OUR APPROACH

TO FITNESS, NUTRITION, AND COACHING

Our coaching philosophy

Our approach to fitness might be a little different than what you see in the “mainstream” fitness industry. Here at K.I. Health & Fitness, we take inclusivity seriously, and we love busting B.S. about harmful constructs like diet culture and what fitness and strength are “supposed” to look like.

You won't see us strutting around in bikinis as a marketing ploy, or telling you that you need a body "transformation".
Fitness doesn't have a "look". Strength doesn't have a "look". And there's no one "correct" way to incorporate fitness into your life. We celebrate all bodies and all forms of movement.
We're tired of "bro" culture and its roots in toxic masculinity and white supremacy. We're working to dismantle the Fitness Industrial Complex.
You may have noticed that we don’t use client progress photos in our marketing. Here’s why.

Our coaching is weight-neutral

Weight-neutral fitness means working outside the confines of fat loss or a smaller body size as the main goal of fitness. It rejects weight, size, or BMI as accurate measures of health; this is in line with scientific evidence, which shows that body size alone (without taking other factors into account) does not correlate with health outcomes.

Do some of our clients have fat loss as one of their fitness goals? Absolutely. But focusing solely on losing weight often leads to restrictive diets, food and body preoccupation, or a damaged relationship with physical activity.

We work with our clients on developing long-term health habits, fostering a movement practice that adds enjoyment and increases quality of life, and creating an eating pattern that supports their fitness and health goals.

These things may result in weight loss, but they’ll increase a client’s health regardless of changes in body weight. Also, these practices are within someone’s direct control, whereas the number on the scale is not.

Weight-neutral fitness also means making sure we’re not stigmatizing or discriminating against folks in larger bodies. This could include questioning what we think a personal trainer “should” look like, not making assumptions about the commitment or self-discipline levels of people in larger bodies, not engaging in “fat phobic” discourse, and valuing bodies of all sizes.

For these reasons and more, we don’t train clients for bikini or physique competitions. Read more here.

Our approach to fitness

We use strength training and other fitness activities to add to our clients’ quality of life. Working out is a celebration of what our bodies can do! We don’t promote exercising purely to burn calories, nor would we ever suggest exercising to “burn off” a treat meal or treat food item.

We believe you’re perfectly awesome as you are right now, and your worth as a human is not defined by your fitness level.

Your physique (and its changes) doesn’t validate your hard work. Your hard work validates your hard work!

We celebrate results like feeling more confident, experiencing less pain, being able to enjoy more activities and adventures in your life, getting stronger and increasing mobility, and much more.

Our approach to nutrition

Diet culture puts weight loss at the forefront of fitness, and values thinness and appearance over physical and mental health. It tells us not only that there is something “wrong” with our bodies if we don’t match this ideal, but that it’s our fault and that we should “fix” our bodies with diet and exercise.

Diet culture tells us that lean bodies are healthy bodies, that they’re the “correct” body size, and that they have higher moral value than larger bodies.

We know that all this is straight-up bullshit, and we work hard to foster an anti-diet-culture coaching practice.

We help you ensure your nutrition is effectively supporting your training, recovery, and fitness goals, while establishing long-term habits you’ll maintain for the rest of your life. We would never tell someone that a certain food is off-limits, or that they have to “earn” their treat foods with exercise. And we have no rules about whether you need to track your food while you’re in a coaching program with us.

We don’t use terms like “good”, “bad”, “guilty pleasure”, or “clean” when describing food, nor do we shame clients for any items in their food logs. We see food logs as data we can use to help you nail your goals, and the language we use around nutrition is very important.

And if, while coaching with us, you don’t want to talk about food at all, that’s perfectly OK with us, too!

Diversity and inclusion

Our coaching team works hard to foster an inclusive coaching environment for all our clients. We want humans of all backgrounds and identities — LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, gender-diverse, neurodivergent, folks with disabilities — to feel welcome in our coaching space and community.

K.I. Head Coach Zoe Peled says, “Gender diversity and racial diversity are two significant factors within the inclusivity dialogue, yet they are not the only ones. Are we creating athletic spaces and experiences that are taking into consideration a wide range of cultural, economic, and education backgrounds? Do we prioritize having the skillsets in place to support neurodiverse populations, folks who use mobility devices, and folks who may be navigating recovery or rehabilitation programs? Are there programs in place to support clients who are disabled?”

Our coach colleague Ren Jones says, “We need an industry-wide push toward large-scale fitness organizations and certifying bodies providing training programs and certification courses on working with diverse populations”. For now, our coaching team takes part in courses like Deconstructing the Fitness Industrial Complex, by Fitness 4 All Bodies.

The No-Bullsh!t Vegan podcast

Myth-busting and evidence-based advice to help you kick butt with your health and fitness, on a vegan diet.