You’ve seen them a thousand times.
Split-screen. Left side: slumped posture, unflattering lighting, neutral expression. Right side: bright smile, tighter clothes, triumphant pose.
The caption says something like: “So proud of this incredible woman and her journey.”
And then 47 people comment heart emojis.
Here’s what nobody’s saying out loud: that photo is doing measurable psychological damage to the people scrolling past it. Including your clients.
I’m not here to shame the practitioners posting them. Most of you genuinely believe you’re being motivational. The research says otherwise — and it’s pretty unambiguous.
The Science Isn’t Subtle
In 2019, a study published in Body Image journal found that exposure to “fitspiration” content — the category that heavily relies on body comparison imagery — significantly increased body dissatisfaction, negative mood, and appearance anxiety in women. Not after prolonged exposure. After a single, brief viewing.
One scroll. That’s all it takes.
Research by Fardouly and Vartanian, published in Body Image, found that social media body comparisons increased body dissatisfaction regardless of whether the viewer considered the image “aspirational” or not. The intent of the poster is irrelevant. The brain doesn’t care that you meant well.
A 2021 study in Psychology of Popular Media went further — finding that viewing weight loss before/after content on Instagram specifically predicted increased dietary restraint and body dissatisfaction in viewers. Not correlated with. Predicted.
The National Eating Disorders Association flags before/after images as explicitly triggering content and has formal guidance for practitioners advising them to avoid posting it. Full stop.
The “Motivation” Myth
The most common defence I hear from practitioners posting these images is some version of: “But it’s motivating. It shows people what’s possible.”
Let’s think about who, exactly, is being motivated.
The clients who most need support — people with a complicated history with their body, people who’ve been through the diet cycle, people with active eating disorder histories — are the ones most harmed by this content. The research on body image and self-efficacy is consistent: when someone perceives a goal as too distant from where they currently are, exposure to that goal state increases shame and decreases motivation, not the reverse.
The before/after post is, at best, motivating people who were already relatively fine. The people who see it and feel worse are the ones your practice was built to serve.
That’s not a small design flaw. That’s a fundamental misalignment between your content and your values.
What the Platforms Know (That We Should Too)
Instagram introduced restrictions on weight loss content promotion back in 2019, hiding posts promoting diet products and weight loss supplements from users under 18 and removing content making “miraculous” transformation claims. TikTok followed with restrictions on before/after weight loss content in recommendation algorithms, citing documented harm.
These are not companies known for prioritising human wellbeing over engagement. When the engagement-maximising algorithms are pulling back from this content because of harm data, that’s worth sitting with.
The Specific Problem for Wellness Practitioners
This is where it gets important for our industry specifically.
A general fitness influencer posting before/after photos is doing harm. A wellness practitioner posting them is doing a different kind of harm, because of what the relationship is supposed to represent.
Your clients come to you to heal. To move. To breathe. To feel better in the body they have right now. That’s the implicit contract.
When you post before/after images — even of yourself, even framed as a personal story — you are communicating something specific whether you intend to or not:
The “before” body is the problem body.
The body that needs yoga, or coaching, or breathwork, is doing so because it is wrong. The goal of working with you is to reach the “after.” And the “after” is visually, demonstrably thinner, tighter, smaller.
This lands in the bodies of your clients regardless of the words in your caption. The visual message overrides the text every single time.
A meta-analysis by Grabe, Ward and Hyde, spanning 77 separate studies, found that media exposure to thin-ideal images significantly correlated with body dissatisfaction and eating pathology. Seventy-seven studies. The evidence is not ambiguous.
Your yoga studio posts before/after photos. Your client — the one already in a complicated relationship with food — sees it while scrolling before bed. She doesn’t book her next class. She books less. She feels worse, not better, about the safe space she thought she’d found.
That’s not hypothetical. That’s what the research predicts will happen.
The Business Case (Since We’re Being Practical)
Beyond the ethics, there’s a practical problem.
If your practice is body-positive, weight-neutral, or anti-diet in its approach, before/after imagery directly contradicts your stated values. And your clients — the ones who chose you because of those values — notice the contradiction.
Trust, once broken by values misalignment, is genuinely difficult to rebuild.
The clients you most want to serve are the ones who’ve been burned by wellness culture before. The ones who’ve done the diets, the cleanses, the transformation programmes that promised them the “after” body and delivered shame instead. These clients are watching your content with a finely tuned radar for authenticity.
A before/after post tells them your practice is not as different as you said it was.
What to Post Instead
If you want to document client progress and celebrate their wins — genuinely, authentically — here’s what actually works without the harm:
Capability milestones. “She held crow pose for the first time today.” “He ran his first 5K.” “She got through a full class without stopping to apologise for her body.” These are real wins that don’t require a body size comparison.
Qualitative testimony. Quote your clients directly (with permission) about how they feel. Not how they look. “I sleep through the night now.” “I stopped dreading Mondays.” “I feel like the practitioner I always wanted to be.” These are transformations worth celebrating.
Process documentation. Share the work, not the result. Clients doing the thing. People showing up. The practice itself.
Your own story without the split-screen. You can talk about your health journey, your relationship with your body, your practice — all without the visual comparison. The story doesn’t need the before photo to land.
A Note on Intention vs. Impact
I want to be clear about something.
I’m not suggesting that practitioners who post before/after images are bad people or bad practitioners. The wellness industry has been marinating in this content format for decades. It feels normal because it’s everywhere.
But intent and impact are different things. You can mean well and still cause harm. The research doesn’t grade on effort.
If your practice is built on helping people heal their relationship with their bodies, the tools you use to market that practice need to match. A therapist who helps clients process childhood trauma doesn’t post graphic triggering content to promote their services — even if it “performs well.”
The bar for body-positive practitioners is the same.
The Bottom Line
Before/after images trigger social comparison. They increase body dissatisfaction and disordered eating behaviours. They decrease motivation in the people who most need support. The platforms are restricting them. The eating disorder organisations are warning against them. The research across dozens of studies is consistent.
You don’t have to post them.
And if you work in body-positive, weight-neutral, or anti-diet wellness — you really, genuinely, shouldn’t.
Your clients deserve a feed that doesn’t make them feel worse about themselves before they’ve even said good morning.
Janelle Baird is the founder of Thrive Wellness Systems, a tech consultancy serving body-positive wellness practitioners worldwide. She works exclusively with weight-inclusive practices because the tech you build reflects the values you hold.
If you’re a wellness practitioner who’s been unknowingly posting content that contradicts your values, this isn’t an indictment — it’s an invitation to do it differently.
Work with Thrive Wellness Systems →