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Social Media Integrity Blog, Episode 9: Priyanka Tomar
Priyanka Tomar, creator of the @goodstuffaa Instagram account, aims to destigmatize the “one size fits all” approach to health and wellness. As a college student navigating a new environment, it is challenging to prioritize your well-being. The personal narratives of U-M students shared on @goodstuffaa emphasize the individuality and unique meaning that “health” has to different people.
Hello, Wolverines. My name is Keara Kotten, and I am a #UMSocial intern and rising senior at U-M. Today I have Priyanka Tomar with me to talk about her Instagram account, @goodstuffaa. So Priyanka, can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your account?
Priyanka: I’m Priyanka, and I’m a rising junior studying business and minoring in English. I’m really passionate about health and wellness. My perception and definition of health has changed a lot [during my time at] college. So, I created @goodstuffaa to share my passion for health with the Ann Arbor community, inspire other people to reflect on what health means to them, and how they can live a healthier life. I [took an approach similar to the] @humansofny account, with a health twist. It focuses on stories from U-M about what health means to them and any advice or tips they have or want to share about health and wellness.
Your account takes a different approach to addressing health and wellness. A lot of accounts just give advice from their own lives and share personal stories, but your account shares a variety of stories from students all across campus. Why did you decide to make that choice?
Priyanka: I think health means something completely different to everyone.
There are so many different ways to live a healthy life. And health is all about finding what works best for you.
So I wanted to share student stories to give a broader perspective of health and allow people to find what resonates with them and ultimately build their own definition of health based on the stories that they hear.
I created this Instagram account for a club that I’m in. It’s called Propel Business Club, and it’s focused on community-based social impact consulting. And as part of the club, we did a training with the Ginsberg Center, based on how you can create an impact in a community by taking the time to focus on what the community is telling you that they need. So that’s another one of the big reasons why I wanted to hear [a variety of] student voices and perspectives. Ultimately, it’s our community. And I wanted to encapsulate that and just not share what I think health and wellness mean.
How would you personally define the word health?
Priyanka: Health to me is whatever makes me feel most energized: whether this is related to food, exercise, or mental health. And I think that taking this approach and really thinking about energy and feeling my best as my ultimate goal—with foods that I’m eating, workouts that I’m doing, or choices that I’m making—has helped me approach health in a healthier way. And I also think the word energy, and focusing on that as a metric for health, makes the entire experience more enjoyable. Incorporating health into your daily life should be fun and energizing and not something that you dread. So really picking foods and exercises and choices that embrace this concept of energy and not just work, make the entire experience more enjoyable and ultimately more sustainable.
So to give a little bit more of a tangible answer, I love fruit and I especially love smoothies. These are always super refreshing, and I have a super sweet tooth. For exercise, I love running. It’s a really good break from all the stress of school, and internships, and jobs, and tests. I just put music on and take time for myself. And I think with exercise, it’s really important to find something that you enjoy doing. If you don’t enjoy weightlifting, you definitely don’t have to do that. Lastly, for mental health, I love podcasts. I love having time for myself to tune into a podcast and learn something new about a topic that I’m interested in.
When I think about prioritizing my mental health, I think about creating specific time for things that I enjoy doing and that I look forward to. For example, I try to listen to a podcast every day while I’m eating breakfast. And I try to go on a walk after I eat breakfast. So, waking up an hour before my first class and just making sure I have that routine and something that I look forward to in my day that I really enjoy.
Can you describe your own journey with prioritizing your health and wellness in college? Maybe share some challenges that you faced, or some of your proudest moments.
Priyanka: Throughout high school, I was always an athlete. I played a sport each season, which helped me stay active and have a community of people who cared about health as much as I did. Having a community was really beneficial for my mental health, to just have so many people who I loved and cared about.
Coming to college, it was hard to lose this structure and lose this community since I wasn’t part of organized sports anymore. And I didn’t really know what it meant to be “healthy” or how I could do that without a coach making workouts for me or a team cheering me on. And I felt out of control of my body because I didn’t have this structured approach to it. I didn’t know how to approach health or what to do to stay healthy or make my body feel as energized and good as it used to when I was part of sports.
As a way to gain control I developed orthorexia, an eating disorder that’s an obsession with working out and eating only “clean” foods. And this was at the beginning of freshman year. That was probably one of my biggest challenges with health and wellness. I was so obsessed with eating foods that people deemed “healthy” and working out as many times a week as I could. Another contributor to my orthorexia was some of the accounts I followed on Instagram. They set really strict guidelines for what health meant and ultimately made the experience burdensome and not enjoyable at all.
That’s something that really got me really passionate about health advocacy and creating my own definition of what health means. It’s so much more than just what you eat, how much you exercise, and having strict guidelines. So something that helped me was taking a step back and reflecting on what health and wellness means to me and how it’s really about how my body feels and how I can make it feel as fulfilled as possible. That is something I’m still learning and I’m still working toward.
Another thing that really helped me with that was joining MRun, which is a running club on campus. I was able to find a community with people who cared about health and wellness and about staying active. It helped me have a structured approach that was similar to high school.
How do you think that this account has helped you in your own health and wellness journey? Have you noticed an impact after creating the account in March?
Priyanka: That’s a super good question because I think something that’s really helped me is reflecting on health and wellness and what it means to me. But I never really had a way to put that into words.
I think that when you put something into words, it stays in the back of your mind. It’s something that can keep encouraging you and it can shift your focus and your perspective. If you have an end goal that’s put into words, it’s like a banner at the end of a finish line.
I want to feel as energized as possible and I want to feel as good in my body as possible. When I’m on a run, I no longer think, “If I run an extra mile, I’m going to burn extra calories.” I think about what’s going to make me feel the best [on that run].
Also, just hearing other people’s stories and advice [through the account] has helped me broaden my perspective of health and how I approach health. For example, one of the people I talked to talked about how when he’s studying for a big exam, he will put a Quizlet on his phone and take it on a walk. And he’ll just go through flashcards while he’s on the walk. And I was like, “That’s such a good idea!” It’s just an example of something you can learn from another person, and how it doesn’t necessarily have to be a huge mind-altering shift. It can just be a little tip or trick that changes something you do.
Have you noticed any impact on the mental health of the students who have shared their stories, after contributing to the account?
Priyanka: Yeah, that has been one of my favorite parts. When people have reached out to me and told me how much the account has helped them or how much doing the interview has helped them. People have reached out and told me about how good of an experience it was to just take a step back and reflect on what health and wellness really means to them. Putting it into words, they were able to better understand their own definition of health and carry that with them.
I’ve also heard of feedback about how inspiring it is to read other people’s stories, and how they’ve been taking podcast and recipe recommendations from the stories that they’ve read. That’s also made me feel really good, that I’m able to give people smoothie recommendations or give people podcast recommendations, and how it’s creating a community of people who are passionate about health.
We’re inspiring each other and helping each other grow.
How do you see the account growing? What is the end impact that you hope to have on the U-M community?
Priyanka: Right now we just introduced stories, which have been specific questions for people to interact with. For example, some of the questions were: “Is there a song that makes you happy?” or “Share something that you do to de-stress,” because finals were coming up. That’s been one thing that we’ve done recently to continue growing the account.
The impact that I hope to create is to give people stories and recommendations to make their life more fulfilling. In the end, health is about living your best life and being most fulfilled. It’s about being most energized, and happy, and living every day in line with how you want to live.
If you would like to be featured on @goodstuffaa, fill out the form in the bio. It includes three quick questions and a link to add pictures.
Interview conducted & blog post written by #UMSocial intern Keara Kotten
