Social Media & The Tricks Used By Influencers Affecting YOUR Body Image - Is It Fake Let's Talk...

Alright guys we're going on a journey today. I think it's really important sometimes to be reminded that there's some very very basic things that can manipulate the way that we look and so today I'm going to see in as little time as possible how I can manipulate those things to make my body look different and I'm hoping it will highlight that if you're ever looking at another photo of someone else or a video of someone else and comparing yourselves to them and beating yourselves up for the way you look that maybe just maybe you're comparing yourself to something that's optimal versus something that you're being super critical of and this is for you as much as it is for me I just think it's really important that we see these things in real life now disclaimer I am awful with anything to do with technology to do with posing to do with photography lighting flexing all those things I haven't got a clue so we're gonna be learning today luckily I've got my phones I think we're gonna be needing Google so without further ado let's go and see what we can do with this so if you haven't met me before hi my name is Lucy and I am a qualified personal trainer based in the UK now my main form of training is calisthenics and bodyweight exercise but I enjoy moving my body in a lot of different ways and my main reason for training is for the enjoyment for the mental health benefits and to feel strong and powerful and have a little bit of fun too so aesthetically this is what my body looks like I'm also a huge foodie so that does have an impact on the way my body looks but I haven't always looked this way several years ago I lost 30 kilos and that will come into play a little bit later on in the video so to be honest with you this is a pretty accurate representation of what my body looks like day to day if you saw me in the gym this is what I would look like in the normal lighting not flexing not posing just doing my thing now there's one thing straight away that all of us can do really quickly to adjust the way that we look and that is to fix our posture so by simply just pulling my shoulders back standing up a little bit straighter and twisting my hips slightly I can change the way my body looks the changes might not be phenomenal but the next thing that we're going to look at is lighting and that should make a bigger difference okay okay that brings us on to lighting and I have not got a clue what I'm doing I am so bad with lighting all I know is if there's a light in front of me you guys can see me and that will be okay now even though I'm clueless YouTube has provided the goods because there are plenty of videos on YouTube about how to light yourself to look shredded now these videos are along the lines of get shredded and get a pump on for your tinder photo but it will have the same effect so I'm googling how to light a photo to look shredded ah my search history if Josh this he's just gonna wonder what the heck it looks like we've got the information we want I'm gonna watch this and then we're gonna start setting up some lights so it is 1151 Wednesday the 2nd of February and I hope from this footage you can see just how bad I am at setting up lighting I literally am completely clueless even when I'm following a video I didn't have much help from Hugo to be honest with you he was a bit of a nuisance and after a lot of faffing around and playing with different angles and getting some help from Josh I eventually came to the conclusion that but alas we persisted Josh came and helped me a little bit as well and eventually we ended up with this now bearing in mind we didn't really know what we were doing I think the results are pretty good I think you can see quite a significant difference in between the two photos and all that's changed is simply the angle of the lighting so I've got one that's above me and one to the side and that is pretty much it so now we're gonna move on to the next thing that we can potentially do to make ourselves look a little bit different and that is to sort out this pasty skin now instead of going through the laborious process of fake tanning I just thought I'd put some bronzer on my stomach and my chest and I got a little bit of my face all and just rub that on as well just to reflect the light a little bit and this seemed to make quite a big difference so I think when you compare it to the original photo you can see a difference but even when you compare it to just the lit up photos it has quite a big impact so obviously if you had a nice tan or you'd apply some fake tan it's gonna have an impact on how your body looks but now we've adjusted the lighting the posture and also having a bit of a tan we're gonna move on to trying to make our muscles temporarily look a little bit bigger by just doing a little bit of exercise and getting some blood flow to the area so of course I had a quick snack and a coffee and then I did a little bit of exercise so just a couple of push-ups some weighted dumbbell shoulder presses some flies and a few other bits and bobs in the hopes that it would make my muscles look a little bit bigger and here we are it is 108 so it's been one hour and 20 minutes since we started and this is basically my final form I don't think that had a huge impact I probably didn't train quite hard enough but there's one more thing that I think makes a big difference to the way you look and that is what you wear so if I'm wearing some baggy joggers like I am here it can make my waist look a lot smaller it can make my proportions look completely different and realistically when you combine all of these different factors you can completely change the way your body looks but perhaps the most important point of this video is because it's all about perception and you can only perceive what I'm showing you I have loose skin which you weren't able to see because my shorts was covering it and I wasn't pulling at it I have stretch marks and a burn on my stomach from having hot water bottles strapped to me for the last few days because I'm so cold I have psoriasis on my stomach which wasn't edited out but wasn't obvious within the lighting loose skin on my thighs and of course I have cellulite which wasn't seen because my legs weren't in shot I wasn't hiding these things throughout this video it just wasn't obvious because we weren't focusing on them and I think that goes to prove a really good point that sometimes we're overly critical of ourselves and things that we notice on ourselves we don't see on others so there may be some of the imperfections that you obsess over or that you notice and think that other people don't have they do have it's just that we don't see it and potentially you're looking at yourself with an overcritical eye alright guys I hope that video has helped I definitely don't think I'm going to be making a career in photography or lighting at this rate however I hope it illustrated enough what I was trying to explain that in a space of realistically a couple of hours it probably would have been five ten minutes if I hadn't had to film and I hadn't had to mess with lighting for so long and struggle with Hugo but I hope that it has just helped in some way to see that it is very easy to be able to change the way your body looks simply by what light you're standing in front of I know when I stand in front of my bedroom mirror at nighttime with the bedside light on my body looks totally different than when I wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and the light comes in from the window and it's just one of those things that we can very easily dupe ourselves into thinking that we are not good enough and we can beat ourselves up over stuff that just isn't true and ultimately really doesn't matter at the end of the day either I really want to highlight the most important part of this video and that's the bit at the end to me where I can easily have gone through that entire video and not shown you my loose skin my stretch marks my cellulite the burn on my stomach from having a hot water bottle strapped to it I could not have mentioned that and you wouldn't have even known it was there probably because it wasn't in shot and I wasn't showing it off and that is exactly what often happens in real life remember that what you see out there it's not necessarily a lie by any means it's just going to be the best of the best and something that I always come back to is that not only are you seeing the best of the best but you're also probably your own worst critic and there's things that I notice on me such as one leg being bigger than the other having cellulite having loose skin and I see it on some of my posts or some of my videos but no one notices it until I point it out to them to say oh there's a little bit loose skin there or here you can see this cellulite because we just don't look at others in such a critical way as we do ourselves at the end of the day life is too short you are probably someone's goal right now what you have achieved or what you are doing or what your body looks like or how your mental health is is probably what somebody else is trying to achieve right now and not only that but you have no idea genuinely you have no idea that if you are working towards something or working to be even the best version of yourself in a mental capacity in a work capacity in a family capacity whatever it might be that somebody around you might be looking at you and feeling inspired by that so don't forget that that is the stuff that matters and the way your body looks really is not that deep and I have been in all the different positions so I feel like I have a reasonable grounding to say that all right I'm gonna leave it here before I go into full motivational speech mode but I hope that you have an amazing day don't be mean to yourselves and I will see you guys in the next video