realistically possible and what is just a marketing ploy by an influencer?

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I think you could write an article on every industry for hours on this topic and we would still have a topic to debate. Something suits everyone differently, and everyone also likes a different influencer whose advice we are often willing to follow verbatim without considering our options and individual needs. Today we will focus, as usual, on the sporting side, which inherently includes eating. I believe a large percentage of us, have our favourite fitness/fitness experts or influencers that we like to follow and wait to see what other advice they will add to their profile and share with us their advice and tips with eating or exercise. There are also dozens of companies trying to sell the latest (and supposedly easier) recipes for weight loss, promoting, for example, powdered meals that can simply be mixed with water so the client doesn't have to spend hours cooking in the kitchen. This sounds great, but if we were to think about it at this point, it is unlikely that a powdered diet (about which we have minimal information) would be comparable to a normal, wholesome diet.

In the end, it's still the same - to lose excess fat, our caloric expenditure must be higher than our caloric intake. The fact that someone gets carried away and buys a powdered diet, only to bypass the kitchen for a few weeks because they don't have to cook. However, it is not the 'lunch in a jar' that helps him to achieve this result, but the calorie deficit he has achieved in this way. Another problem arises when we get fed up with the liquid powder diet and start eating normally again, as before. Firstly, you are very likely to experience a yo-yo effect, where you increase your calorie intake in an uncontrolled way, and secondly you may well experience digestive problems (if you drink liquid food for a few weeks and then switch back to eating normally). Plus, I don't think you have to be a nutritionist to figure out that a normal diet of whole foods will give your body all the nutrients, energy and strength it needs for all your daily activities and exercise.

The same applies to the Instagram infuencers who promote different styles of eating or tips on certain foods on a daily basis. I'm not saying that the advice is useless, but everyone should only take from it what they find really useful and meaningful and not dumbly copy someone just because that person has a few tens of thousands of followers. That's no guarantee of quality information, but often the services or products being promoted are merely the result of a paid partnership that the person has entered into with a particular brand. Which doesn't mean that there is necessarily always something wrong, it's just always good to think common sense about a service or product and assess whether it's really a worthwhile thing and not just another Instagram creation of some fitness girl who gets a fee or a bundle of products from the company for promotion.

It works the same way with exercise and setting up training plans. It is natural that everyone has found their own style of training that suits them. Most likely, he will also apply this style to his clients and build training plans for them in a way that suits himself. However, it is important to remember that each client has their own individual needs and the plans you receive from your coach should look accordingly. I would always look at the person first, before deciding to commission a service from someone, whether in the form of a diet or training plans, to see what results they have achieved, how they exercise and eat, how they present themselves and most importantly if they have the knowledge in that area to guide the client.

I myself try to work on social media in a way that my posts are beneficial to my followers, and I certainly don't want to lump everyone together. There are plenty of ways to engage with potential clients online and pass on information to them via social media or offer your quality services. I just want to point out that it can be difficult for a lot of the general population these days to distinguish fictional information from real information. Before we decide to put ourselves in someone's hands, it's good to be aware of their work and knowledge. It's great and very easy to find inspiration in someone or try new things, but common sense should always come first and not get carried away by the well executed advertising of our influencer.

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