Instagram’s newest fitness sensation sheds light on what inspired him to pursue his passion

By Jake McCreven

Anto­nio Arcaroli’s Insta­gram health and well­ness page has accu­mu­lat­ed over 53,000 fol­low­ers in less than 12 months since its cre­ation in April of 2024. The col­lege stu­den­t’s grow­ing influ­ence has moti­vat­ed peo­ple to start their own fit­ness jour­neys, and Arcaroli has even helped his father loose over 90 pounds in 15 months. Hear about Arcaroli’s moti­va­tions and dai­ly rou­tine down below in my one-on-one, sit down inter­view with the fit­ness influencer. 

TRANSCRIPTION:

Hey, there every­one. It’s your host, Jake, and I’m just going to briefly set the table for this inter­view before I wel­come Anto­nio into the stu­dio. Anto­nio is a sopho­more here at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut who runs a 53,000 fol­low­er Insta­gram page that focus­es on dietary well­ness. You can find the page at organ­ic arc — organ­ic, under­score A‑R-C — on Insta­gram. In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing dietary advice on how to eat right on a dai­ly basis, Anto­nio also describes his day to day fit­ness jour­ney. Anto­nio is also an affil­i­ate of over sev­en prod­ucts that pro­mote well­ness, includ­ing sun block, water fil­ters, pro­tein pow­der and elec­trolytes. If you pur­chase any of the prod­ucts linked in his bio for its dis­count­ed price, Anto­nio earns a com­mis­sion for the sale. Go help him out. Now, let’s get into it. Let’s meet Antonio.

Hel­lo, every­one. I am here with Antonio. 

Hel­lo, everyone. 

He is my inter­vie­wee for my in depth chat­cast inter­view, and I’ll be ask­ing a series of ques­tions about his spe­cial­ty. And if you want to take the time to kind of intro­duce your­self briefly…

Yeah, thank you for hav­ing me, Jake. Um, my name is Anto­nio Arcaroli. I’m a sopho­more in UConn, and I’m a nutri­tion­al sci­ences major. I start­ed my Insta­gram account, which is about fit­ness and nutri­tion, in April of 2024, and it grew pret­ty quick­ly, and it’s com­plete­ly changed my life. It’s com­plete­ly changed my life in the sense that I feel that I’ve impact­ed not only my fam­i­ly’s life, like my dad, I have his weight loss trans­for­ma­tion on my pro­file, but oth­ers life through direct mes­sages, through text mes­sages, and it real­ly makes my day when I see like, old friends, old teach­ers text me and telling me, like, how much I mean to them, not only help­ing them, but just the sub­ject that I’m covering.

And that’s a big thing for a lot of peo­ple. You know, weight loss, eat­ing right? That’s a com­mon top­ic and a lot of dis­course today. And I was kind of def­i­nite­ly a lit­tle caught off guard when I saw this guy on my floor eat­ing, like the per­fect diet, and work­ing out and hav­ing this page, and it was just like, it’s crazy, because it’s not some­thing that you nor­mal­ly see, you know, in a col­lege, espe­cial­ly an under­class­men, yeah, but, you know, can you kind of take me to the begin­ning, and what kind of sparked your inter­est in this? Obvi­ous­ly, you’re a nutri­tion­al sci­ences major, but was there some­thing? Was there one spe­cif­ic event that kind of trig­gered your inter­est in this. 

Yeah, so this goes back to 2022 I believe it was almost the end of 2022 I was liv­ing in Long Island for hock­ey with one of my team­mates, and we had to cook for our­selves, but we were also a lit­tle bit into health. We just nev­er under­stood what exact foods were healthy. So we sort of talked to our coach about it in our hock­ey train­er, and they gave us a gen­er­al idea of what we should be eat­ing. But since we were cook­ing for our­selves, we had to go gro­cery shop­ping, and we had to real­ly do all the work with cook­ing meal plan­ning. And we actu­al­ly end­ed up split­ting up after a month, we had to move out of our house, but we cre­at­ed a group chat with the team where we sent pic­tures of our meals every morn­ing, and from there, it just my pas­sion and love for nutri­tion came along with it. My mom would always ask me, like, what do you want to do in col­lege? What do you want to do in school? I would always say, busi­ness finance. Like I real­ly nev­er had any clue until I start­ed doing all the stuff with nutri­tion. And I real­ized, like, wow. Like this is tru­ly my pas­sion and love, like I final­ly found some­thing that I def­i­nite­ly want to do for my future.

Was there any, you know, fig­ure in your life that has kind of inspired you to go this way, or is it more of a self dri­ven kind of thing?

It was self dri­ven until I actu­al­ly came home from hock­ey. This was April 2023 I came home from nation­als, and I was­n’t in school at the time. I was play­ing junior hock­ey, and I want­ed my dad to lose weight, so I wrote on a piece of paper a meal plan that I was going to make for the week. Since I was used to cook­ing when I was liv­ing in Long Island and I went gro­cery shop­ping with my mom, and I would explain all these foods that we’re going to be eat­ing, why we’re try­ing them, and the rest from there is his­to­ry, like we were talk­ing about before my dad, how he lost 90 pounds. But when I got back, specif­i­cal­ly, I cooked for them every night, and when I made the meal plan for the fam­i­ly and we went gro­cery shop­ping, it real­ly got us to spend more fam­i­ly time as well as eat­ing healthy, because we nev­er real­ly ate togeth­er at the din­ner table. We sort of just did every­thing on our own, and that was also some­thing spe­cial that came along with it. And yeah.

I see all of your posts pret­ty much every day. How much effort do you say that you put into cook­ing these meals? I mean, they’re they’re full course. Yeah, what goes into doing that every day? Do you get help from any­one? Do you do this?

The biggest thing I tell every­one is you learn as you go. There real­ly is no I did­n’t learn through any­one on social media or any­thing. I just learned from per­son­al expe­ri­ence and per­son­al fail­ure, and that’s the biggest thing. Like you were talk­ing about the effort. I def­i­nite­ly put the most effort when I cook for my fam­i­ly at night, the din­ners that takes an hour to two hours just cook­ing meals for myself, it real­ly depends what I’m mak­ing. A break­fast will take like, 15 min­utes. Let’s say lunch will take 30 min­utes. And then, for the most part, I’m cook­ing din­ner for my fam­i­ly every night, so that takes like, one to two hours. But it def­i­nite­ly does take a lot of time and effort, and it does take a lot of think­ing out­side the box. When I post my videos, I try to make my food look as esthet­ic and pre­sentable as pos­si­ble. So I’m real­ly think­ing like, as I’m cook­ing, like, hey, what could I do to make these pota­toes look as as good as they can? What about this bird or this steak?

And obvi­ous­ly, diet is only half the bat­tle. Obvi­ous­ly, you need to get into the gym, work­out, do some­thing, go on a run, swim. Can you kind of describe what you do, and do you fol­low any sort of spe­cif­ic program?

Um, I sort of try to go along the pro­gram I did with my hock­ey team in Long Island. We do a lot of like ath­let­ic move­ments and free weight exer­cis­es, basic move­ments like dead­lift, squat, bench, pull ups, push ups, those basic move­ments, and I try to engage my core into every­thing as much as pos­si­ble, just because it trans­fers to ath­let­ic per­for­mance better.

I guess I think this is a good seg­way, this is why I wrote down, how do you stay moti­vat­ed on days you don’t feel like eat­ing or work­ing? Right? That’s the down­fall of so many peo­ple. Every­one always points out the new year’s res­o­lu­tions, and they’re done by Feb­ru­ary, right? How do you stay moti­vat­ed in going to the gym every day, work­ing out every day?

First, I’ll answer with the nutri­tion­al part. I think I real­ly enjoy what I do, so I real­ly stay moti­vat­ed with that, like I enjoy the foods I eat, and I try to make it as fun as pos­si­ble and enjoy­ing some stuff in mod­er­a­tion. I think that’s also the biggest thing. And with fit­ness, if I’m feel­ing tired one day, I will rest, but I’ll always make sure I’m get­ting 10k steps in for a day. I think that’s def­i­nite­ly the biggest part, because you’re burn­ing a lot more calo­ries than you think, and you’re able to do eat a lit­tle more dur­ing the day than you think, and your caloric intake can be a lit­tle high­er than nor­mal, but I def­i­nite­ly don’t work out sev­en days a week. I def­i­nite­ly work out three to four, but I just train real­ly hard, just for about an hour, maybe even a lit­tle bit less than that. But I try to stay as dis­ci­plined as pos­si­ble, just because I don’t like cheat­ing myself, and I want to feel the best that I can and look the best that I can. So that would def­i­nite­ly be my biggest reason.

I feel like that’s that’s part of the rea­son for every­one, yeah. How, how do you fol­low these dietary goals? Right? Do you have any par­tic­u­lar thresh­olds that you like to fol­low every day, like, a cer­tain amount of pro­tein, carbs? Like, what does that kind of look like? 

Yeah, I try to get in my body weight times one in pro­tein per day. So I weigh 190 pounds. I try to eat 190 grams of pro­tein a day. That’s plen­ty, but car­bo­hy­drates are still very impor­tant, and fats are extreme­ly impor­tant for reg­u­lat­ing your hor­mones. Carbs are impor­tant, specif­i­cal­ly for ath­let­ic per­for­mance, so I always try to carb load in the morn­ing, or even carb load at night with hon­ey fruit, maybe even some pas­ta on some nights when I know I’m gonna work out hard the next morn­ing. But yeah.

How would you say that you bal­ance your fit­ness, your eat­ing with the rest of your lifestyle. Obvi­ous­ly, not a lot of peo­ple our age like to eat as healthy as you do. How do you kind of bal­ance hang­ing out with your friends and eat­ing the diet that you do?

Um, some­times it could be hard, espe­cial­ly when I see oth­ers around me hav­ing a lot of treats that I would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly eat. But like I was say­ing, Before you can do every­thing in mod­er­a­tion. Some­times I’ll enjoy myself to treats. But I think the biggest thing for me was even try­ing to moti­vate the per­son next to me to eat bet­ter. Has helped. I’ve tried to help kids at school, kids on our floor, eat as good as possible. 

And I feel like you kind of this good segue into this ques­tion, you know, and you also kind of allud­ed to this it start­ed inter­view like, Have you received any kind of mes­sages or and even in per­son, you know, has any­one thanked you for what you do, what you post, and how does that make you feel? 

That’s a great ques­tion. I think that’s the biggest thing, like that’s what keeps me moti­vat­ed to keep post­ing. When I get mes­sages which I have to answer your ques­tion, that inspires me to just keep going.

And, you know, I think a lot of peo­ple want to be like you, but I just, I think that they’re kind of scared to start. And if you could give one piece of advice to some­one, let’s say, on our floor, that wants to start the jour­ney that you did, what would that be? What would you tell them –

That the hard­est part is start­ing? I was always scared to post on Insta­gram, and then once I did, it com­plete­ly changed my life. And I tru­ly love going on my phone every day, check­ing mes­sages, cre­at­ing drafts to post. There’ll be times where and I’ll mess up over and over and over again. My videos look real­ly clean, like the voiceover is clean, but I’ll break down one meal in a video and I’ll mess up 10 times on the same meal. It might look per­fect, but almost like behind the scenes, it’s not per­fect, but at the same time, like I’m so grate­ful for hav­ing a plat­form and being able to help peo­ple that I don’t get angry when I mess up, just because I start­ed and it grew, and it means every­thing to me.

So I just kind of want to ask, who has been your biggest inspi­ra­tion in this field, is there a par­tic­u­lar fam­i­ly mem­ber, friend, or is it some sort of influ­encer that you’ve drawn inspi­ra­tion from?

Influ­encer on social media? His name is Bren­dan Ruh. He’s based out of San­ta Cruz, Cal­i­for­nia, and his user­name is san­tacruzmed­i­c­i­nals. I think he’s done an amaz­ing job at edu­cat­ing my gen­er­a­tion and oth­ers about what health is. He start­ed post­ing in 2021, and he slow­ly, slow­ly grew, but even­tu­al­ly he got to a point where he’s huge. He has a huge plat­form now of about 500,000 fol­low­ers. And he has his own brand where he sells cre­a­tine sup­ple­ments like Vit­a­min D, which I buy cre­a­tine. And he real­ly is the one that changed my friends and my life. When we would send our food in our group chat of our health group chat, he’s the per­son that we’d send the videos try­ing to like edu­cate oth­ers on what’s good and what’s not good. And he’s the one that also moti­vat­ed me. Moti­vat­ed me not only to eat bet­ter, but to start post­ing and yeah, he com­plete­ly changed my life.

So obvi­ous­ly, I view your sto­ries, right? That’s why I’m hav­ing you in here. I see the spon­sor­ships that you get and your your page has got­ten to a point you have near­ly 60,000 fol­low­ers on Insta­gram, where you’re hav­ing these prod­ucts, kind of reach out to you and say, “hey, can you pro­mote our prod­uct? And we’ll pay you in return? You know, you’ll earn com­mis­sion,” stuff like that? When you pro­mote these prod­ucts how much thought goes into, hey, I’ll pro­mote your your prod­uct, or no, sor­ry, I’m not doing this. And what’s the kind of the out­look on receiv­ing mon­ey for some­thing that you love doing?

To answer your first ques­tion, I always look deeply into the prod­uct and see if it’s some­thing that I tru­ly believe in and want to pro­mote. For me, it’s not about the mon­ey at all. It’s real­ly about show­ing some­thing that I tru­ly believe in and use in my day to day life. I have about eight affil­i­ates in my Insta­gram bio, so when peo­ple click the link on my bio, it’ll imme­di­ate­ly take them to my dis­count code and I get a cer­tain per­cent com­mis­sion, which, let’s say you order some­thing for $100 I’ll make $10 from it. So it’s noth­ing crazy, but it’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing that I get excit­ed about when I see peo­ple use my code because they’re using some­thing that I use in my day to day life. And this def­i­nite­ly, I did­n’t start my Insta­gram account to make the mon­ey. I start­ed my Insta­gram account to help oth­ers make an impact on oth­ers lives. And get­ting affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing and mak­ing some mon­ey sort of just came along with it, and that’s obvi­ous­ly been a great thing. But for me, the pri­or­i­ty is to just help oth­ers and make an impact on oth­ers lives. Great, you know?

I mean, thank you for your time today. And I mean, it feels like I’m hav­ing a celebri­ty on the pod­cast, right? Yeah, I’ll def­i­nite­ly, obvi­ous­ly tag your your Insta­gram and all that in the descrip­tion of this. And again, just thank you for your time.

Thank you so much for hav­ing me! This is awe­some, yeah.