Should You Market Your Post Partum 'Bounce Back'? w/ Michelle Carroll, PhD— Episode 11 of Building a Coaching Business in Motherhood

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Gillian Bennett: Hello, and welcome to this episode of Building a Coaching Business in Motherhood. I’m here with Michelle Carroll, who is one of my lovely internet friends, who is just always a joy to talk to, and she also just happens to be a body image expert. And when I say expert, like, she’s actually finishing her PhD, so…

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Gillian Bennett: Kind of a big deal. Kind of a big deal, Michelle. And I wanted to bring Michelle onto the podcast to have a discussion around body image and the ethics of, like, around sort of, like, bounce back

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Gillian Bennett: and documenting body changes, especially in the postpartum period, and I’m sure we’re going to touch on other things as well in this conversation, but Michelle.

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Gillian Bennett: If people for some crazy reason do not know you.

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Gillian Bennett: Who are you?

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Michelle Carroll: So, as you have very kindly said, I’m currently finishing my PhD looking at body image. Now, I tend to focus more on fitness industry, so again, from a fitness professional lens, so I look at how disordered eating and body image concerns are experienced and kind of shaped

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Michelle Carroll: by working in the fitness industry, specifically by personal trainers, online coaches, all that business. So.

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Michelle Carroll: I’m finishing my PhD, and then I also run a coaching business where I support predominantly coaches in building positive relationships with food, positive relationships with their body, and I also help coaches do that in their business by, kind of.

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Michelle Carroll: I’ve really, as you have no doubt, been made aware, I care so much about SciComm, especially in the realms of body image and relationship with food, and I just think it is the area where most of us fall down immensely, and it is the biggest influence on people’s

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Michelle Carroll: You know, eating, nutrition habits in general, and exercise behaviours, that is so ill-addressed in the coaching space in general, but also in wider society.

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Michelle Carroll: Love it. Yeah. That was so depressing.

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Gillian Bennett: No. But I think that that is so incredibly important because I think often in the coaching industry, especially at the level that you and I are at where this is, like, normal for us to talk about, I think we assume that people see the connection between improved body image and improved eating behaviors and improved exercise frequency and things like that.

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Gillian Bennett: And so before we jump into this, I’m wondering if you can give us sort of like the really higher high level breakdown for anyone that maybe isn’t that well versed in body image or maybe hears the word body image and thinks something that is not actually accurate. Can you give us the high level of like how is body image connected to eating behavior and how does understanding body image support coaches in building a stronger business?

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Michelle Carroll: Yeah, for sure. And like, first of all, I can totally understand because like the PR and the marketing behind body image and body positivity is bad, right? Because a lot of people.

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Gillian Bennett: so.

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Michelle Carroll: so misinformed. Like, and if I’m to ask someone that has… is not really that well-versed in research what it is, before I knew what it was, I was like, it’s a load of, you know what, rolling your eyes, thinking it’s all this kind of woo-woo stuff. And something I think…

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Michelle Carroll: You know, because there’s so much misinformation out there, a lot of it has been allowed to proliferate by people will say things like, well, you know, the body positivity movement says you’ll just, you know, eat whatever you want and gain loads of weight and be totally happy with that, or, you know, body image means, you know, not caring at all about what you look like, and it’s like, at…

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Michelle Carroll: If we’re going to be critical of body positivity or any of these movements, we need to get the fundamentals right.

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Michelle Carroll: So, at its core, body image, what most people assume it to be is, you know, our general thoughts about whether or not we like how our body looks. And that is a part of body image, 100%, but body image is a lot more than that. So, body image

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Michelle Carroll: crux of the issue. It’s kind of your thoughts, feelings, experiences, behaviors, emotions that you have. So again, there’s already loads of things connected to your body, not only in terms of your body weight, shape and size, or how your body looks, but it’s also tied into your body’s abilities, right? So again, this is tied into body functionality. You know, your skin color, your body’s ability to perform, digest, you know, live, laugh, love, all of this kind of thing. So it’s not.

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Michelle Carroll: Simply about appearance, but…

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Michelle Carroll: You know, body images often distill down into being solely about, you know, satisfaction with appearance.

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Michelle Carroll: Which is a huge influence on eating behaviour, but ultimately, at its core, body image is so much more than that, and I think that’s probably the first thing that people need to understand, right? It’s like…

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Michelle Carroll: And again, we can divide it… research is divided into four components. So you have your cognitive body image, your thoughts, beliefs about your body, you know, for example, you know, my arms are too big, or, you know.

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Michelle Carroll: I’m too heavy, etc. All of these beliefs that you have about your body. Then you have your behavioural body image, so these are obviously the habits and actions that you carry out in response to how you feel about your body. So again, it can be, you know, I’m going to start a diet because, again.

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Michelle Carroll: tack on from the fact that your arms are too big, right? And then you have your perceptive body image. So again, this is very subjective, this is your overall kind of how you perceive your body, yay or nay. And then you have your affective body image, which is what most of us overlook, right? So again, these are the emotions and feelings that you have in response to how you feel about your body.

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Michelle Carroll: what we’ve seen in research, right, is obviously incredibly complicated, but one of the biggest drivers of unhealthy, negative, disordered eating behaviours is how somebody feels about their body. So, when people are dissatisfied with their body, be that in terms of their appearance, you know, their body’s…

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Michelle Carroll: you know, function…

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Michelle Carroll: satisfaction with your general body’s ability, that is a stressor, and when people kind of want to change their body or feel unhappy, dissatisfied, the actions that they take in order to bring them closer to what they feel is, like, quote-unquote, their own personal ideal

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Michelle Carroll: is often leads to engagement in disordered behaviour. So again, this is, like, really restrictive dieting, crash dieting, you know, emotional eating in response, which again, is a precursor for eating disorders, and all of that is incredibly stressful. And again, all of this to say, this is a little bit of a shitshow, right? But it’s so ill-addressed, because so much of society

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Michelle Carroll: is appearance-focused, is incredibly weight-biased, and constantly, we’re constantly being sold this message that how you look is everything, and currently, how your body looks is bad, and this is the product that will fix it. So I think that’s something that a lot of the coaching industry is ill-informed on, and in fact, actually kind of reinforces

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Michelle Carroll: Inadvertently.

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Gillian Bennett: Yeah.

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Gillian Bennett: Yeah, I mean, I know how complex this is as someone who is not a PhD, or studying a PhD, but as someone who has been very invested in understanding this, is, like, it is incredibly complex, and I probably started

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Gillian Bennett: doing, like, studying and taking courses and learning from other mentors on body image years ago, and there’s still so much that I don’t understand about it, because it is such a huge field of study. But I think specifically, and one of the things, I think I had reached out to you when I was pregnant, because I found some research around postpartum body image

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Gillian Bennett: And… and the effect that… or no, and the correlation between, like, postpartum anxiety and depression, and I just found that so incredibly impactful that how you feel about your body and the emotions that you have around your body

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Gillian Bennett: can actually have an impact on, like, these things that we take to be incredibly serious postpartum issues.

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Gillian Bennett: And when we think about, like, the fitness industry and postpartum bodies, there is, unfortunately, a lot of, like, push towards, hey, bounce back. And I think now, what I’m seeing is a little bit more

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Gillian Bennett: Of a push towards not just bounce back, but like, Hey, look at me. I’m a mom and my body’s even better than before I had children. And when, and using the term better is almost always it, just because I hate saying never and always, but it’s almost always in conjunction with someone showing their physique.

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Gillian Bennett: And I wanted to hear you kind of talk through what are the impacts on being too heavily focused on physique postpartum? How does this affect coaches’ businesses and how they show up in their businesses when they are so appearance-focused postpartum? Yeah.

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Michelle Carroll: Yeah, OK, well, God help you because this is about to be a monologue. So gather.

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Gillian Bennett: Go for it. Give us a TED Talk, Michelle. Give us a TED Talk.

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Michelle Carroll: So basically the ideology behind that is firmly rooted in weight bias. So again, these are

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Michelle Carroll: The attitudes and beliefs that we have, that we’re told about weight, about body size, body composition, and generally it tends to be larger bodies are seen in society as being symbolic of, like, laziness.

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Michelle Carroll: Like, lacking discipline.

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Michelle Carroll: being unhealthy, less than, all of these kind of negative connotations that are ascribed to negative bodies. And again, the ideology behind this is rooted in this concept of what’s called healthism. So again, this is this kind of belief that all elements of our personal health is personally controllable, you know, influenced by

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Michelle Carroll: You know, our own decision to engage in quote-unquote healthy behaviors and not engage in quote-unquote unhealthy behaviors, and that should

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Michelle Carroll: according to this ideology, be enough to guarantee us health. And unfortunately, that’s just not true, because there are so many influences on physical, mental health that have nothing to do with your own actions, right? You have no control over the childhood that you had, you have no control over your genetics.

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Michelle Carroll: you’ve no control, realistically, over your socioeconomic status that you’re in, that you can conceivably change in that future. All of these things have impact. Again, to use the example of motherhood, you really have not a lot of control over your, you know, childbirth experience, right? And a lot of those things, you know.

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Michelle Carroll: Yeah.

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Gillian Bennett: I will… sorry, I was muted there. I will just say.

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Gillian Bennett: and this is, I think, this contributes to the conversation that Michelle is saying, and I want to give some context here for any women that maybe aren’t familiar with what Michelle is talking about, or maybe have, like, heard about, like, weight bias, but don’t really get it, and healthism, is that

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Gillian Bennett: You can’t. So I had a 38 hour labor and a forceps delivery with an episiotomy. Michelle’s like, what? I’m rinsing. I trained up until.

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Michelle Carroll: the mic.

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Gillian Bennett: Yeah, it’s wild. So I trained up until I was 40 weeks pregnant. I had zero pregnancy complications. I was incredibly healthy. I gained quote unquote the right amount of weight.

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Gillian Bennett: And I still had, and I was oh, and I had to be induced. So I had a birth that was extremely challenging, even though I did everything right. And I think that this just goes, this also goes for when we are thinking about postpartum and like postpartum weight loss and postpartum quote unquote bouncing back.

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Gillian Bennett: We also don’t have a lot of control over that, because we often don’t have a lot of control over our lives, and the life, for example, that a mother is living when their child does not sleep is not the same life that a mother is living when their child sleeps, like, 4-hour stretches.

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Gillian Bennett: And so, I think when we look at this in the context of how this applies to our business, and I’ll get to this in a second, because I want to loop back to Michelle, is, like.

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Gillian Bennett: We need to be very careful about how we market to postpartum moms and how we market as a postpartum mom.

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Michelle Carroll: And I think that’s something that’s come up in the research, because I think I sent you that paper, right, where it’s like they did a full, I think it was a systematic review, where they kind of basically categorized all of these influences on postpartum body image. And one of the main themes that came up was this idea of, like, feeling that your body is out of control and you need to, quote unquote, get this control back. And the idea that, again, you should be able to control your postpartum recovery, you know, you…

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Michelle Carroll: should be able to exert this kind of discipline and moral good to kind of control your body and prove to, I don’t know who you’re even trying to.

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Gillian Bennett: Well, and you should be able to jump back into every.

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Michelle Carroll: Yeah.

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Gillian Bennett: six weeks postpartum.

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Michelle Carroll: You know, you can’t unbirth a child, you know, it’s too late for that. You know, that does unfortunately cause irreversible changes, some good, some bad. But unfortunately, you know, because of society’s general view on weight and women and bodies in general, you’re, you’re supposed to be able to, you know, undo this major life event or look and act like it never happened. You know, it’s so dismissive of the female experience that it actually just pisses me off, makes me.

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Michelle Carroll: so angry, but it’s so, just so internalized, and it goes so far down, and I think this is something, you know, a lot of women will experience more positive body image in pregnancy, because for the first time in their lives, there is this culture of acceptance around being in a larger body, and a lot of them, and it’s interesting, because I was talking to one of my clients about it, and she was saying.

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Michelle Carroll: You know, now that she’s, she’s pregnant, she was like, I find it really a lot easier to like my body and I’m like.

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Michelle Carroll: But why is it, why do you only have permission to quote unquote gain weight or, you know, take the foot off the gas a little bit? Why is that only acceptable when you have a quote unquote excuse? And I think it’s really interesting because it’s just so drilled into women. Like this is the only time where you’re allowed to take a breather. And the second that child is out, get down and start doing a few burpees because it should have bounced back months ago.

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Gillian Bennett: Exactly, exactly. And I think from a, like a, from a business perspective, it’s really challenging because

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Gillian Bennett: as a business owner, you end up in a position… let’s… you’re… you’re… you are a coach, you just had a baby, or you had a baby in the last, like, year or so, because postpartum, depending on who you ask, it is a long-ass period. I personally think.

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Michelle Carroll: forever.

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Gillian Bennett: You’re pretty much always postpartum. You’ve always had a baby, right? But from a business perspective, is, like, postpartum moms are both one of the most vulnerable niches to market to, but also one of the most, like, receptive

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Gillian Bennett: to marketing because they do really, like, if you think about pain point marketing, it’s like postpartum moms are experiencing a lot of quote unquote pain points. And so I think this brings in the question of like, how do, how do you as a coach be an ethical business owner and also support yourself and your own body image?

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Gillian Bennett: when you are kind of considering, like, how do I incorporate this into my business? Because I think, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, Michelle, is like, I think you and I have had a discussion around, like, well, so much of it comes down to the intention behind it.

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Gillian Bennett: Is like if you are, for example, documenting your, your like shifts, the shifts that your body makes and like how you’re taking care of yourself postpartum with the intention of showing this is how I am taking care of myself postpartum, even though everything is different. That is very different than being like, I’m gonna show up and document my physique changes.

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Gillian Bennett: Postpartum.

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Michelle Carroll: Yes, and I think it kind of ties into that healthism, right? Where, you know, and again, I do not conceivably see a net positive or any real justification for someone posting transformation photos or documenting fat loss photos, because there is always this undercurrent or this implicit endorsement of appearance ideals, and my life is better because I am leaner, because again.

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Michelle Carroll: All the research has shown that people don’t read the captions, you know, and people say, well, disclaimer and captions, it’s not just about what you look like.

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Michelle Carroll: But ultimately, what people are saying is, I am leaner now, and this is what taking care of yourself looks like. You know, it is an aesthetic. Of course, you can do all of these things. You can eat better, you know, potentially improve your sleep, be a little bit more active.

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Michelle Carroll: All of those things are going to improve health, but it’s always done under the guise of like, and now I look better, you know, and I think something that’s very, very difficult because it’s it’s

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Michelle Carroll: So ingrained in us that we often don’t realize is like, that is an implicit endorsement of bounce back culture.

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Gillian Bennett: Mmm.

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Gillian Bennett: Yeah, so I agree with you, and I’m also, like, I’m also thinking about it from the perspective of… so, when I first gave birth, one of the first things that I did when I could, like, finally walk around like a normal person without feeling like my vagina was gonna fall out of my

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Gillian Bennett: Pants.

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Gillian Bennett: was… I was like, I need to go, and I need to buy pants that fit my body right now. And I went, and I did that, and it was just like, oh, God, I feel so good, because I’m wearing clothes that actually fit me right now. And then.

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Gillian Bennett: sort of naturally over the course of, I mean my son is now 10 months old, is like my body did slowly change. I don’t personally, like I’ve never compared photos just ’cause like that’s not the vibe that I have in my life anymore. But I imagine.

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Gillian Bennett: I imagine that if you were to look at photos of me postpartum, like newly postpartum and photos of me now, you would see a visible difference just because I can tell by, you know, the way that my clothes fit and things like that now.

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Gillian Bennett: I’m thinking, okay, so if I’m a coach and I’m wanting to market my coaching, and one of the things that I wanna do is like show how I’ve taken care of myself postpartum, but by nature of me showing my face on social media is like, you may notice that there has been a weight change. So how does someone navigate that when they wanna be sensitive to, Hey, I don’t want to be selling this idea of bounce back.

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Gillian Bennett: Yet at the same time, by nature of me treating myself with respect.

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Gillian Bennett: you know, getting back to exercise in a way that felt right for me, you know, making sure to work on my core muscles because I did have ab separation, like, my body has changed. How does someone navigate that without falling into healthism or, you know, or appearance ideals?

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Michelle Carroll: This is a really good question and I think this is something I think about a lot, right? Because it’s like ultimately you can’t win, right? Where it’s like, and I really don’t agree with people saying like you can’t ever post your body, but like we were saying, it comes down to the intent behind it, right? Where it’s like you have a body. Some people’s bodies are closer to societal societal ideals naturally, some aren’t. And I think, you know, you shouldn’t ever feel shame for existing in a body regardless of what way it looks. But ultimately it comes

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Michelle Carroll: to how you present it, like you were saying, you know, again, if you’re saying, like, this is how I, you know, learn to eat better, and then you have it slapped up beside a before and after photo, that’s obviously incredibly unethical, right? Where it’s like, you can be mindful of people’s experiences, but also you can’t protect everyone, and I think so long as you’re acting with good intent, you know, I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer, but I think we just need to be incredibly mindful that we’re not

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Michelle Carroll: Directly stating that now that I look a certain way or I’ve lost X amount of weight, this is the reason why I’ve started to take better care of myself, or this is the reason that I’m quote unquote healthier. I think it’s a very difficult line to.

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Michelle Carroll: toe, right? And I do think about it a lot, because existing in a lean body isn’t weight bias, right? But positioning your lean body as being evidence that you’re somehow healthier, or better, or changed for positive… and the only reason for that is because you exist in a more societally acceptable body, is weight bias. And I think

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Michelle Carroll: the lines become blurred, and it is… implicit weight bias is very difficult, right, because it’s not always obvious, but ultimately it comes down to your positioning. Some people might take… may take that as you saying, yes, I’m leaner X, Y, and Z, but unless you, like, actually state that or contribute to that, I think it’s difficult, right? But I think

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Michelle Carroll: You have to be confident in your own intentions and your own motivations.

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Gillian Bennett: Yeah, I think the last part is probably what a lot of coaches need to be here, need to hear is like, you have to be confident in your own intentions and know that there are always going to be people that misunderstand you, but you know your intentions, you know your meaning. That said, I think it, it, it does.

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Gillian Bennett: Put a lot of coaches in a really interesting position where they’re like, hey, I know it would be quote unquote easy for me to market this, right? For all intents and purposes, like there are, you know, there are many reasons why my body may have done what my body has done postpartum.

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Gillian Bennett: a lot of which, like aren’t really in my direct control.

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Gillian Bennett: And in that sense, people would be, oh, like, well, you know, you’re so lucky. It’s like, okay, or it’s just like this is what bodies do. I think that when you’re thinking about it from a marketing perspective, though, is there would likely be a lot of business coaches that would be like, yeah, use that.

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Gillian Bennett: Like show people how you’re getting your body back or like show people how you bounce back. And it is in theory, like quite easy marketing.

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Gillian Bennett: And… and so I think, how do we want coaches to think about it if they’re like, okay, well, how do I market my services in this era, like, the season of my life?

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Gillian Bennett: where I am a nutrition and fitness coach, it does… like, my… the thing that I’m selling is helping people eat better and exercise more frequently. My clients want body changes, and so how do I…

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Gillian Bennett: market my services without necessarily falling into, like, really promoting weight bias. I think one of the things that you’re gonna say is, like, first, you have to be aware of your weight bias.

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Michelle Carroll: Yes and no. And I think like, again, so much of it is so ingrained in us that we often don’t necessarily realize. Right. But the way I like to look at it is like, if your weight was to never change again, no matter what you did is what what are you doing now to support health? Because ultimately that’s what people want, right? Where it’s like what people want that’s often attributed to weight loss or body composition changes.

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Michelle Carroll: is often…

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Michelle Carroll: in no way correlated with body weight changes, right? People want to be confident, people want to feel back in control around food, they want structure and routine, they want to be more active, they want to be stronger, they want to be confident.

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Michelle Carroll: you do not arrive at these things when you hit this, like, body composition threshold, right? Where it’s like, what you can… and, like, what you can do is tap into those desires that people have, only you don’t position body changes as being the solution, right? Your marketing doesn’t necessarily change in terms of your awareness of your client problems.

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Michelle Carroll: And the core outcomes, right, where it’s like.

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Michelle Carroll: If you were to look at.

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Michelle Carroll: my marketing side-by-side with a transformation coach, right? The only thing different, really, is… well, the evidence is on my side, and obviously.

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Gillian Bennett: The only thing different is absolutely everything.

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Michelle Carroll: Yeah. But what we are promising people is exactly the same, right? We are promising people that you will care less about how your body looks. You will be less food obsessed. You will be able to feel confident, secure, healthier, whatever that looks like for you.

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Michelle Carroll: But how we sell it is different. The process is different. And again, you can get better at marketing that. Again, it can come with time. And I don’t think you’re necessarily at an ill advantage.

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Michelle Carroll: By not using your body directly in your marketing, and I think this is something that comes up all the time, right? Because if you.

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Michelle Carroll: market your body, or you use your body heavily in your marketing, you are going to attract people that only really want to change their body, because that is what you have positioned as the solution. And if you’re someone that wants to help people improve their relationship with food and their body.

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Michelle Carroll: people that are very appearance-infested are very difficult to get to engage in that work, because so much of working on your relationship with food and working on your relationship with your body requires you to be open to the possibility that appearance shouldn’t be the main motivator for everything. So I think it comes down to being very, very clear on

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Michelle Carroll: Ethically, what kind of message do you want to put out there, right? Because you have the unique opportunity, and I think this is so cool about the work that you do, right? Where it’s like you have the opportunity to do something that nobody else is doing to make the next generation better and offer women going through childbirth, pregnancy, whatever it is, if that is your niche, the opportunity to do things differently, where it’s not all about like mum tums and whatever else awful.

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Michelle Carroll: unfortunately catchy names that they have for all these, like, predatory female fat loss programs, right? It’s like, you have the opportunity to lead from the front and do something different, and offer people a solution that works if you’re prepared to stop comparing yourself to

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Michelle Carroll: All what all these like fat loss coaches are doing and you know, instead of worrying about what would be easier, be like, well, what feels right to me and what would help somebody in my position? Because I guarantee it’s not somebody in their bikini say, well, I had.

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Michelle Carroll: These the kids, what, three months ago and now have immediately bounced back. Has that ever helped you, or has it only ever made you feel like shit beyond motivating you temporarily to, you know, and you see it all the time, right, where people post these like postpartum transformations.

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Michelle Carroll: And people will come and be like, oh, I’ve just put down the end of my burger or diet starts tomorrow. It’s like, is that a helpful message? No. Yeah.

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Gillian Bennett: Yeah, I, I mean, I very much, you know, I’m very much invested in, in what you have to say and, and how you say it and the message that you’re, that like the goal is.

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Gillian Bennett: Within the fitness industry to like create big changes. And I think about this from the perspective of a mom who is like kind of exhausted, like completely overthinking their marketing and thinking like, well, this is just like, you know, we, we see coaches all the time, whether they’re, you know, postpartum pregnant or not.

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Gillian Bennett: That are like, oh, well, if I just document my cut, then I will get clients. And I think that especially in a season of motherhood where sometimes it’s like your capacity, you’re just like, I just have to figure out something that works.

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Gillian Bennett: Because I, you know, this is so hard, and I, you know, I need more clients and all of these things, and I think for you, what you’re saying is essentially, and I think something that you said a few minutes ago is so important that I want to say it again, is what would you be doing to support your health and well-being if your weight never changed?

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Gillian Bennett: And I think that is a really important point for a lot of coaches to consider.

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Gillian Bennett: Because I think we can frame the way that we support ourselves in the very specific ways that they help our lives and change our lives without necessarily focusing on weight.

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Gillian Bennett: And I think it is easy to buy into, well, a lot of moms feel like they can’t control their bodies anymore, or they feel like they’ve lost themselves. And so it’s, it’s, it is easy to market to them as.

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Gillian Bennett: Okay, well, you’ll find yourself again when you focus on fat loss, but…

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Gillian Bennett: I think what you’re saying here is

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Gillian Bennett: if you are a… someone that markets to mothers, or pregnant women, or, you know, prenatal or postpartum, or any, you know, I guess women in general, people in general, if you are a coach that markets, period, then we really want to consider, like, what is truly going to

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Gillian Bennett: support their lives, and I think that it may sound really challenging to market without focusing on weight, because that’s the way the industry has always done it. And at the same time, if you go on social media and look at, like, your Reels tab right now, you will find hundreds and hundreds of mothers

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Gillian Bennett: Posting things like wanting to break the generational, cycles of being hyperweight focused, having a fucked up relationship with food. Like, you will see so many reels about women that actively want to change that pattern, and that is something you can market to.

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Michelle Carroll: 100%. That’s so funny, because one of my clients just finished up with me, and she was like, I wish they taught this in schools, because she was like, I really do not want my children to have the upbringing that I did, where it was just very body talk focused. I don’t want them to have the body image that I did, so I’m going to do this work so I don’t pass on the curse, right? And, like.

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Michelle Carroll: again, whenever people say, well, people don’t, people only want fat loss, no, they fucking don’t. Like, have you seen diet culture? It’s everywhere. People just need more people talking about this. There is not enough people talking about relationship with food, not a lot of people talking about postpartum body image in motherhood, or working with people like that.

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Michelle Carroll: Oftentimes, what people are just selling is postpartum weight loss. No one actually gives a shit about postpartum beyond that, right? So there is so much space for people to support postpartum women in an ethical way.

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Gillian Bennett: Yeah, I completely agree with that. And and of course, if you’re a coach that wants to learn how to do that and do that in your business.

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Gillian Bennett: That’s what I’m here for. Michelle also has an amazing course if you want to understand a little bit more about disordered eating and body image and how it affects your coaching clients. It’s called Disordered Eating Informed. I’ve had a look inside it, it’s great. And…

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Gillian Bennett: And so I think here the message that we really wanna get across is that documenting your own bounce back or marketing specifically like weight loss to postpartum women, it can be an easy way to market, but it is not ethical.

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Gillian Bennett: And it can create an environment in which you end up perpetuating, whether you want to or not, like, as I don’t think a lot of I don’t think a lot of this is intentional. I think a lot of this is because people do not know the impact of negative body image on the rest of our lives.

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Gillian Bennett: Right? And they experience negative body image is such a normalized thing, and they experience weight bias is such a normalized thing that people don’t really get it.

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Gillian Bennett: And so what we’re saying is there are ways to ethically market your services and bring in clients that you genuinely are excited to work with without documenting your own fat loss phase, without marketing to, you know, postpartum women, trying to get them to just focus on fat loss. And it is also going to align with the research.

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Michelle Carroll: Amen.

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Gillian Bennett: Any last thoughts you want to share?

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Michelle Carroll: No, I think I would just like to tack on to the point of, like, it is easy to market a fat loss with their fat… oh my god, I can’t even say it. It is easy to market fat loss postpartum period. Yes, technically, but long term, you’re going to make your business a lot harder.

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Gillian Bennett: Yeah, yeah, and I think this is also, like, we were just talking, so we just recorded an episode for Michelle’s podcast, Waitlist, so you should go check it out over there. But we were just talking about how it is really challenging to end up with a business full of clients that are extremely draining and extremely difficult, and…

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Gillian Bennett: postpartum weight loss can be one of those… those niches that can be really, really challenging, because so much is out of your control, and because

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Gillian Bennett: The body dissatisfaction is so high that a lot of the challenges that coaches find when they are working with women in that position is because they’re not addressing body image.

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Michelle Carroll: I’ll stop talking because I will go on another monologue.

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Gillian Bennett: the.

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Michelle Carroll: that time.

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Gillian Bennett: All right. Well, we are gonna we’re gonna wrap up there. If you would like to find Michelle, Michelle, where can people find you?

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Michelle Carroll: Best place is Instagram, that’s @michellecarroll1.

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Gillian Bennett: Fantastic. And your podcast?

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Michelle Carroll: It is called Waitlist, so maybe we’ll link both of ours in the show notes.

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Gillian Bennett: Yes, I will link all of Michelle’s things in the show notes. If you would like to chat with me or chat with Michelle.

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Gillian Bennett: Check the show notes. If you found this episode interesting at all, go ahead and send it to a coach colleague that you might want to chat about it with. And you can also check out a conversation that Michelle and I had recently on her podcast.

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Gillian Bennett: With that, thank you for being here, thank you for listening, and we will talk again soon.