Episode 22 Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to The Be About Being Better podcast, where we help people make evidence-based sustainable. Small changes for their health that compounded the huge shifts towards a better, more vibrant life. I'm your host Abbie Stasior, a health and life coach, future registered dietician, a master's graduate from Columbia University, and a certified intuitive eating counselor.
And I believe that we can't make lasting or meaningful change single handedly. So I'm so happy that you're here so that together you can see that a diet free, sustainable lifestyle is possible, and you can leverage that to live a better life. And remember my disclaimer, This podcast is meant to give you general information.
And it's not meant to substitute or replace medical advice, a diagnosis or serve as treatment.
Hello. Hello y'all. Welcome back to the Be About Being Better podcast. Today we're gonna be talking about my beef with Beachbody. Mm mm Now the company is called Body, B O D I. If you don't know. Uh, you know what we're talking about when I say Beachbody. I think most people know that body was previously called Beachbody, the multi-level marketing company, mlm, that that company is what we're gonna be talking about today.
And if you've been following my journey since day one, literally day one, you will know that I started with beachbody. Uh, slightly, I don't wanna say embarrassed to say that, but you gotta own your story. And what I will say is that once you know better, you do better. And I just realized there's so many better ways to go about getting healthy than Beachbody.
And Beachbody ultimately is not the sustainable solution. that they claim to be. And I'm gonna talk about a few reasons why that is and why I chose this was now almost like seven years ago at this point in leaving Beachbody and being inspired to start my own company, be about being better because we wanna do things in a better way.
And why I've decided to become a registered d. and a certified intuitive eating counselor to get my master's in nutrition and exercise physiology from Columbia to keep building my credentials, to understand the evidence-based knowledge so that ultimately I can help you all have a sustainable, healthy lifestyle.
It's free of dieting. And I needed to, on my journey, realize what feeds into diet culture and what gets us away from diet culture and throughout. Journey leaving Beachbody like over the last seven years or so, I've become accustomed to that. It's like, oh wow. My fitness pal's actually a problem. Tracking our macros can actually be harmful.
Taking progress, photos can be harmful. Doing hit workouts day in and day out is harmful. Like some of these things that we. are ob maybe obvious, weren't obvious to me in the beginning. So I needed to go through my own journey of transformation, breaking away from diet culture, healing my relationship with food so that I could be in a place to actually help you all do it too.
Uh, but before we get into my beef with Beachbody, I wanna get into my beef with the movie Burlesque. Uh, if you have not seen this with Christina Aguilera and Cher, it's one of my favorite movies and I'm about to expose. Real hard right now, but I am one of those people who watches the same movie over and over and over again.
Like I have my top five movies and I watch, like, I don't, it's, I, it's very hard for me to watch new movies and new shows unless it's a short series because my attention span is like I just can't sit there for that long. I get very antsy when I watch like a two hour plus movie. . And I also like to feed my need for certainty.
I need to be certain as to what's going to happen. Now, people might be analyzing this and thinking, uh, ab, that's not very healthy. You need to let that go. You need to find that need for certainty in other ways. Um, you can't be certain of, of everything in life. And I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to be certain in every area of my life, but
it gives me a great comfort to watch the same movies over and again, and to know what the outcome is going to be because we don't know what the outcome's gonna be in life, right? So that that's how we feed my need for security feed. My need for certainty. And Burlesque is one of those movies that's in my top five.
And you might be thinking to yourself, Abby, oh my God, that's in your top five. Really you need to watch some better movies. I've been told this time and time again, I need to watch better movies. I need to be cultured. It's hard. I can't really watch new movies. It's very difficult for me. Um, so sorry.
This is what we got. What I've already seen. That's what we got. You're probably wonder what else is on the list. The notebook, obviously I watched that once a month or around my luteal phase when I'm like sobbing. Just, it's real. It's like a monthly ritual at this point. I curl up with my heating pad and popcorn, maybe some red wine.
It's giving Olivia Pope, you know, I just, that's what I like to do. Some dark chocolate with raspberry. Hmm. Anyway, so that's my monthly ritual, basically. Watch the Notebook School of Rock with Jack Black. That is out of my top five. That is my favorite movie. That is my favorite movie. I know every line I'm.
Absolutely obsessed, obsessed, devil Wears Prada. Love it. It's my favorite movie. Well, school of Rock, then The Devil Wears Prada, legally Blonde and Burlesque. Those are my movies. Those are my movies. Was that fun? I think that was fun. So, and you know, sometimes there's other ones that maybe come into the mix where I'm like kind of craving that.
Sometimes I'll watch the movie Jackie, just cuz I like Jackie O, you know? And I'll watch that and I'm like curious about history, like I kind of like those types of movies sometimes where it's like about a real person.
Cause I like stuff to be real. But no, you will not catch me Going to see the new avatar. . Absolutely not. I'm just, I can't sit there for four and a half hours or however long the movie is, and I don't like stuff that's like not real. And I know what they're trying to like base it on real, like it's supposed to be like real.
I just, anyway, no, I can't do it. Um, so anyway, back to my beef with burlesque .
So I'm watching this do this movie and the whole time, if you haven't seen the. The whole time the love interest for Christina Aguilera in the movie is right. He's a songwriter, and he's also a bartender at the burlesque club, and he's writing a song, and the whole time he's like so secretive of his notes.
He's like, you can't see my notes. You can't, like I'm, I'm writing this love song. And she's like, why haven't you finished the song already? Like, just finish the song, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, you're judging me about my life and my choices, but you can't even write a simple song. And then at the end, he reveals the song to her and it's like the big dance number at the end.
Like, show me how you burlesque and I'm rewatching this movie again. And I'm like,
that's it. That's the song he wrote. This is, this is what the hype was about. Now I've seen this movie probably about 50 to a hundred times now at this point . So I know that this is coming, but it's the first time that I'm like clued into it.
Like this was this big romantic song that he's been working in, over the whole movie. This is the way you produce. Maybe we need to, you know, workshop this a little bit more like it's kind of poppy song. It's good for the end of the movie, but I'm like, this is not like a romantic song. and I could, I could have written that a five-year-old could have written that song.
I'm sorry. I'm like, the bar for men is so low and maybe I'm just bitter about my recent breakup, but which I'm not, I'm not actually bitter. I'm like very at peace. We need to do a whole episode. Like once I'm ready to like, talk about the deeds of the breakup, like we'll get into it y'all. But, um, , but I'm just like, the bar is so low.
Um, what the song should have. is the song bound to you that she sings when it's the solo. She's wearing the green silk dress and she looks gorgeous and stunning, and it's just a bold, serenade ballad. Like it, it's so sultry, romantic. She's saying, I'm bound to you. Like that would've been a better song that had more complexity.
anyway. I know I'm like carving on this movie. That doesn't matter that nobody's probably seen, cuz it's probably too niche of a movie for people to see. But it's in my top five, so I feel like I needed to address it.
And anyway, so back to my beef with Beachbody. This is why I don't recommend Beachbody.
Number one, the people that are coaching you through Beachbody are not credentialed or licensed in any capacity, which makes this really dangerous and especially coming from me that is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars investing in my education. So many hours in clinical rotations in the hospital, learning how to care for people from a new, from that lens of nutrition.
It takes a lot to be licensed. . It takes a lot to really understand the pathways in the body and how things react and how hormones work and the digestion process, and then what to do when things go awry or when people have a disease or a condition. Because food is medicine, we call it in the dietician world, medical nutrition therapy.
M and t. So we believe like food is really medicine and so we understand that. And for different conditions and disease states, we know what nutrition is going to be best for you. How do, how do we identify, um, micronutrient deficiencies, vitamin and mineral deficiencies and all these sorts of things. So I know for people that are really credentialed with nutrition, especially, I know how much training goes into it because I'm literally going through that.
Anybody off the street, Joe Blow could be a Beachbody coach. Like it's just crazy to me. And so they have this thing, when you're a Beachbody coach, enroll three get yours free. So if you like the protein powder, if you enroll three of your friends or three in family members or whoever, The commissions that you get from that pay for your protein powder.
So that's what motivated me at first to get the coaching. Cause I was like, okay, the protein powder's kind of expensive, but I like it and or I liked it at the time. Now I don't like it. And once I like actually understood the ingredients, I'm like, oh boy, not great. So I started to like enroll my friends, people in college and family members, you know, women in my sorority.
I started to enroll people and then I realized, , oh, if they start to enroll people under them, then they get their protein powder for free. And then I get commissions based on their commissions. And that's how the kind of pyramid, I don't wanna say scheme, but the pyramid structure starts to grow.
But the problem with that is, is that any one of those people that is signing up, other people could be registered as a quote unquote coach. and start to lead a team and enroll their own people and be in charge of those people under them. And it's very problematic if you don't know what you're doing or if you didn't really sign up to be a coach or lead other people, but you just wanted free protein powder, which is probably most people, but these are the people that are helping you with your workouts and your nutrition and prescribing.
like what to do in helping you with your mindset. And people that are coming to Beachbody are, are pretty similar to people that are coming to sign up for coaching with me. People that have body image issues, people that have a history of chronic dieting. People that, you know, maybe want, want to lose weight, um, or think that losing weight is gonna solve all of their problems.
But really they just wanna feel comfortable, confident in their own skin. They don't really know how to do that. People that really struggle with eating, struggle with consistency, struggle with a self-deprecating mindset. These are heavy issues. These are heavy issues that not, I would say most people are not equipped to handle those things.
And there are some client cases that I don't even feel equipped to. And so I, I refer out, I have other people that I, I refer to. Um, I recommend that patients are also in therapy. If they're working with me. Sometimes I recommend, Hey, we can't even do our work together until you go work through this in therapy first, then come back and get health.
So I'm very cognizant of staying within my scope of practice and keeping the patient or the client first. So I just feel like Beachbody, because they're such a, they're a business, they're focused on the profit. They don't necessarily really care about that. They're, they care about incentivizing people to sign up more people.
and unfortunately people are getting caught in that crossfire and being led by people that aren't actually credentialed. So it's very dangerous. We don't know what could come of that. I'm sure so many people in the process have been hurt, have been given bad advice because they were coached by someone that wasn't licensed or certified.
So not, not a good look.
I also think beachbody puts people at too much of a caloric deficit they give you, with each workout plan that you subscribe to, there's a meal plan that's associated with that, and they kind of estimate the calories. Now, I understand when you're coaching people on this large of a scale, you can't personalize every single thing.
Although wait, you probably can, you could probably work that out in your business model to do. You would just need to hire dieticians or sports nutritionist to figure out what those calories are going to be for that individual. And maybe every person that signs up gets a consultation with that and or, I don't know, like there's gotta be something.
But right now they just say, if you're doing this workout program and you are a male or female or you know, and like, this is how you estimate, or I think it, maybe it's based on weight. If you weigh this much, this is how much you should eat. And they give you, The breakdown there, it puts people at too much of a caloric deficit because Beachbody profits off of you losing weight.
So this is very similar to what I was saying in the Noom episode. They don't care about you . They, they don't, they care if you lose weight and they will do anything in their power. To make sure that you lose weight, so they will put you at too much of a caloric deficit. Restrict your calories too much, put you on a very intense workout plan, because that works for weight loss in the short term, but unfortunately, this will lead to disordered eating.
It will lead to weight cycling where people gain weight back and probably more weight back from where they originally started because focusing on weight loss in this restriction is the biggest predictor of weight. So they put people on too much of a caloric deficit. We're not fueling ourselves adequately, and the workouts tend to be too intense.
Now, I know that they have yoga and they have spinning, and they have other things, but most of the time it's hit workouts, very intense, and you have to sign up for a program. So it's reinforcing this notion that we're either on the wagon or off the wagon, you're subscribed to a program or you're not.
And I think that can be really detrimental for people. to be like on again, off again. And they don't, they feel like they're failing if they're not all in on a program or if they skip a day, they feel like they need to start over again. So it's just reinforcing this all or nothing mindset versus actually finding balance a sustainable, healthy lifestyle.
This is the biggest thing that I work on with my clients is getting away from perfectionism and getting away from that all or nothing mentality and working them towards something is better than nothing, and we don't need to do high intensity exercise all the time. To check a box or do a workout like it's Beachbody gives, like if you're not wearing your Apple watch, the workout doesn't count like that sort of thing. And it just leads to very disordered relationships with food. But then also disordered relationships with exercise and just a healthy lifestyle in general. Cuz people, if they're like, well if I'm not doing a program right now, like I'm just not gonna do anything.
Or , it also promotes when you're either doing a program or not doing a program and you're gearing up to start a new program, you have in your mind, oh, I need to give up all these things, or I'm not gonna be able to eat that. So you almost have like last supper syndrome. Where you feel like you need to eat everything and get everything out because you know you're gonna have to restrict for X amount of weeks or however long the program is.
It's very detrimental. Very detrimental. So it's promoting disordered eating, it's promoting restriction, it's promoting, binging, and overeating. Honestly, from this last supper syndrome. Very problematic and we know it's just not healthy, especially for women to be doing high intensity exercise all of the time.
There's a time and place . Most of the time we feel better doing high intensity exercise during follicular phase, during ovulation phase, and then other forms of exercise during luteal and menstrual phase. So that's what you should focus on, moving your body in a way that feels good versus subscribing to a program and then feeling a failure if you like miss a day or don't do that, like you need to get away from that.
There's no opportunity with Beachbody to. work through the mindset shifts and the limiting beliefs that you need to work through to have a sustainable, healthy lifestyle You can muscle through with willpower and discipline for a good like four, maybe six weeks, you can push through if you're like, I'm gonna commit to doing this, and maybe you're feeling that now at the start of the year, like if you started a new workout plan, maybe you started a new eating plan.
I hope not, but if you did, you could muscle through it. But eventually, Your mindset's gonna catch up with you and you're gonna have a pitfall, like some excuse or limiting belief is gonna come up and you won't have the mindset to support the longevity of the lifestyle that you've chosen.
You're gonna burn out, so you can't be firing at all cylinders all the time. So you need to be working on your mindset throughout your health journey or. , it kind of turns into a pit or a valley because you could be going, going, going, working through with, you know, willpower and discipline for like four to six weeks.
Maybe. Most people it's like two weeks and then they quote, unquote fall off the wagon. But you could be going for a little bit of time, but eventually your mindset is gonna catch up with you, like you're gonna burn out. It's not sustainable. Your self-deprecating thoughts are gonna come up, excuses are gonna come up, limiting beliefs are gonna come up.
So then you stop the healthy lifestyle. So then it dips down and then eventually maybe you, you know, work yourself back up and to and try again. But if you're working on your mindset, it serves as a bridge to kind of bypass those dips in your consistency so you're able to maintain the lifestyle. . If you are working on your mindset simultaneously working on your physical healthy habits, and you also don't get this to, don't get it twisted, this doesn't mean that if you work on your mindset, then you can continue to fire at all cylinders with a crazy exercise plan and a restrictive eating plan, and you'll finally be consistent with that.
If you just work on your mindset, no, with the mindset work will like allow you to work through. Needing to take breaks. Not feeling guilty about giving yourself grace, doing less slowing down so that you can speed up and have longevity, that your mindset will pace you. You need pacing because I can guarantee you have tried to be on a super restrictive workout plan and eating plan and it hasn't worked for you. It's not going to work. If you work on your mindset, your mindset will show you what healthy lifestyle to prescribe to and you.
Changing your mindset will allow you to see what shifts you need to make in your healthy lifestyle to make it sustainable . So I know Beachbody has that two B mindset and I honestly didn't know that much about it because they implemented that after I had already broken away. Because at when I broke away, I was like, I need mindset shifts.
And I was turning to other podcasts, other creators to you know, work, work on my mindset. Cause I was like, I'm just not getting this through Beachbody. So, . I had to look into when I posted on TikTok that I didn't like Beachbody. People were commenting, oh, what about the two B mindset? What about the two B mindset?
I Googled it right before prepping for this podcast two B mindset, Beachbody, what is this? What does it entail? And literally, this is what came up. Two B mindset. Wait, what loss program in why it? Y'all. This is so problematic. If we are really working on our mindset, we cannot be focusing on weight loss.
The, of course it's about weight loss cuz they don't care about your mindset, they don't care about you. This is proof. They only care if you lose weight. That's all they care about. They're a business. They want you to be lu like that. Beachbody absolutely not. And you know, they can change the name of their company.
it doesn't change the fact that they're, they're just masking themselves, that they're still immersed in diet culture, even under a different name. Maybe they're trying. But it's just, it's too problematic at this point. Like it's just, it's just not genuine at this point. Now they're just getting, they're like noom, they're trying to get, they're trying to mask themselves.
It's like intuitive eating and help at every size. And they're not like that. They are not. It is still very much diet culture masking itself as a sustainable solution. And that's why I gotta call them out. That's why I gotta bring this to the forefront. Bring this to y'all's attention. So I didn't even click on the link cuz I.
I've seen enough. All I needed to see is comparing the two B mindset program that they have to shift your mindset in the same sentence as weight loss. It's all I needed to see. So I can't tell you the details of exact, I don't know how long the program is. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know anything else about it.
I don't care. I've seen what I needed to see and an hour, uh, it's reinforcing. The thought that once you lose the weight, then cuz people believe once I lose the weight, then I'll be confident, then I'll have intimacy in my relationship. Then I'll feel better in my own skin. Then I'll feel confident going on a date.
Then I'll be able to wear that shirt and finally fit in with my friends and be trendy.
No . You will realize, and I'm sure so many of you have lost the weight before, and you lose the weight, and you see that number on the scale that you've been trying to see for so long, and you finally fit into that article of clothing or you're finally able to buy that size and you realize you're still empty.
you don't feel more confident. You don't feel happier, you don't feel more at peace. You still have anxiety.
And that's the reality. And it's unfortunate that so many of us have gone through that, where we think the weight loss is going to solve everything, and it's a really hard place to be in. When we finally get there and we realize we're still.
It's like, wow, I really, I wasn't allowing myself to eat. How many things did I miss out on? Because I was going to the gym twice a day, every day. My, maybe my grades have suffered or my, you know, my focus has suffered at work because all I could think about was how hungry I was. because I was restricting myself so much trying and lose this weight.
Cause I thought it would be the, the key to unlock everything and the happiness and fulfillment and vibrancy in my life. But now I'm tired than ever. my hair, I mean, my hair is falling out, my nails are brittle. I'm hungry.
I'm having digestive issues, like there's so many consequences to it. Real, real physiological issues, or I'm cold all the time. There's so many physiological, physiological signs of when we're undereating that are just very unpleasant, and so I really empathize because I've been there before. I've lost the weight.
I've hit that goal number, and I was still at such a low point in my life, so it just proves. . If you're thinking to yourself, once I lose the weight, then no, we gotta flip that. It's not true. You have to whatever you're thinking what's ever on the other side of then? Then I will be more confident. Then I will feel confident eating.
Then I will go try that. That style of of clothing, you have to focus on that first and forget about the weight loss because losing weight is not going to solve anything. It's a hard lesson to. It's a hard reality to be in, but for those of you that have lost the weight and you've been there, oh, you know, you know, and if you haven't done that yet, I don't want you to go through that.
I want you to just avoid it. I want you to avoid it like the plague, please. Ah, . So that's what I saw enough. I, I've seen what I needed to see from that Beachbody program, that quote unquote mindset program, because they're combining the, the mindset shifts with weight loss. And I just know we need to get away from focusing on losing weight and actually focus on healing ourselves, healing our mindset, bettering ourselves independent of what our body does.
So that's it. That's what I think about Beachbody. I think it's diet culture masked as a sustainable solution. I don't, I don't think it's sustainable. I don't think that they have credentialed people that are like coaching and you know, they have Autumn Calabrese coaching about gut health and it's like as soon as gut health got trendy, then all of a sudden she comes out, oh, I have gut health issues.
Did she really have gut health? Or is she just paid to talk about that and promote different supplements in their gut health program?
Now they had a spin option because they're trying to compete with Peloton. It's like you can see the trends that they're following and they're not doing it because they're, they're trying to benefit you. They're doing it to compete in the marketplace cuz they're a business and they're focused on profit.
and they changed their name from Beachbody to just body B O D I, because they're trying to focus less on becoming a Beachbody or everybody can be a Beachbody, but it's like we still have these problematic things, so maybe that's a first step, but maybe we need to focus less on changing the external and focus on changing the internal things of the company.
Let's start from the inside.
So if they still have the same leadership, if they're still promoting a lot of these same things, it's like just because they changed the name doesn't mean that anything has changed behind the scenes. So I think they're just fooling people. I hope it doesn't fool you. And I know $99 for the year sounds great.
That sounds amazing. That sounds affordable, but it's $99 too. If it doesn't give you a sustainable, healthy lifestyle, if it doesn't help you love yourself, if it doesn't help you stop focusing on the number on the scale. If it doesn't help you get away from the mindset that once I lose the weight, then it's $99 too much.
If it has you leaning into disordered eating habits, if it's not healing your relationship with food, if it's making you feel guilty for not exercising. having you still continue to binge or have that last supper syndrome before you start the new workout plan. That stuff isn't healthy and that stuff is feeding into diet culture.
So it's $99 too much if it's doing those things. So if you need help, if you want to get away from diet culture, truly, you gotta lean to intuitive. . You need to work through your all or nothing mindset. You need sustainable, healthy habits, stuff that's easy to integrate into your life. A lot of these plans that Beachbody gives, it's like, here's the plan.
Here's the workout plan. Here's where you're supposed to eat. Figure it out. Figure out how to rearrange your life, rearrange your schedule to make this work, and if you're not able to make that work, then it's on you because you didn't follow the plan that we told you to follow, and they make you feel guilty about it.
That's what these things do. The way that I coach, it's totally different. Like my clients know when you get on a coaching call, you tell. You tell me how busy you are. What do you have going on this week? What meetings do you have? When do your kids have doctor's appointments? Or who's sick? Like, well, so you tell me how busy you are and all the barriers that you have, and then you also tell me your goals.
This is what I wanna work on this week. I wanna work on increasing my hydration, or I wanna work out three to four times this week. It's like, okay, great. We have the barriers and we have the goals. Now we're going to figure out how are we gonna weave these healthy habits seamlessly into your busy schedule so you don't have to, you have your.
and we work the healthy habits in there cuz that's how we make it sustainable. That's how I coach. And we get you away from diet culture. We get you intuitively eating, do all things. So if you need help with that and you want to explore a healthy lifestyle, I wanna let you know that I have five spots left for health coaching I've had a lot of shifts in my life, clearly. Uh, single. Hello. I just had to move like so. But we are still launching and energetically I am able to serve five more health coaching. in the first quarter of this year. So we have five spots left for our B about being better academy. If you're interested in that or even just curious, just take the quiz.
or apply below. We, you know, in the show notes we'll link to the landing page where you can read more about it. It's submit an application or if you're not sure if the AC academy's for you, take the quiz and see which one of our programs is best for you. But we have five plus left for the academy, and that's the program where you get the most support, the most accountability, the most customization, and you meet the most frequently with me.
We have weekly calls. You have Messenger access to me Monday through Friday, where we're going back and forth holding you accountable. You can ask all your questions and you have the community support. So you're surrounded by people that wanna get away from diet culture and want to feel comfortable and confident in their own skin.
So head to the show notes, click those links. and we got five spots left and I would love to support you. And that's the thing, like I only take a certain number of clients each time I launch the program because I go all in for those clients. Uh, I have some, you know, other private clients for like life coaching and things like that. Um, and some people in other programs. But for the academy, specif. I'm, I'm looking for my class of six. They've got five spots left, and that could be you. So that would be, you know, take the quiz and or if you know the academy is what you want apply.
If you don't know, then take the quiz. But if you're applying for the program, know that you're not committing to anything by submitting an application. We'll just get on a call, talk with you about your goals. Draft out a customized plan for you, and then you tell me if it's something that you wanna commit to, and, and we'll go from there.
] basically, when you apply, you'll be saying, Hey, I want to get on a call with you and explore this further. That's really it. Awesome. Y'all love you so much. I'll see you in the next episode.
Hey y'all. Thanks again for listening to the Be About Being Better podcast. I so appreciate you. If this episode made you laugh, smile, think about yourself or your life differently, in any way, making your life better, I empower you to share the show with three people who just like you, need to hear this message and have this type of transformation in their lives.
I personally read all the reviews the show and see the Instagram story shares. It honestly gives me so much joy to see that our mission is making people's lives better, and the reviews really do help in increasing our impact. So thank you so much for taking the time to do that. If you need personalized support with anything discussed in today's episode or need help creating a sustainable diet free lifestyle, take my quiz.
It's linked below in the show notes, and that quiz will help you see which one of our coaching programs is right for you. Thank you so much again for listening and hears to being about being better.
