TW: This article discusses weight loss and restrictive eating.
Holly Scarfone is facing criticism for documenting her weight loss journey on TikTok, with claims the influencer is promoting “dangerous” habits to the app’s young audience.
The former Too Hot To Handle star first discussed her weight loss publicly in June, revealing she had lost 20 pounds in three months. While Holly is certainly not the first person on TikTok to share a weight loss journey, the tactics she claimed to have used were alarming to some, like eating in an extreme caloric deficit by cutting out meat and intermittent fasting.
Holly has since posted numerous TikToks about her continued weight loss, including videos where she shares what she eats, her workout routine, and her experience with intermittent fasting.
By October, fans grew concerned for Holly when she began posting about wanting to have “abs by [her] birthday,” December 17th. With this new goal, Holly’s content has become increasingly focused on restrictive dieting and exercise, and users are now calling her out for promoting dangerous behaviours and beliefs about food to her 500K+ followers.
In one controversial video, Holly says it’s “bad” that she ate chocolate and “a chip or two” as a snack. In another recent video, she “confessed” to eating Chick-fil-A one evening. “So this morning, I’m going right to the gym,” she said.
Earlier this week, actress and creator Abbey Humphreys seemingly called Holly out for being deceptive about how she actually lost weight.
In the video, which has over 1.3 million views, Abbey claims that “someone on this app” who has been “very openly discussing the lifestyle, fitness, diet changes that they’ve made” is on Ozempic, a semaglutide prescription drug that can help with weight loss.
“All I’m saying is, this is evil,” Abbey says.
While the Perfect Match star did not mention the creator by name, her comment section is flooded with people suggesting the video is about Holly. Many users have now taken to Holly’s comment section to accuse her of taking the prescription drug without disclosing this to her followers.
Holly defended herself against this accusation in the comment section of a recent video, writing, “I’ve been working out and dieting since last April… it’s been 8 months.”
TikTok star Loren Gray also voiced her concerns about the content being shared by an unnamed influencer, which many believe to be Holly.
“I watched a video from an influencer that was a ‘what I eat in a day’ style video to lose a significant amount of weight in a very short period of time. And to me, the video was screaming disordered eating,” Loren says before sharing some of the health issues she faced while she was struggling with an eating disorder herself.
“I see [under-eating] being glamourised far too often and it’s not a glamourous thing to go through,” Loren explains. “If you’re an influencer, please be cautious of the message that you’re sending to millions of people because it can be dangerous.”
Holly did not immediately respond to Centennial World‘s request for comment.