66- Why I Don’t Use Before-and-After Photos: Redefining Progress in Midlife Strength Training

In this episode of MilesFromHerView, powered by KatFit Strength, host Kat discusses the limitations of before and after photos in capturing true fitness progress. She emphasizes the importance of focusing on personal growth, strength, and resilience rather than aesthetics. Kat shares insights on building a lifelong fitness journey tailored to each woman's unique life season and goals. She encourages listeners to cultivate a positive relationship with their bodies, food, and exercise, and offers practical advice for navigating different phases of life with confidence and self-compassion. Whether you're an athlete, a busy mom, or someone seeking a sustainable fitness path, this episode provides valuable perspective on finding authentic strength and balance.

00:00 Introduction: The Truth Behind Before and After Photos

00:37 Welcome to MilesFromHerView

01:26 Best of Episodes Announcement

02:05 Why I Don't Use Before and After Photos

03:32 Understanding Fitness as a Lifelong Commitment

08:08 Designing a Program for Your Real Schedule

10:54 Coaching as a Partnership

15:48 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

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Transcript

Kat: 0:00

You've seen them before, the dramatic before and after photos, promising transformations in six weeks. They almost feel unreal. But the truth is those photos don't tell the real story. They don't show the woman who finally stopped feeling anxious about food. They don't show the woman who eased her back pain and started hiking again. They don't show the woman who learned to sleep through the night for the first time in years. And that is one of the main reasons why I don't use'em, because real progress, especially in midlife, can't be captured in a single snapshot. Welcome to MilesFromHerView, the podcast powered by KatFit Strength, where busy women like you find practical solutions to fuel your fitness journey with authenticity and resilience. I'm Kat, your host, a mom of two active boys, a business owner, and an ultra marathon runner and a strength trainer in her forties with nearly two decades of experience. I'm here to help you cut through the noise of fads, hacks, and quick fixes. This is a space where we celebrate womanhood and motherhood. All while building strength and resilience and reconnecting with you from a place of self-compassion and worthiness. Whether you're lacing up your running shoes to go out for a run, driving your kids to practice or squeezing in a moment for yourself, I'm right here in the trenches with you. Let's dive in. Hi, I am Kat. I'm your host in the next couple weeks, you're gonna hear a couple best of episodes. They have already been aired,, earlier this year or last year because I am taking some time away from my business to spend it with family, we are about ready to start the school year. So the next couple weeks I am going to take some time for me to spend with a family and focus on behind the scenes work in my business too. Revisit the core of my mission, what and why. I started my business 12 years ago, and today's podcast goes into that of the before and after photo. And it is something that for me in my business, my mission is not to use them. And I wanna clarify. This has no. Judgment or vilifying. Anybody who does use them part of their marketing, that's for them and that aligns with their business. But I want to share some reasoning why for me, it's not part of my business. And if you are someone who feels trapped by them, or maybe you, yourself are using pro progress photos, and maybe they are not the best relationship, or maybe you're having a great relationship with progress photos or before and after is fantastic. But it is a moment for me to kind of explain why I don't use them, and that you don't have to be a before and after. So one of the primary reasons is you're not a start stop. When we use before and afters, it's where you started, where you stopped, and that after photo becomes a metric of comparison. The fact is, you're a beautiful living, evolving being. Your body will change, your schedule will change, your priorities will shift, and none of this is good or bad. It just is. And for me and at the core of my business. Is I'm teaching my clients that fitness is a lifelong commitment that adapts with them. I work with my clients some for a season and some for years, and my goal is the same to help'em build the skills, confidence, and routines that keep you strong through every chapter. Now, when I started KatFit 12 years ago. My background was not in the Fitspo gym culture of detoxes six week shreds. I came from coaching athletes where progress was measured by strength and resilience and showing up not how you looked in a photo and, and most of the women I work with grew up in the weight watcher, SlimFast, celery juice era, special K diet. You know where fitness was all about shrinking yourself. And they come to me ready to break free from them. And even though I have been a lifelong athlete, I was an athlete as soon as I, I don't know, it was like 11 or 12 when I entered sports, found track and field as my primary sport. It clicked with me. I loved it. And even though yes, coaching athletes, yes, myself as an athlete, as I grew up from my teens to my twenties, through my thirties, and now my forties, aesthetics are absolutely fine. We can all feel the insecurities in our body. It. It is different when we're training in an atmosphere that is positive and embracing and not hyper focusing on chasing the after, not chasing and nitpicking little bits about our body. Now, not all my clients, most of my clients in fact, are not. In the traditional sense, an athlete where they are signing up for a race, competing in a sport or a league, most of my clients are looking to gain that strength, that confidence, and that resilience. They want to find that good relationship with their body and like I said, breaking away from. The chasing the aesthetics, the shrinking themselves. They want that freedom from food, anxiety, and guilt. The ability to adjust to workouts without spiraling into shame, and to smile confidently in photos without hiding behind someone else or passing on a photo altogether. The fact is these winds cannot be seen. In a bathroom mirror, a selfie, but these winds change everything. So how I approach this with clients is I really get to know. The season of life they're in and I help them understand the season of their life and allow it to empower them. A lot of what we see with the seasons that women go through, prenatal, postpartum, perimenopause, menopause, a lot of change. It is come with a lot of, you can't or this is why your body can't. It is limiting beliefs and restrictions. I don't believe that does not mean, and I wanna make this very clear, that any symptoms or any feelings that you have are not valid. They are a thousand percent valid. But when we learn to train in our training, cardio, mobility, strength training. Our sleep, our nutrition, our stress mitigation, our social relationships, our work life balance. When it is in alignment with where we are at, you are going to see incredible success. So this is where. I disagree with the limiting beliefs of, oh, it's menopause, therefore I can't, oh, it's postpartum. Therefore, I can't, can't. Your body is very resilient and can change, but we have to understand the season of life you're in. Then from there, designing a program for your real schedule, again, knowing the season of life where you're at. Are you currently pregnant? Are you trying to get pregnant? Are you postpartum with your first, second, third, et cetera? Are you postpartum? And in this perimenopause years, are your kids grown and flown? And this is the first time you've been able to come up for air and now menopause is hitting you and you cannot remember the last time you did a workout or had time for yourself. Okay. Let's put a plan that sets you up for success. So it has to understand who you are, where you're at, and then designing that program for your real schedule, not a schedule of where you think you should. Understanding that even if you have 20 minutes between meetings or 20 minutes in the morning or in the evening, wherever it works in your schedule, or that you can dedicate three solid workouts a week, it's creating a plan that works in your schedule that is gonna set you up for success, not burnout. When clients come in, I ask, what have you done in the past? Why did that stop working? I wanna know what is their history? What are things that have worked? What are the challenges, the barriers that have come up and put in a plan with tweaking, because that sets'em up for success. Oftentimes, I hear clients say. And I'm not their first trainer coach that or program that they've ever done. That. The program, they loved it, but they couldn't keep up with it. It didn't. It worked for a season of time and then it stopped working and there was no adaptability or flexibility. So. That's where it's understanding, again, the season and understanding the schedule. Then I wanna get to know their body. Are they having aches and pains in areas? Do they have past injuries? Do you know how? Is there kinesthetic awareness? How are their kinetic chains moving? So how are they squatting? How are they moving about life? And I wanna improve their mobility. I wanna put in exercises that are gonna help them build muscle, help them ease aches, and strengthen their over overall body and improve mobility throughout their everyday life. Again, it's meeting them where they are at with their schedule and the season of life and coaching is a partnership. I'm not here to say, here's your plan, do it, and if you can't figure it out, don't you know that's on you too often. I have had women come to me in this essence of, I got a plan. I really wanted to do it, but there were limitations and whoever they received it from, or gym or class or whatever, there were no options. There were no. Adaptations to help them. My job and the way I view it, is I wanna help you build that authority and autonomy over your own body. I want you to know when to push harder and when to pull back and how to trust yourself in the process. It's not about the rigid plan, it's training that works for your life and not against it because. Inevitably. We all have a starting point or a continuation point with our fitness. I have had them in the past. There's nothing bad and there's nothing bad with progress photos. I don't think they need to be the marker of success in fitness to see if a program worked because there are so many different changes to show a program is working versus a dramatic change in a short amount of time. A lot of my clients come in and what they will see. With the biggest changes that impact the overall change in their body composition in their body is being able to get a full night's sleep, feeling confident with adjusting their workouts, staying consistent on a program, not for six weeks, but for six years. Rebuilding muscle and strength that makes their body feel good. And not limiting them further or quitting a program because they feel so sore and achy, or having past injury flare flares returning to the adventures and the sports that they love. They get back to hiking, skiing, running, cycling, and signing up for those races are my all time favorite. It is when they jump into photos without hiding their body and they are smiling. Those are the most amazing progress. Those are things that the before and afters don't show. Strength training is about resilience and freedom, and not about perfection. It's about building a body and a mindset that adapts with you through every season. And the truth is fitness isn't about being done. There's just no finish line with it. That after photo with that dramatic change. In order to sustain that, we need to continue on the plan. And if you aren't understanding how to adapt the plan, how to understand when you need to push a little harder in your workouts. Or you, maybe you can take on a little bit more with your workouts or you need to pull back in your workouts because life, you wanna put more of life as a priority. I wanna. Be a little bit more clear. Clear with my words, does not mean that when you are pushing with your fitness and your workouts that you don't have a life. We're in summertime right now. A lot of my clients are pulling back on their fitness because maybe they're dealing with multiple schedule changes. Maybe. And like for me, to be quite honest, in these next two weeks, I'm pulling back on my fitness. That's a progress check-in. I could keep pushing. I'm not burned out. I feel really good. I have rest built into my schedule. Same thing that I do with my clients. There's rest time. There's, weeks where the workouts are a little scaled back, It's when we understand and develop that we are not just a start and stop with these before and afters, that we are a whole human in life, that things are going to come up and if we learn the skills. Of understanding our body and our seasons, we can tune into exactly what we want and train for our whole life and not for white knuckling, um, ourselves through intense, restrictive programs that are really hard to maintain, especially when life gets lifey because life will always happen, happens to me, happens to everybody. So I wanna leave you with this. Do you wanna be known for your strength or your pants size? If you're ready for a coaching approach that evolves with you and teaches you how to truly own your fitness for life, let's talk. Jump in the show notes, book a free discovery call, and together we'll create a plan that fits your season of life, your schedule, your goals. Without guilt or pressure. If you have questions about this podcast or any other podcast, hit reply to the podcast. I will respond to your message. I read every single one, and no. If you've enjoyed this podcast, if you could take two seconds, hit a follow rate, the podcast. This helps individuals like yourself find the podcast. I can't wait to be back here in two weeks. Thank you for tuning in to MilesFromherView, powered by KatFit Strength. If this podcast inspires you, don't keep it for yourself. Hit follow or subscribe to stay updated on the new episodes, and leave us a review to help more women and moms discover this space. Your feedback fuels this podcast and I'd love to hear what's working for you or what topics you want to dive into Next. You can connect with me on Instagram at KatFitStrength or share this episode. Road with a friend who is ready to embrace her strength. Remember, fitness isn't about perfection. It's about showing up for yourself and finding strength in every step of your journey. Until next time, keep moving forward one mile at a time.