Heard of 'oatzempic'? How the rise of harmful fad diets online is driving eating disorders

The sun had yet to rise and everyone else at home was asleep, but teenager Joy Ng was already up, working out to an exercise video on social media.

This might sound like a healthy start to a day, but she was doing this while suffering from anorexia nervosa, a type of eating disorder and a mental illness.

People who have anorexia have a distorted image of their bodies, thinking they are fat even when they are underweight. They typically exercise excessively, do not eat enough food, take laxatives or make themselves vomit, to the point that they can begin to starve.

Miss Ng, 19, is now on the road to recovery, but the polytechnic student recalled how it had all begun with a well-meaning thought, before it gradually spiralled into a toxic situation.

In 2020, as a healthy and active teenager, she wanted to shed some weight after being cooped up at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, so she began working out and eating less.

Then, as she began to cut her weight, she became increasingly obsessed with the numbers on the weighing scale.

She would spend all her free time exercising and looking for exercise tips and diets on social media platforms such as Twitter, now known as X.

The efforts took a dark turn as she got sucked into groups where members encourage each other to starve for an unrealistically slender body. Food, to her, slowly became akin to poison.

Social media channels have long been known to perpetuate unhealthy or misguided standards of beauty, leading some to develop a warped sense of an ideal body or to become obsessive about keeping up with what others have seemingly done.

However, it is not just comparison and unrealistic expectations that can lead to unhealthy eating habits or eating disorders.

Poor diet advice given by influencers and online content creators are another reason, and this is why nutritionists and dietitians are sounding the alarm bell on diet fads touted on social media.

They are warning that following some of these diet fads could result in individuals missing out on necessary nutrition, especially if they follow trends encouraging them to cut out entire food groups from their daily meals.

When 56-year-old part-time logistics worker Francis Cheah wanted to lose weight last year, he turned to social media for advice. He soon latched onto an unconventional diet of eating just protein such as meat, eggs and fish.

For the past year, he has adopted the “carnivore diet”, which is an extreme version of the Keto diet, where people cut out vegetables and carbohydrates from their meals.

He eats only two meals between 11am and 7pm every day and drinks at least 3L of water, in what is called intermittent fasting, where people eat and fast in regular blocks of time.

He lost 25kg in a year and now weighs about 75kg. While his diet may seem overly restrictive, he told CNA TODAY that he feels healthier and more energetic, which is why he is going to stick to it.

Several influencers he follows include Anthony Chaffee MD, a registered health practitioner in Australia, and KenDBerryMD, who claims to be a family physician from Tennessee, United States.

Still, experts warned that such rigorous diets are unhealthy and could result in eating disorders over time.

Ms Charlotte Chew Soo Cheng, an accredited nutritionist from the Singapore Nutrition and Dietetics Association, said: “Many people, especially the younger audience, trust diet trends and advice that they can find on social media blindly. They often do so without really questioning their validity. They don't really do the research.”