Before & After Photos are used a lot to market gyms & PTs. While the sentiment is there to display the progress of an exercise programme and potentially a motivating practice for a time, they can be hugely problematic.

They portray the ‘before body’ as the undesirable body when these bodies are perfectly normal and healthy. It tells us that health and fitness progress is about weight loss or creating a smaller body. It triggers comparison & insecurity. If someone feels they look like a ‘before’ photo it tells them their body needs to be changed or they are not ‘fit’ or ‘healthy’. We have a responsibility for what we put on social media and such photos and messaging can be very damaging and trigger body image issues amongst demographics.

It can trigger comparison & insecurity for the person in the photos. If you are a gym or a trainer using your client's photos as ‘success’ stories. What are you telling them about their 'before' body? It was not adequate? It was unhealthy? Bodies change ALL the time, if the person goes back to their ‘before’ body for whatever reason, this will most likely hurt their self-esteem and relationship with their body.

Before and after photos imply we can only determine someone's health by how they look or that fitness & health only have a certain look. If someone is getting smaller they must be getting healthier. Not everyone has the goal of weight loss or muscle definition and this over-emphasis on aesthetics in the fitness industry is creating barriers to getting people active.

The fitness industry, personal trainers, and gyms as a whole need to take responsibility for their marketing, take the emphasis off celebrating aesthetic changes, and think about the impact of such photos on their clients and their wider social media audience. Ultimately this style of marketing exploits people’s insecurities for profit. The industry needs to change