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Showing Up Anyway is a podcast about unlearning diet culture, redefining health, and making peace with food, movement, and your body -- without needing to have it all together. Hosted by Coach Adam Wright, an anti diet-culture personal trainer and body-trust educator, each episode dives into the imperfect side of wellness and how to navigate motivation burnout, body image struggles, emotional eating and the pressure to be "healthy". This is your reminder that progress doesn't need to be perfect, and you'll still see progress as long as you show up anyway.
Welcome to Showing Up Anyway,
the podcast for people
who are not perfect.
On this show,
we talk about intuitive eating,
fitness without obsession,
and healing your relationship
with food and your body.
Hi, everyone. Welcome back
to episode two of Showing Up Anyway
and look who showed up - you did.
And I'm here with you.
And we're going to be talking today
about before and after pictures.
What's the harm in them,
why people take them
and why I don't.
I've decided to call this episode
You Are Not A Before Picture.
Now you know what I'm talking about,
right?
The dramatic split screen photos
that gyms,
personal trainers and companies
who are trying to sell you
a product are using.
I'm talking WeightWatchers,
SlimFast, Herbalife,
most every big box gym,
most personal trainers have
before and after pictures
of people either using
their products
or using their programs to try
and sell you something.
And I think it's worth mentioning
that, especially in commercials,
these pictures
are often greatly exaggerated,
with terrible lighting
and poor posture in the
before pictures,
and then perfect lighting and
a smile on their face in the after.
You've been seeing this
your whole life,
especially now
in the age of social media,
and that's why we often correlate
our value to our size.
We've been seeing these images
since childhood.
Does anybody else remember waking
up in the middle of the night
and seeing, you know,
Jenny Craig commercials
or WeightWatchers on the screen?
And diet culture
as a whole uses these images to try
and sell you the idea
that smaller equals better.
Now, I recognise
that there's still going
to be brands and trainers
and influencers,
probably including some
of my friends
who still use these photos
for marketing,
and they might get
a little defensive
and I might get some pushback,
but I think it's really important
to talk about this.
Because the truth is,
that these pictures imply that
the after picture is a happier,
more valuable version of a person,
and the before picture is something
that they need to get away from.
So, what they end up doing,
whether subconsciously
or consciously, is feeding shame,
comparison, and the feeling
that we're always less than -
less than the person who's gone
through this transformation,
less than who we used to be
when we were smaller,
less than who we used to be
before we were pregnant
or before we got a chronic illness,
less than somebody
who can afford personal training,
less than somebody who's
been doing it longer than you.
And they also set up this false idea
that health is only measured
in inches or pounds,
instead of how you feel,
how you function,
and how you're living.
And I'm not mad at somebody
who wants to share their aesthetic
transformation -
there's a lot to be proud of
when somebody's put
in the hard work -
but real transformation
isn't always visible.
It's also feeling more energised,
it's sleeping better,
it's trusting yourself around food,
it's finding peace,
and none of that shows up in
a side-by-side picture.
And these pictures also
leave out some really
important context, like,
okay, they lost a lot of weight, but
what was their mental health like?
Did they struggle with depression
or anxiety?
How about disordered eating?
What about socioeconomic barriers?
Did they lose their job
for a couple of months?
Did they struggle
with food insecurity?
Access to health care?
It might be pretty shady
if I decided to put before and
after pictures up of my client,
who has stage four cancer,
but you would never know.
I have loads of clients
who haven't necessarily dropped
10 or 20 or 30% body fat,
but have seen dramatic
transformations
in their relationship with food,
their relationship with their body
and exercise,
who are now living lives
that they feel
are much more fulfilled
than they were before.
And it's not just because their body
is unrecognisable.
A lot of times it's
because their mindset changed
and their lifestyle definitely did.
The fact is that before
and after pictures promote
a one size fits all
idea of wellness,
and I just can't get behind that.
Not any more at least.
As a young trainer, and I'd say
even up until maybe a year ago,
I was still using transformation
photos on my website to show people
that I knew what I was doing,
that I was an effective trainer.
I even felt pressure
to put my own pictures
up of my transformations,
because in my industry,
there's a saying that says your body
is your business card,
which is pretty shitty.
But, like it or not,
progress pictures are
a very effective form of marketing.
Humans are very visual creatures.
We've been trading and bartering
since the dawn of time.
If I'm going to give you money,
I want to know that I'm going
to get something in return.
I know better now,
but I didn't think back then
that my assurance would be enough,
and I'd see other coaches
gain followers and clients
from showing these dramatic
befores and afters.
And I would question
whether or not people
would just believe in my coaching
if I didn't play along.
And I'd get on social media
and I'd promote
all this anti-diet culture stuff,
which is something I'm
really passionate about
and truly believe in,
but I would still have before and
after pictures up on my website.
And I don't remember who it was,
but somebody out there wrote me
a message and said,
"Adam, why do you still have
before and after pictures up
"if you're spreading
an anti-diet culture message?"
And I tried to justify it.
I'd tell myself that this was
a small price to pay to get people
to buy into
an anti-diet culture program.
If they bought in first because of
the before and after pictures,
and I could teach them how
to escape toxic diet culture
in the rest of their lives,
then that was a fair trade off.
And that may be true, to an extent,
but I know
that there are other people
who would see those before
and after pictures
and it would make them feel bad
about themselves.
And so whoever it was that wrote me
that message,
if you're listening now, just know
that message did make a difference.
And it got me to re-evaluate
and change the way I did things.
Was it malicious? Of course not.
But the reality was
that I was perpetuating
the same kind of diet culture
that harmed me in the first place.
I know what it feels
like to be reduced to a number,
to think that your only worth
is in being in a smaller body,
to lose weight
and still not feel good enough.
I could not be a part of
that anymore.
So, I made a choice and I removed
all the before and after pictures
from my website,
from my social media.
I stopped asking clients to take
before pictures,
and I trusted that the right people
would find my program regardless.
And they have. I'll be honest,
it was a scary decision
because I thought maybe
I'd lose out on some potential
clients who were on the fence,
and maybe I have.
But, more importantly,
it's allowed me to be at peace
knowing that I am
not contributing harm.
It's allowed me to create
deeper work and help clients feel
like they are seen
as more than just their appearance,
and not feel like they're being
used as a marketing prop.
Now I share testimonials,
clients talking about their
experiences in their own words,
telling their own stories.
They talk about feeling stronger
and more confident
and more connected to their bodies.
They talk about the freedom
they've found around food
and being able
to wear clothes they love again,
and feeling more at home
in their bodies.
Those testimonials carry
a kind of nuance you'll never get
in before and after pictures.
They carry raw emotion.
They show who someone
has become rather than just
what they looked like in a moment.
And that's the kind
of transformation that I care about.
I used to have a screenshot of
a quote that I really liked about
the idea of personal training,
and I've searched the internet,
I've searched my phone,
and I can't find it anywhere,
unfortunately,
so I can't quote it exactly,
but it stuck with me
since I first started training
and it said something like,
"We don't sell TVs or tires.
We sell the quiet dream
"that someone has at night
when they lay
"their head on their pillow and
imagine a better life."
If anyone can find that quote
in its entirety,
please send it to me.
I'd love to read it on air,
because even though I can't remember
the entire thing,
the message that I don't need to
hand someone something tangible,
I just need to help them
have hope has stuck with me
as long as I've coached.
A before picture often captures
someone when they're at their
most vulnerable and painful point.
Do you know how many clients
I've had come to me and tell me
they don't like taking pictures
with their families on vacations,
fully dressed,
but personal trainers want them
to take pictures
at different angles
in their underwear,
forcing them to look at
the parts of themselves
that they're most uncomfortable
with?
It just turns that person into
a prop, a piece of meat.
Not a person, but a body
in progress.
And what we don't talk about is
that people often regain weight,
and that happens
for a number of reasons.
So, what happens then?
Do we archive that post?
Do we erase their story
because it doesn't fit into
the narrative any more?
Do we make them feel like failures
because they didn't maintain
that thin body?
There's an analogy I use
with my clients quite a lot
and it's this -
progress is not a race.
There is no finish line.
There's no ending destination.
It's really more like a garden.
It's something
that will always take tending,
nurturing, attention,
and it's going to happen in seasons.
It's not going to look the same way
all the time.
You can't just do a diet,
lose weight and then stay
at that point forever.
That's not how weight loss works.
That's not how bodies work.
Maintenance is work.
And so the method you use to get
there needs to be sustainable
because progress is a process.
You are more than a moment in time.
You are more than a number.
You are more than a photo.
Now, I'm not going to say
that progress pictures
can never be useful, okay?
If you can look at those pictures
in a neutral way and just recognise
that each photo is a page
in a flip book,
and that it's simply one tool we can
use to see change over time - okay.
But constantly documenting your body
and flipping back and forth through
the pictures like it's one of
those spot-the-difference games
creates anxiety and a disconnection.
It trains us to be our
own surveillance systems -
always watching, always criticising,
and always body checking.
And fat people are not the only ones
who struggle with the pressure of
before and after pictures.
There are countless
fitness professionals
and body-builders
who are editing their photos
on social media as we speak.
So, I'll say it again -
when we remove visual metrics,
we allow
for internal changes to matter.
True transformation is peace.
It's freedom.
It's not thinking about your body
all day.
Social media has normalised using
your body for validation,
but that is optional.
You're allowed to opt out.
There's a reason I don't post
a bunch of pictures of myself
shirtless and that's because
you're not getting this for free.
Are you kidding me?
I'm kidding!
(LAUGHS)
It's because my body
is not my business card.
Let's start talking about
the progress we see outside
of aesthetics - better sleep,
reduced anxiety, better boundaries,
freedom from guilt,
more energy, more confidence.
Let's expand what we celebrate
and stop clapping
just because someone loses weight.
You don't need a picture
to prove you're making progress.
It's okay to want
to change your body,
but you are more than a project.
You are a person.
A person with a story,
with strength,
and with so much more than
a side-by-side picture could ever
show.
Keep showing up.
Your story is worthy
even when it's unfinished,
especially when it's unfinished.
You are not a before picture
and you never were.
Thank you for tuning in to this
episode of Showing Up Anyway,
you can find it
for free on Spotify
or wherever you get your podcasts.
And wherever you're listening,
if you like the show, I'd love it
if you gave me a five-star review,
because that does help other people
find the show,
and hopefully it will
help change their life
just like you're looking
to change yours.
If you're listening
on Spotify, though,
you can follow me and tap
the bell icon
so you get notifications
when new episodes come out.
I'm Coach Adam. Remember,
when things get challenging,
keep showing up anyway.