FAQs on Instagram DM

March 27, 2018May 12, 20201 Comment

These are some of the most commonly asked questions on my Instagram and YouTube. I try to reply to everyone who messages me, but it may be quicker to find the answers in the content I have already produced. Enjoy!

Where do you work/what do you do/how can I get into it?

Edit: I now work as a social media consultant, freelance writer and as a blogger 🙂 Left this up in case you would like to go into science comms! It’s an amazing job and I would recommend it to anyone.

I work in science media and PR – in short I act as a go-between between scientists/doctors and journalists, to make sure the journalists understand any important research coming out, and to make sure that exciting new research is getting into the press. I absolutely love my job – I think it’s so important that the public understands scientific and media research, and it empowers people to make their own decisions about how they want to live their lives.

I am currently working at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which works on women’s health globally, but especially in the UK. I run their twitter account and do a bunch of other stuff too, to do with communicating Obs and Gynae research and news to the general public.

If this sounds like something you’d enjoy (science communications could be to do with anything from environment to medicine to engineering), then I would really recommend getting some work experience, including writing about relevant topics for your student or local newspaper and maybe starting a blog on your favourite topic, if you enjoy writing. Show how keen you are – I did months of unpaid work experience just because I loved it and wanted to show that. I would also recommend joining ABSW and STEMPRA to hear about job opportunities and get the chance to talk to people who have the job you want to get 🙂

What are your favourite activewear brands?

I’m not sponsored by any particular brand at the moment, but I love sharing other brands that I use. I have two vlogs on my favourite activewear – for everyday and winter running.

In terms of shoes, I wear a combination of different running shoes. Everyone is different, so I am reluctant to recommend shoes for others, but my favourites are Asics Gel nimbus 20, Adidas Ultraboost, Hoka One One Clifton 6 and for trails Columbia Caldorado II.

If you’re looking for new trainers, give this vlog with my coach a watch before buying and remember, everyone is unique!

Are you vegan?

No, not technically. However, I find labels unhelpful – I would call myself ‘plant-based’ if I had to label how I eat. I have been pescetarian since I was 4. I gave up fish in 2017 for environmental reasons (I studied marine and conservation Biology at uni and couldn’t really ignore what I had just learned). Shortly after that I also cut down significantly on dairy and cut out eggs totally. Now I eat a totally plant-based diet, but since I occasionally wear leather I don’t call myself vegan. In my eyes, every small step someone makes to make better decisions is a step in the right direction.

I share a lot of vegan food on my Instagram and my YouTube to show people that there are a lot of vegan options out there, even if you don’t associate with being vegan, or even vegetarian. Read my blog post on the topic here.

How can I cure my injury?

I get asked everyday about resolving injuries, especially those from running. I am not a physio, so can’t provide advice except my personal experience of ITBS. If you have niggles, you may find this vlog with my physio helpful, or this blog post on shin splints. Nothing beats visiting a physio though, so if your niggles continue, please do speak to a professional.

Do you have a YouTube?

YES! I finally have YouTube after around two years of deliberation. Check it out, watch and subscribe – enjoy!

Check out my twitter, instagram and blog too.

How do I lose weight/tone up/look like you?

I’m not a dietitian or a personal trainer, so I don’t like to give out personalised advice. I couldn’t anyway, since I know nothing about your diet, activity levels, metabolism or anything else. My Instagram aims to help you find enjoyment in living a healthy lifestyle – I am not going to give someone a personalised plan to ‘lose weight’.

I look like I do through a combination of working out in a way that I enjoy, eating a diet that I enjoy and genetics. Even if you followed everything I do to the letter, chances are we’d still end up looking pretty different.

How often do you workout/how do you train?

I’ve also got plenty of vlogs on my YouTube on my workout split (which changes according to my goals). However, please read above for what I think about copying workouts and expecting the same results – that’s not how it works sadly.

I always like to incorporate a mix of resistance training, HIIT and cardio into each week, whether that’s though boxing, running, weights, physio, classes or anything else. I think everyone should have a baseline fitness in strength training and cardio for all round health and fitness and to avoid injuries.

What are your favourite podcasts?

I have a vlog and blog post on my favourite podcasts. These need updating a little but are a great place to start! I love running with podcasts 🙂

Can you promote my product?

If you’d like to collaborate, please contact my agent at hannah@wmodel.eu.

I hope that helps answer your questions! Follow and DM me on instagram or twitter to find out more 🙂

My blogging story

December 10, 2017August 30, 20191 Comment

I often get asked when/why/how I started instagramming and blogging, and in truth, the story is long and not simple. I’ve always been a writer, enjoying capturing emotions and events in a diary from a young age. But, ever efficient, if I could capture the same story in a photo, I would rather do that. So here’s a little overview of how I got into both blogging and other forms of social media.

Throwback to my first ever shoot – for Sweaty Betty!

I started my current instagram at the beginning of 2013 (I had another one for a few months previously), following several years of struggles with body image, control and food. Instagram gave me a way to ensure I ate three meals a day – no under eating, no over eating, no purging. The community back then was small in comparison to now, but the support I received as a teen recovering from eating issues was phenomenal. Over time, however, I felt myself distancing from the community and felt better moving on from it all, as I’m sure others who have suffered have also felt during and after recovery. Remembering is good, dwelling is not, so I moved on.

The start of my fitness journey overlapped with the end of instagramming about eating disorders and food – I was a competitive squash player at school, and after deciding that my instagram would be about health and its role in my life, I started to include more fitness pictures alongside the food. However, I found myself increasingly opinionated on all things health and wellness, and was irritated at not being able to convey these feelings (and the facts and figures I feel are so important) in the space of an instagram caption. Not even a picture would tell the thousand words I wanted to tell.

That’s when I set up my blog. It was August 2016 and I had been storing up articles and recipes for some time. I was also getting increasingly frustrated at the lack of evidence based statements and abundance of pseudoscience being banded around social media. I hoped that sharing fact based, balanced articles might help people see themselves – and ‘influencers’ – in a different light. Essentially I want to share things that are important to me with a wider audience, and I hope it gives people a better insight into who I am as a person and what my values are!

After starting my blog I saw my followers grow. My first month of blogging received about 3000 views in a month. By January, 5 months later, I was getting 9000 monthly views, which coincided with my instagram growing from 10,000 followers on christmas day 2016 to about 20,000 followers around a month later. For reference, I now get an average of around 10,200 views per month, an audience that really means a lot to me.

I never really thought about twitter much, except to complain about the seeming abundance of trolls and stupid comments from various world leaders. However, partly out of perceived necessity and partly out of curiosity (and a desire to share more of what I was doing), I set up my twitter in November of 2016. Bizarrely I’m actually now quite obsessed.

Who knows what’s next – maybe a youtube, maybe a podcast? In a world where a woman is judged on one photo and opinions are crammed into 280 characters (admittedly better than 140), I want to slow things down and draw people in. Show them that life isn’t captured in a snapshot, and explain why truths aren’t one line quotes. It’s a mission that’ll probably go on forever, but in the meantime, I’m having fun and hopefully adding enjoyment to others’ lives too!

I hope this gives you a little insight into my journey through blogging. Read more about my story here, of check out my instagram or twitter to see what I’ve been up to!

Throwback to my account almost a year ago – it’s grown a bit since then!

Blogception

Social media and mental health

October 3, 2017October 2, 20175 Comments

How to enjoy real life (aka get off social media)

… from someone who works three jobs in social media.

Before I set out, I’d just like to state that I love Instagram and all it has done for me, but am writing this because I think it’s important that we are all aware of the potential impacts it can have on our lives. I hope you enjoy it!

When was the last time you left the house without your phone? Spent a day ignoring all all social media? If you can’t remember and think it might have been some time a century ago, you’re not alone. A recent study showed that 91% of 16-24 year olds use social media, spending an average of over 2h everyday scrolling through feeds of friends, celebrities and others, with well over 3h daily screen time. Spending all this time on our phones has had known impacts on our mental health. In a study that came out recently, instagram was found to severely harm peoples’ mental health, affecting sleep, body image and causing fear of missing out – all things I can vouch for on a personal level. Snapchat, Facebook and twitter followed close behind in terms of damage to mental health, increasing anxiety and feelings of inadequacy in users. The effects of social media use don’t stop there either – last week it became evident that social media was linked to the 68% increase in hospital admission for self-harm. This was the second well-publicised study this year to directly link social media to worsening mental health.

Instagram is the worst social media channel for mental health

When we look through our social media feeds, what do we see? We see carefully curated lives excelling at various things and it’s only natural to compare our real ups and downs to this polished highlight reel. Thankfully, for many, social media is used only recreationally, and reducing usage shouldn’t be too hard. However, for many others, social media is a job – a means of earning money and a way of life. The more time you spend on social media, the more careful you have to be that it’s not negatively impacting you. If you’re reading this, you probably have instagram, and if you have instagram chances are you’re already addicted (sorry).

Signs you might be addicted to your phone

You check it regularly even without notifications
You get ‘phantom buzz’ syndrome (when you swore it vibrated but alas no messages)
You feel naked if you leave the house without it
You forgot to actually enjoy something because you were too busy recording/photographing it

How to track your phone usage

Checky (measures how many times you check your phone)
Moment (tracks how long you spend on different apps on your phone – you can also do this on iphones in settings > battery > battery usage then clicking the clock top right)

Intrinsic v extrinsic self-esteem

Understanding that social media is not real life, however important it is to you, is one of the most important things I’ve done for my happiness in my adult life. I started my instagram over 5 years ago, and I quickly found that many used it as a way of creating a ‘perfect’ life, viewed by others as ‘goals’. But how realistic are these things to upkeep? The chances are, that girl you think has the perfect life, just doesn’t – that’s not to say she’s unhappy, but the chances are that she has problems and fears, just like the rest of us. Just look at the story of Essena O’Neil.

So how can SM be improved? The Royal Society for Public Health’s #statusofmind report suggested various measures instagram could implement to reduce the negative impacts it could have on its 800 million users, such as heavy usage warnings – how often is it that we suddenly find that it’s been 30 minutes since we started scrolling through instagram and felt like 5 minutes. Other suggestions included identifying and signposting help to users showing signs of mental health issues, and highlighting when photos have been digitally edited – it’s one thing having body-envy, and a totally different thing being envious of a literally unachievable photoshopped body, and important to note the difference.

One of the measures instagram could implement to make it a safer platform

When I started instagram, I found that many said they started their accounts to help them feel connected to people with similar interests. The irony is that the more time we spend on social, the lonelier we feel – it’s been proven. We are so versatile as humans that we’ve changed in one generation from developing self-acceptance at a young age to looking to likes and follows for validation, and I know how quickly that happens. It’s so easy to get caught up in what’s going on on social media and lose track of our real lives, our real connections and friends. The positive feedback cycle of posting, receiving validation and then posting again to receive more validation is easily formed and not easily undone. It’s altering where we look to for self-validation, changing us from people who are self-assured to people who struggle to accept ourselves without others accepting us first. It’s important to remember that we are all on our own journeys, no one is a finished product and you cannot compare your journey to anyone else’s final destination.

Boredom

The constant distraction from phones means we are rarely, if ever, truly bored. Boredom is the source of a lot of ingenuity, self-reflection and contemplation, and without it we may be reducing the creative capacity of our brains. When you sit on a train, what are you doing? Playing a game? Editing photos? Messaging people? Waking along the street, do you have your phone in your hand in case you need to check it? We hate to be bored, preferring to fill our time with ‘productive’ activities. If pushed, people would literally rather administer electric shocks than sit doing nothing for 15 minutes (look up the study, it’s crazy). A book called ‘bored and brilliant’ set out 6 steps to acing boredom, and surprise surprise, the first two were to do with getting off social and disconnecting from the world on the other side of your phone. It’s so easy to fill time nowadays, but it might not always be good. Boredom has been linked to increased productivity, creativity and pro-social behaviour (being nice to people and doing good deeds). When you’re rushing around all day, there’s no time to think. But when you’re alone, there’s nothing to do BUT think. And all that time to think might just turn you into the creative, brilliant, social butterfly everyone on social media thinks you already are.

How to be more social, without being on social

Put your phone away in your bag whilst walking around. Look around you, enjoy your surroundings and don’t keep checking your phone. You’ll be surprised what you notice when you’re looking up rather than down.
Put your phone away when talking to people. This is just common courtesy – you may think that you can text/read messages whilst listening to your friend but you just can’t. I promise you. Don’t leave your phone on the table, put it in your bag or coat pocket to avoid checking it every 5 minutes. Your friends will thank you too.
Put your phone away when eating. This is not only good for your mental health, it is also good news for your physical health too. Paying attention to what you are eating increases feelings of satiety and enjoyment of food, meaning you’re less likely to over eat.
Listen to podcasts or music instead of playing on your phone when on public transport. Taking out your phone as soon as you sit down is unnecessary. Pay attention to things around you.
Turn off notifications – I can’t stress this enough. It’s rare that a notification is so important that it needs to be checked immediately, and looking at your instagram photo every time it gets a new like just isn’t useful.
Set time without your phone before bed. Did you know that 90% of 18-29 year olds sleep with their phones under or next to their pillow? The more you use screens before bed, the lighter your sleep, and the longer it takes you to get there. In a world where we are already limiting our sleep to get more done, we need every minute. Put your phone away from the bed, then spend time reading or just thinking before going to sleep. If it’s hard, you know you need to practise more.
Set aside social media time and prioritise real life the rest of the time. When I know I can use my phone for 5-10 minutes every hour, I’m much less likely to check it during that hour.
Schedule posts. This is especially useful if you work in social media. Twitter apps such as hootsuite and buffer make this really easy, and for instagram drafts can be made all at once and posted later, meaning you’re spending less time thinking of something to post when you’re busy.
Delete social apps that you don’t really need. Whether that’s twitter, instagram or facebook. You don’t have to delete your account, but deleting the apps can be a good way to reduce usage.
Do other things that you love! If you find that you have time to scroll through SM feeds for hours, you probably have time to do a hell of a lot of other amazing stuff too! Just think of all the things you could get done if you just put down your phone for the day…

Get outside, notice your surroundings and enjoy real life!