I don’t care for a before-and-after photo; I care that you feel seen, heard, and educated on tools to help you create change throughout your life. Not just for a 6-week programme.
You can sign up with a coach for a 6-week block. You get a meal plan, gym sessions and all they want after it is a photo of you in your bra and knickers with your head cut off, side by side with “before” and “after” to post on their Instagram.
Ok that’s fine; you’ve changed your body. That was your goal. You maaaayyyyy be happier and more confident, but what that post doesn’t show is:
The worth you place on your body to be slimmer because that fits the ideal and the norm, and clearly anyone in a smaller body should be happier, right?
This is only heightened by all of the likes and comments you (and your coach) receive on that post. “Well done, Aimee, all of your hard work paid off” scroll down to “you look incredible!” followed by “now you can enjoy your pizza again woooo”
It doesn’t show the constant restriction you had with food. Controlling every morsel of food by scanning it on MyFitnessPal. Ruining your hunger cues because you can only eat 3 meals a day worth 500cals each, if you’re lucky, so your hunger? That doesn’t matter. You ignore your hunger cues.
But by controlling your food, funnily enough, your food noise goes up. You are not allowed pizza? You want pizza.
Comparison becomes your best (or worst) friend. You’re eating, training, walking, doing everything like Sally did when they had their transformation. So why don’t you look like her? You’ve bought into an idea that one size fits all, and I’m here to tell you it doesn’t. It just fuels the thoughts of you’ve not done enough.
Now I’m not here to say you shouldn’t want to change how you look, because I help women with fat loss more than any other goal. But what a good coach will do (yes, that’s me) is dive deeper into why. 9 times out of 10, these women hate how they look and can’t bare to look in the mirror. They think eating one meal out will make them fat. They restrict all day and overeat in the evening.
So what I get with my clients isn’t before-and-after transformation photos, it’s transformations that can’t always be seen.
The ones where:
she “feels satisfied going to bed eating 2 pieces of chocolate orange instead of a full bar.”
she “looks at her body and appreciates the movement she has been doing that is helping her become physically and mentally stronger”
she “has an epiphany - her existing version of body neutrality was refusing to think about her body at all”
If someone leaves my coaching feeling stronger, more confident, less consumed by food, is being kinder to themselves and actually is enjoying living their life. That’s the real transformation and certainly does not need a naked before and after photo.
