Leigh Ann Lindsey: Welcome to the Accrescent Podcast. I'm Leigh-Ann . This podcast is an extension of my personal philosophy and commitment to continual growth in all areas of life. I firmly believe that optimal health comes from addressing all areas of us as human beings, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

Through expert interviews, I hope to both inspire and enable you to create sustained change in your own life. Thank you so much for tuning in, and enjoy.

Happy Friday everyone. Welcome back to the Accrescent Podcast. I'm your host, Leigh Ann , and today I have a wonderful interview with Katie Bramlett, the founder of We Shape, which is a company looking to help women stop focusing on the scale and rather put their energy and efforts towards a more meaningful intention, finding more inner knowing and balance with themselves looking at exercise and movement and rest completely differently. And this was such an expansive interview with Katie because we're talking about toxic weight loss culture and toxic diet culture and things like the fake fulfillment we can often get from killing ourselves in the gym or from denying ourselves certain food groups.

And what might some of the deeper subconscious yearnings be when we're pursuing these things? How wellness is so multifaceted, but how that's not often communicated from traditional and conventional fitness industries. It's very much about, it almost becomes like a fitness dogma. It becomes about being disciplined.

And if you're not achieving results, then you are doing something wrong or you are lazy, you're not disciplined enough, and. We talk about how corrosive that can be, as well as how shame can be so corrosive. Each of us shares a little bit of our own journey and evolution with our outlook on fitness and wellness health in general.

I think this is gonna be such an expansive interview. I hope you all enjoy it so, so much. As always, Katie's information, WeShape's information, will be linked in the show notes below so you can reach out, follow them, find more in information if anything is resonating. So with that, please enjoy this interview with Katie Bromley.

Okay, Katie, welcome. Thank you to the Accrescent . There's so much I, we were talking even before I hit record, there's so many places that we can go with this conversation. And I'm so excited because I think there's a lot of alignment and as I'm sure you know, there's not a lot of conversations around fitness coming at it from the lenses that I think we're gonna come at it today.

But before we get into all of that, carried away with the excitement. Just give us a little bit of your background. Who are you a little bit of WeShape and maybe the progression of how you got there.

Katie Bramlett: Yeah, absolutely. So I have a company called WeShape . My co-founder and I started that company a few years ago.

Before that we had a different fitness company that was rooted in very different intentions and pillars. That company did really well. We made the ink 503 times. We successfully scaled that company and I just, I still didn't feel right inside and I couldn't understand. Why? I've told a number of people that it was I felt I had this Instagram life that, looked great and everything that I thought that I wanted had really been checked off, but something just still didn't feel like all the way aligned.

And so as I started just to crack that door and better understand what's not feeling aligned here, I just got taken down a very different path.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Okay. So it wasn't even clear initially what was unaligned? It was " Oh, I've got this feeling what is it?" And that sent you on a whole journey.

Katie Bramlett: I feel I've lived a lot of my life through the lens of what I should do. And, even down to the degree that I got. And it wasn't like I even had like overly invasive parents who were like, you have to do this.

They were actually pretty open, but I think I just really, you know, was a natural born people pleaser and nurturer and all the things that a lot of people who identify as female, you know, fill that role. And so it wasn't like a particular message, but it was the collective whole message of what I felt like I should be doing with my life.

And I just didn't listen to myself along the way. And I feel so much gratitude because I do feel like there still was that little voice inside and I just feel grateful that I was, you know, still trying to tune in as much as I could, even though the volume was pretty low.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yeah. Say more to that.

I think, especially because what I am so curious to hear is it sounds like it was a pretty big pivot for you.

Katie Bramlett: Oh, it was huge. I shut down the other companies. Yeah. We took huge financial risk in what we were doing to the point where like financial advisors are like, we don't advise this. And I was like, "Oh, I've never felt better. How funny." Because the other company, there was no financial woes. And then I went into this going this is huge financial risk. I even sold, I had this home that I had owned that was this sweet, precious beach house that had been in my family for years. It was like my retreat. It was where I hosted people.

We would record content there. And I told our financial advisor like, I'm gonna sell this so that I can keep the startup going. And he was like, I do not advise you doing that. And I was like, I'm doing it anyway. And so there's just been a lot of trust. And I still I deeply struggle with that.

I always use this analogy of there's two internal dials, you know, the inside and the outside. And I feel like by the time I got to adulthood, the inside was like a one and the outside was like a 10. Yeah. And I'm still calibrating those and it's just a journey and it's a journey of self-trust and learning what that means.

Because I think for me, I can speak personally I just feel like I've always done a really good job of trusting others and not really the best job of trusting myself for what I need.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Right. Yes. I mean, I can resonate with this so deeply and truly the last year of my life has been a massive uplevel on the trust piece.

Because I realized, holy shit, like I'm betraying myself on a daily basis. Yes. In little ways. Like in really simple ways, which we can, get into as we get go on. But I realized on that thread that I don't have trust in myself because I've been actually subconsciously, unintentionally wounding myself.

In the same ways I was wounded as a kid. So I'm like mirroring the way I was treated to myself. But it's a journey of actually rebuilding that trust. Like it doesn't just turn on instantly. We've gotta rebuild that trust by kind of continually showing up for ourselves, continually caring for ourselves.

And sometimes that's in a really basic level, like for me it sounds so silly. I wouldn't eat three meals a day. I'd just get distracted and go about my day and I'm working and I started to reframe it of if I had a three year old that I was responsible for, would I ever let them go without all three meals?

No, and so why am I not treating myself with that same level of care? So all that said, relearning the trust within ourselves. But I think from, it sounds like kind of the jumping off the cliff that you did a little bit with this pivot, that's like a huge thing. Did you feel reinvigorate again?

Katie Bramlett: I do feel like the universe was like, "Okay, we're gonna do this, and we're gonna slowly progress into how this is gonna unfold." So it wasn't like one day I had this revelation, and then the next day I was jumping off the cliff.

It was more like, I wanna create a better product. And my co-founder was like, I would love to do that. I want to create a product that's like super customizable, that's rooted in movement and not all these fat exercises. So we had a lot of alignment in the product offering that we wanted to add, we wanted to offer rather.

And I think that, it wasn't something as sexy as we were selling before, like use this product to get toned abs. Our product was literally rooted in, " customize a workout for yourself at home." But these things are gonna be rooted in balance and coordination and movement and strength and flexibility.

So it was like we were shifting the whole mentality of how we look through the lens of exercise. And I didn't know if people would really wanna buy that, but I knew it was the right thing to do for the humans who were buying the product. So I said, " Let's just trust that and go with it."

So our product took two years to build actually Because it's a technology driven product. So even that alone felt scary. I was like, will people even wanna buy this because I'm not selling them something sexy. I'm asking them to learn how to move better in their body and sustain exercise for the long haul.

And what we know about the fitness industry is that exercise is often sold to us. Like they're selling a promise. And we buy the promise. And I know that cuz I used to run a business like that. It's a very profitable way to run a company is sell something that promises a certain body for somebody, and that will likely be the reason why they do it, or promise weight loss.

And when we were making this pivot, I did have people in my industry tell me, " This looks like an incredible product and you probably won't be able to sell it." And I thought, "Oh, no." And then there was just something inside that said, " It doesn't matter. Someone will want this. Just keep going."

And then so that kind of naturally unfolded. And then along the way I started waking up to some of my... it's I like to pretend that my personal life is here and my business is here. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. So, I started evaluating some of my own beliefs in my own life and like why I was doing some of the things that I was doing and sort of the channels that I was subscribing to for lack of a better way to describe it. And that's when I started to wake up to this toxic diet culture that was around us. I was participating in "healthy eating." And so I was masking behaviors around food that were labeled wellness. But really it was just full of criticism and judgment and shame and it was, if I'm doing this, then I'm gonna be healthier.

And it was just like a really poor relationship with food that I realized was just being masked as wellness. So then I was getting praised for it, so it was like really confusing. So kind of through that journey I realized, "Oh my gosh, like I need to wake up like not only in the exercise space but also in the diet culture space." This is all intertwined. People don't come to me and don't talk about the diet side and or the dieting side. And so I was like, this is really messed up. You know, I just cracked the door and then all of a sudden the door was just slammed open.

That part felt like jumping off a cliff.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yeah. Because it's "Whoa, I have so much to reframe." Holy cow. This foundation that felt so stable and sturdy for me, that I've kind of been basing all these ideas off on is now moving underneath my feet. Whoa, absolutely. What do I rebuild on?

Katie Bramlett: Yeah. And I think what was so interesting about that was that there was actually a lot of embarrassment and shame around " Oh my gosh, I cannot, I, now that I know this and now I see what I was participating in the past where I was telling people to eat certain diets." I was like, " Oh my gosh, I'm not gonna be able to survive this embarrassment and shame."

And then I thought... I think of shame as the emotion that really gets people stuck. And I was like, " You can't get stuck. Use this as an opportunity. You went through that for a reason. And when you know better, you do better." And so, I've just been on this mission to bring people together and say, look " You don't need to look a certain way or have a certain body type" and just educating myself and then offering the education that I'm learning to other people. So that we can kind of look at how we view our body and wellness in a different light.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: One of the things that you were talking about before I was listening to one of your other interviews is you didn't even enjoy movement until maybe within three years or so ago.

Can you say more to that? And I love one of the things you said, which is we really, we call it movement rather than exercise or working out. And I can share my journey with this too, but I'd love to start with you and. When did you start enjoying movement? What did you shift that suddenly it became something enjoyable and maybe what was it like before for you?

Katie Bramlett: Yeah, I mean before it was like, oh, I'm gonna exercise tomorrow because I ate a piece of cake. Before it was like more punishment and no pain, no gain, and how hard can you push yourself? Before it was a lot of, oh, you missed your workout. And so inner critic judgment up for days just really toxic, like not really healthy for me psychologically, emotionally, or even really physically. And when I really started to reframe like how we look through the lens of exercise and how we look through the lens of diet culture, I went, oh, like there's a completely different path that I can go down and me trying to "motivate myself" to do something as a means of trying to get something that I think will make me happy, which is like this body type or what a number on the scale allowed me to realize that.

Actually, if you show up for yourself and learn how to turn that inner dial up, learn how to cultivate better self-worth. Learn how to turn the inner critic down. Learn how to connect with yourself in a deeper way. You won't have to motivate anything you'll want to take care of yourself.

And so then I just started finding pleasure and joy in moving, going on hikes with friends, doing our workout product, like whatever it might be. It was like, I want to do this, I want to move my body. And then if I miss my workout, I get to just be okay with that now.

I even had someone join a call recently where they're like, we have like daily support calls where we all get on Zoom together. And someone in the community had said "Oh,, I haven't done my workout in a couple weeks. I didn't know if I should come to the call."

I'm like, "Oh,, so you're a human and you just got busy and life just got in the way." And I'm like, "Trust me when I say I've been through this, and you will not guilt and shame yourself into doing that workout. So offering yourself kindness and gratitude. You're here on the call right now.

You're showing up in community, you can try again another time." Like just reframing what happens when we don't work out also was really big for me.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Oh my gosh. So many things I wanna point out there. One, Coming back to how I was saying, sometimes we're treating ourself the way we were treated as kids.

And one of those things that I think a lot of us grew up with is we get taught either explicitly or implicitly conditional love. Yes. Our parents or our caretakers or our teachers. It was very much like only when we did the right thing did we receive some kind of validation, affirmation, display of love.

And we don't realize that so many of us, I think are treating ourselves the same way. And you gave a perfect example of, I miss a workout and maybe I'm going down this negative internal dialogue. I'm berating myself for doing that. And what is that? That's conditional love towards ourself. Yeah. I didn't meet this thing and unless I meet this thing, I'm withholding love.

In fact, I maybe even hurting myself, shaming myself, demeaning myself. And I think that's such a big piece here is starting to uncouple those things a little bit. I'll speak to my kind of relationship with movement and exercise and working out, because I was a college soccer player, played D2 soccer, got recruited, went abroad to Spain to play.

And so a high level of activity was just a part of my life for so long. And when I came back from Spain, really what it was injury that forced me to calm things down. And that break from intense exercise, I was like, "Whoa, I've actually never felt so good. Weird." And I would say you know, in the thick of my athletic endeavors, I had whatever, "a decent body."

But when I actually slowed down and started doing movement, that felt good. That felt within my capacity. I had the best body I ever had in my life. And I was not even trying. Yeah. Like I wasn't even thinking about it. And again, I know we're not talking about getting the right body here, but I, and I think we, I heard you say this on another interview that almost sometimes can just come naturally.

Like it can come with so much more ease. But I think for me, what I realized is I wanted to be "healthy," and I thought I just had these beliefs that this is what you have to do to be healthy. You have to kill yourself every day with exercise and, eat a certain diet, and restrict certain things and be really conscious of all these things.

And so when I almost accidentally stumbled upon this realization of, " Whoa , I haven't done all those hard things, but I feel better mentally, physically, emotionally," it kind of, broke that limiting belief in my own mind to just prove to me like, no, there's other ways to achieve " health."

Katie Bramlett: I think you're speaking to something really important that I talk about a lot, which is this idea that like the, it's like the way that we're raised in our culture around exercise is to tune into your mind and do what it says. And it's really not to tune into the body. And I think that oftentimes people get injured or they burn out. And I really can't say this enough that I just, if people do one thing, it's how to tune into your body is. We're not taught to do that.

And I think that the body has such infinite wisdom, and if we just allow the pathway from the mind to the body to connect and to not always be in our own mind, and I know that's so much easier said than done, I'm guilty of this every day. But, I think that's even like an amazing starting space.

Like my body feels tired. Okay, so that does not mean you push through the workout. My shoulder's hurting. Okay. That does not mean you keep going. Right? I feel like we're trained to [ think] you didn't do it good enough unless you just did 1, 2, 3. What point do we say no?

The infinite wisdom. My body can also decide what feels good for me. And so when people come to our community and they're like, "Oh, how often should I work out?" I'm like, "I don't know. What do you think?" And people are so shocked by that. They're always waiting for me to give them a plan, and I'm like, " You're in charge of the plan. And I know that's really foreign and that's really confusing, but it's only because we've been conditioned in a culture that tells us your infinite wisdom inside is not what's valid. The out, we know what's best for you." Whoever that may be, community, parents, you know, even therapists like there has to come a point, I've even had experiences in my own life where I've had to say, "Oh, a therapist told me something, but that doesn't feel true for me inside what do I do?"

That is really intense to have to say, "I guess I'm not gonna believe that." So, you know, I feel like just that connection and understanding that a lot of us are conditioned to just be so in the mind when it comes to exercise and we often completely ignore the messages our body is telling us.

Fall on their side, not on yours. And trust the expert at all costs. And then kind of binary thinking. Of just there is one right way. There is one best diet. There is one best form of exercise rather than, no, we're so bio individual. The right diet for me, the right nutrition for me could be completely different than it is for you.

Same thing. And I think even the next layer of this is the right nutrition and movement and emotional support for me right now could be totally different than it is for me five years from now. And I think this is where really, to your point, the more we can actually tune into ourselves, what do I need?

What is resonating, what's not resonating? What feels good, what doesn't feel good? But we're kind of hitting on that deeper topic again of. We don't know how to trust that. We may not even know how to tune into that. We might be so disconnected from the signals of our mind and body, because I think there's so many different messaging that's training us to ignore them.

In a variety of ways. So I love that though, because you're like recreating that for people. You're helping them learn to tune in and trust that.

Katie Bramlett: Yeah. And we tell people all the time because they'll be like, "Oh, I don't know if I got the best workout because I basically wasn't throwing up."

I'm like you know, you're learning how to move in your body and we're helping you build balance, coordination, strength, flexibility. These are sustainable, like fundamental biomechanics that the body needs to like, learn how to do for the long haul. This is not about how many calories you burn.

This is about connecting with your body in a different way that maybe we haven't learned yet. And I think that it can be challenging. Like I am so guilty of being really just only in my mind and not really tuning into my body. One of the ways I was able to really start tapping into that was through some different body work practices.

So, like through some somatic body work. I'm not sure if you've heard of like network spinal analysis? That's a good one. It's all of these practices allowed me to start, you know, speeding up that process around learning how to tune in with my body.

But I mean, I feel like we can even just do that by simply pausing and asking, and I think that it just takes practice. But I do think the body is really wanting to tell us things, and I think that we often just ignore them because they're not aligned with what the outside is telling us.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Totally.

Yeah. If my body's saying I cannot do another hard workout, but I feel like I need to, for whatever reason. We're gonna shut that down. We're not gonna attune to it. Two things I wanna add to this one, I had a practice for a really long time where at the start of every morning I just write these two questions.

What is my body telling me it needs today? And what is my spirit telling me it needs today? And I would really let that inform, what is my day gonna look like? Because for me, I, the way that I frame it out in my mind is I kind of have these baseline categories that I wanna make sure I'm hitting every day.

Nutrition, hydration, movement, sunshine, emotional support. Like it's those five things. But I keep it really broad. Am I gonna give myself at least 20 minutes of movement today? And it could be anything. If I wake up and my body is I am depleted. It might look like a 20 minute walk around the block.

Yeah. It might look like 10 minutes on my vibration plate. If I wake up and I'm like, oh God, I'm so energized, maybe I do a harder weightlifting session. So I found that just giving myself the categories and then tuning in every day allowed me to really do the thing that's gonna serve me the most.

Because I think that's the other piece is when we get stuck in one way of doing something, it can actually be very counterproductive. Yeah. Which I think we've all seen before where, for example, I'm killing myself with hard workouts, but but maybe I've got underlying hormone issues. Maybe I've got a dysregulated nervous system and these intense workouts are exacerbating all of those problems.

Katie Bramlett: And it's teaching You to not tune in which then doesn't allow you to really think and listen or you don't feel into that.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yeah. And it becomes this kind of downward spiral.

Katie Bramlett: I mean, and it's hard too because I'm a real rule-based person and that is just such a way that I like to control, right? And so it's also like I love the idea of, having the categories and figuring out like, am I really getting my needs met? And then I also have to be conscious for myself that when I do that, if I don't hit the mark for that day or for what I had hoped to happen, that the rule doesn't take over.

And that the inner critic isn't turned up. Because that's what will often happen for me. If know, for instance, I really value getting good rest, and sometimes I don't get good rest. Because I, there's this thing called life where my child wakes me up, or for whatever reason, it's want that goal.

But then it's if I didn't get what I needed instead of really beating myself, I hope you didn't go to bed that 20 minutes earlier, like you said, you yeah. It's really also offering kindness through the process of it and not having the goalpost be perfection.

Just stepping in the right direction, stepping towards self, stepping towards what we know will be good for our own individual body, and then also offering so much kindness and grace when it doesn't always work out.

And I think it's not because all of a sudden we're feeling horribly. I think it's probably because our mind, body, spirit has been sending us warning signals for a long time now. And we haven't been attuning to them. So maybe we start tuning in and we go, "Whoa. I'm a lot unhappier than I thought I was.

My body is aching a lot more than I thought it was. I have way less energy than I thought I did." So, I think that's something worth noting because maybe it can feel a little overwhelming. Like it can totally, whoa, what is my body telling me?

Katie Bramlett: It can totally feel overwhelming. I'm not sure. Do you ever talk on your podcast about the highly sensitive person?

Have you gone down this road?

Leigh Ann Lindsey: We talk a lot about nervous system. Chronic dysregulation and how that affects sensor. All these different things.

Katie Bramlett: Yeah, it was funny. My good friend and I started going down the path of like understanding like what being a highly sensitive person meant.

And once I discovered that I scored like the highest on the test, I was like, I need to reevaluate my whole life. And when I did that, I was like, " Oh , you were so in your mind because your body was so sensitive and it was so overwhelming for you that you were shutting that down so that you could be in your mind and only focus there."

So it's, I think these things are important aspects to know about ourself and I think that the overall I feel like I'm always coming back to the same thing, which sounds really silly, but it's just like, how do I keep coming home to me? How do I learn about myself? How do I understand what my body needs?

How do I give myself kindness, grace, empathy through that process? Because it's not always linear. When we do decide to tune in more to our body and change some of these lenses of ways we look through things, life can feel different. And that can, like you said, can be extremely overwhelming.

And so almost trusting that process too. I know like I said, even in my process of understanding toxic diet culture and understanding the business I used to run, that was painful to have to experience all of those feelings and understand that oh my gosh I need to go a different direction, but

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Maybe even a loss of community. Whoa, are these people gonna accept me now that I'm pivoting a different place? And I

Katie Bramlett: Oh, totally. And I Think honestly you're hitting the nail on the head with something that I have really been discovering, especially lately, is that the closer you get to you, that might not be aligned with other people.

And it is a tremendous loss. And it is painful and it is scary. And I think the only thing I can say is that I keep doing it anyway because that connection that I continue to build with the inner knowing of me is what feels to me like true, authentic power. That's, that is where I feel the most safe.

But sometimes I have to go through scary things to get there, and that can be really overwhelming.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: I Think this is potentially one of the subconscious things that keeps a lot of us stuck from just growth in general. We're talking about kind of fitness and movement, but in general, because I think there is a knowing for many of us that if I change and I change too much, there's gonna be people who can't walk that path with me.

And I think that is so worth pointing out that there can I have had almost every big uplevel in my life has come with grief at the places I can no longer go because they aren't aligned anymore. And the people who maybe can't play as big of a role in my life because it's not aligned anymore and it's not a, I'm better, they're worse, I'm good, they're bad, and maybe they still play a part in my life.

But it's stepping into my authenticity and my alignment while also doing it from a place of calm and composure and grace, I think. And shedding some of those things.

Katie Bramlett: And that's tricky, right? Because I know for me, what's come up too has been like frustration and anger and those are things that I was like, you're not allowed to feel those things, right?

And so, that's also difficult to like, be okay with the process being messy. I'm not okay with messy processes. I like to control everything. So, having kindness and self-compassion through the messy process of learning how to listen to your body, listen to yourself, come home to you is really challenging.

And it's one of the main reasons I decided when we were launching the product that we had to have a major pillar of community. Because it's okay that things change. It's okay that you evolve and there is grief and there is frustration and anger that sometimes can come with that. Like this how did I know this before?

And did I waste part of my life because I didn't know this about myself and I was doing something for somebody else. That can come with really hard feelings, but there's also other people out there who are in alignment. Yeah. You do have a similar ability to connect maybe wherever you are on your journey.

And maybe that won't last forever because we don't know where the next journey's going. But I did know that I wanted to offer community where we were because I knew that people would come in and they would feel awkward about not talking about how much weight they lost. They would feel like, wait, am I doing it right because I've only learned how to, you know, work out to the max or focus on the scale. And so I was like, community is a huge element, but I think that community with yourself is the most important. But it does help to have people around us who can support that growth. And sometimes when people kind of fade out of our life as a result of that growth, that can be hard.

But I also know that if there's time given the universe does provide other people for that, for those spaces to be filled,

I just wish I had a partner like this. 99% of the time, we are not doing that for ourself. And it's not to say that we shouldn't also want that from others, but when we're giving it to ourself, the desperation piece I find gets taken away. I'm not so desperate to find that in someone else or to need that from someone else because me, myself, and I, we're good.

I'm a safe place. I'm an uplifting place. I'm a place that cares for me and then I think it allows you to be able to really find the people who are gonna do that for you authentically, rather than when we're denying ourselves. Those things love, acceptance, care. We're so desperate for it that maybe we get it from people who ultimately end up being kind of toxic or there's such a fear of abandonment there that we're clinging so tightly. That's a whole separate conversation.

Katie Bramlett: We talk about this a lot in our community with the idea of just thinking about like on a simple level around the scale.

Like this idea that if I get this number on the scale, I'll get the worth and validation that I've always wanted. And the reality is if you can give yourself the worth and validation that you've always wanted, that number will never matter. And in fact, I argue like we, I have talked about this idea of fake fulfillment, like you're gonna lose the weight you might get there, and then what?

And then. What I have discovered is people are very temporarily happy there. They always then want more, or I didn't feel as good as I thought I was. And I'm like, yeah, if you can't figure out how to feel worthy in the body that you have today, I promise you chasing a certain body and chasing a certain number are not going to offer you that.

And so, you know, when people come into our community, they do come in for a workout and then I'm like, " Surprise! We're actually gonna teach you how to connect with yourself in a deeper, more meaningful way, so that we stop chasing that number so we stop chasing that body type. So we stop chasing that, you know, social media influencer that we think has the best life."

Like you are responsible for your best life. And it comes from the pillar of being able to connect with yourself in a deep, meaningful way. It doesn't negate community. I deeply believe in community. It's why it's 25% of the way that we do it here at WeShape. It's one of the four pillars, but It's this sense of trusting that inner self and knowing that person, which I think is a lifelong journey I'm like discovering that this relationship that I'm building with me is not gonna be "Oh, we did it. We reached it." It's gonna go on for a long time, but it has to be the centerstone . And then the outside community is what offers that sort of like extra.

Right. But it's, you're not reliant on everyone else's narrative. You're reliant on your own and then you don't have to be chasing anything. Right. Because you're just coming, you're just constantly coming back to you.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: There's two things I want to highlight on this same topic. One of the things I wrote down is we want crystal clear guidance.

We want tell me exactly what workouts to do, when, where, what to eat, what time to eat it, how much to eat, all these different things. And it sounds like a little bit sometimes when you're telling people. No, you tell me what would feel good for you. And I think the underlying sentiment I hear there from the individual's lens is I'm trying to achieve someone else's level of acceptance.

When I reach this thing, I'll be accepted, I'll be worthy, I'll be validated, whatever it might be. And that's why I think a lot of us find it hard to attune to our internal compass because we're basing that compass off of what is gonna make you like me? Yes. And that's why I need you to tell me exactly what to do.

Yeah. Or what is the world, what does the world need to like me? Great. You're the expert. Tell me what I need to do to make that happen. And so when we flip the script on that a little bit of what is gonna feel good for you, we're also challenging these deep core beliefs of, " Oh shit, I'm not doing this for that external thing. I'm not doing this for that validation. I'm doing this for me and how I wanna feel." and so then that leads us down. "How do I wanna feel? What do I want to be able to do and engage in with this body?" And then I think the tricky part of the process too is that there is experimentation involved.

What is gonna get me there could be totally different than what gets you there. And it's more nuanced. It is, in a way a little harder, but then at the same time, a lot easier. Yes. If that makes sense. Because we're, it does, we're attuning to our bodies and doing what feels good for us. So when we're actually doing it, it comes with such ease and grace and oh we feel so good after.

But it's harder because it's more nuanced. It's not someone just handing us a sheet of paper with workouts that we can kind of mindlessly do for a month, you know?

Katie Bramlett: Yeah. I mean, you said so many things there and one of the things is you know, we can probably all agree that at the core, all of us do wanna feel safe, physically, emotionally, psychologically, and to think about putting someone else's validation of us in the driver's seat for our self-worth. That is the opposite of safety to me. That will not provide safety. Because that can be ever changing. I don't have control over what that person likes or doesn't like about me. And so that, that idea alone always keeps me back to, "Okay, you gotta care more about you."

What, because it's easy to get sucked back in to, yeah, this person thought this and this is what everyone else is doing and this is what I see on social media, so I understand that is it's a push and a pull between "No, my internal world is what matters most." But, when I zoom out and I think for that lens of, if I deeply desire safety on all levels, me putting that safety in the opinion of somebody else is not going, that is not safety to me.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Right. Yeah. And what's " safe" for one person might be really dysregulating for me. And yeah, again, I think this is where so much of the nuance comes in. And I always try and take a very empathetic lens. If someone is sharing their perspective their diet, their workouts, being able to go, you know what?

That doesn't resonate with me, but if that's what's working for you, amazing. Yeah, I love it. But not needing to take it on and at the same time, not needing to make it binary. If it doesn't work for me, what they're doing is wrong. No, maybe not. It just doesn't work for me. Or it's not what's aligned for me right now.

Katie Bramlett: Yeah. When people come in, there's lots of people come in our community here "I'm here to lose weight." And I just go, "Okay, tell me more about that. Why?" Right? And then when they answer that, I go, " Okay , then tell me more about that. Why?" Yes. And then they tell me. I'm like, "Okay. And then tell me more about that.

Why?" And usually by the fourth or fifth why they're like, oh, because when I was little it kind of always goes back to that, right? And I think for all of us as human beings, I think that's the whole journey of being a human being is the first part of our life, is we are being told what to believe.

And we are trusting the environment around us, that is what we are supposed to believe. And that doesn't always, I would say most of the time there're gonna be things that we're gonna have to dissect as adults that go, wait a minute, I was taught this, but this really isn't serving my inner knowing, my inner self, my higher self.

So, I'm very available for people who wanna come in and start there. What I have discovered though is that when people go through the journey of kind of shedding those ideas, that there is this set of ha, it's like I always laugh. Like I don't, I can't promise people weight loss when they come in, but I could, I can pretty much guarantee if they keep showing up either to the community or keep showing up for themselves or keep, if they just keep showing up in some way they're gonna shed an energetic layer of needing that external validation. Because they're surrounding themselves with a community of people who are like, we don't need you to be that number. We don't, we're just actually happy that you're here how you are.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yes. Yeah. I love that because part of WeShape, you're actively disproving I think a lot of the limiting beliefs that we have, which is no one will accept me if I don't look this way. This is how I get love and validation and we all can go on our own journey of identifying and releasing and rewriting our subconscious beliefs and fears and wounds. But there's also a part of it that we need to try and also seek out the new thing.

And I love that your community is saying, "Hey, here's proof that you can be accepted just as you are." I mean, and that's huge.

Katie Bramlett: You would think about most of the time when people are joining like a diet plan or an exercise plan, they go in because they want something and it's usually an aesthetic change in their body.

And not always, sometimes people are like, oh, my shoulder hurts. I wanna get outta pain, or, so not always, but it's usually I want this thing to change about my body, and the reality is I don't even know if people are conscious of it. I don't even think it's smart on the business side, to be honest with you, that if people don't get that, then what? They're not welcome there anymore. Right. It's like that. That seems like my mind can't comprehend that. So I try to tell people when you come into We shape, we're actually happy you're here day one. You don't need to change anything about yourself. You don't need to change the number on the scale.

You don't have to fit into those jeans in order to be welcome here. That's actually not our goal. Our goal is for you to connect with your body in a way maybe you haven't before, and that's it. And that means something different for everybody and that's okay. And so like I could tell that day that girl came on the call and was like, I just, you know, I haven't worked out in a couple weeks.

And I'm like, okay, that's wonderful. That's not a problem at all. You know, and I think we just get it backwards sometimes and I don't think any of us consciously do it. I know I didn't. I thought I was on the right path. Just shame myself and get myself into this body type and everything will be fine.

And she said she didn't feel good at all. And she did our program and she doesn't even know if she lost weight and she's never felt better. And I'm like, okay, I feel like I'm on the right path. She's I learned how to say no. I have learned how to listen to my body. I'm showing up out of self care, not out of self-judgment.

This is a completely new experience. I don't even care if I've lost weight or not. And I'm like, Oh, the amount of energy and you know, metaphorical weight that has been lifted from your shoulders. I can see it in her. I can feel it in her. And I had another woman who was like, I've lived 70 years of my life looking in the mirror with other people's voices in my mind telling me that this isn't okay.

You need to lose weight. This is how you're supposed to look. And I've only been here for a month, and I'm like, those voices aren't there anymore. Now I know the most important voice when I look in the mirror.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Right? Yeah. Right. And when we absorb those voices for so long, we do start to believe that's our voice too.

That's confusing. Sometimes it does become our voice, but then as we go down that releasing, revealing, rewriting, we start to go, "Ah, you know what? I don't want that to be my voice, even if it has been." But the other piece I love though is that You're also modeling what that looks like, which I don't think a lot of us received as kids in adulthood.

We're not modeled how to be graceful and empathetic with ourselves. There's so much more rhetoric and content and information out there showing us how to be critical and conditionally love ourselves. So again, like you're hitting so many different angles of it, and I really love that.

Katie Bramlett: Ultimately I really just wanted to have a goal of, if I provided somebody a workout product that was rooted in what was best for the human body, best for their emotional wellbeing, their psychological wellbeing, their social wellbeing,

and profit was second, or profit was third or fourth, whatever profit was not first, what would that look like? Let's try offering that. And the reality is we live in a culture that is profit driven. That is, predicated on capitalism and that is what it is. But I, knowing that and knowing the businesses that I used to run, I'm like, that's where a lot of companies are coming from in the fitness industry is from that perspective.

Okay, how do we maximize revenue? And so when I started doing this new business, I was like, obviously I need to have revenue because I have to pay people to do all of this. But what happens if that's not the first lens we look through? What happens if we make decisions about how we show up for the consumer, for the customer through the lens of what's actually best for their body and for their mind and for their social and emotional wellbeing.

And I think I'm just gonna keep that as my north star. Because I've tried it the other way and I was deeply unfulfilled and I could see the harm that it was causing. And I also know that I was just doing the best that I knew how to do at the time, and yeah. I've had people from that community come over to WeShape and they're like, oh, Katie, don't be so hard on yourself.

We love that old community. I said, "No, I hear you. I hear you, but I I'm just gonna keep this my North Star now." What does it look like to deliver a product in a community to people from a new lens that's not profit first?

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yeah. My, I mean, I say it to myself all the time I do my best until I learn how to do better and then I do better and that's enough.

Like my best is enough, which has not always been the story in my head, but I wonder. Do you feel like you, if you hadn't done those companies before, would you have even been equipped to launch WeShape?

Katie Bramlett: No. Like they paved the way. They absolutely paved the way. Yeah. So I, I try also to look at my life through the lens of this is a journey and the things that I've experienced in my past are what are allowing me to be in this present moment.

And so I try not to look back with regrets. But I do try to share that this was my experience and like sometimes learning hard things about ourselves and having to change behaviors can be shameful. And I just wanna encourage people to not get sick. Stuck in that. I think that's my biggest message with that is oh my gosh, yes.

If there's a way that we cannot get stuck in shame, I think that's how we can continue on this path and understand these are things that are happening for us. And so yeah I'm trusting the process for sure. It's hard, but I'm definitely trust- I'm trying my best to trust it.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. To the point on shame, it's just, I see it time and time again, especially here in my practice with clients that it's the most, one of the most corrosive emotions. Because shame is basically us saying to ourselves, I made a mistake and I'm a bad person. Rather than I'm a good person who made a mistake.

And when we just make that simple shift in it, it allows for so much more grace and like you were saying before, we can get up and keep going and make pivots where we need to rather than I'm a bad person. And that leads to a whole cascade of beliefs. Bad people don't deserve good things. Bad people don't deserve good friendships. And then it starts to have this really corrosive negative ripple effect on our life. So guys, you are a good person who's made mistakes. You are a good person who can learn to live life better. We all are. No more shame.

Katie Bramlett: Like you said, had I not gone through those experiences, I wouldn't be able to offer what I offer today.

Yeah. And I know that what I'm offering today is something that's bigger than myself. I know that I'm on this path for a reason and that feeling that I get inside knowing that is better than anything I have really felt so far in my career journey. So, just being okay with that sometimes.

Accepting. Accepting. And Byron and Katie always talks about this, I love her work. Just like loving what is Yeah. That is what it's and loving what is that's like a different level of accepting what is.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: It's not like resignation.

Katie Bramlett: Yeah. So just trusting that process can be hard.

But I'm continuing down the path that what I feel is You know, I just, I don't even feel like I'm the one who's really, like, when people come and they're like, oh, this amazing thing. I'm like, it's not really even me. Like it's, I feel held by the universe. If that makes sense.

I don't actually want the credit for it. I just feel like I want to keep going and I don't know why. And I just see how the universe has really showed up to make it happen, and so I'm just the person who's helping it happen. It's like beyond, it's beyond Katie.

It's something else.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: I think that's how it should be ideally. Yeah. But also I really do believe it lands differently. It resonates differently when it's coming from a place of authenticity. I just believe this on every level, which is why for me, in my own business, it's so important.

But I just think when we're coming from that place of authenticity ourselves there is something so magnetic about that. That people can feel and they're like, I wanna be around that.

Katie Bramlett: So I was on a podcast the other day where we were talking about this sort of, the difference between the idea around like real self-confidence and it's actually not the six pack abs .

No. It's like you shine different when you have this connection with yourself that feels real that feels authentic despite what we think other people will say. I mean Yeah. You just, people feel that energy. And there's been a lot of times even on, in the last three years when I've been building this company with my team, where we've all been faced with challenging things and I'm like, I'm gonna have to go against the grain.

And it feels real bad. And luckily I have a, an incredible team. At WeShape and everyone's we're doing it anyway, you know? So I love that. I think that's the hardest part about staying true to yourself is it doesn't always align with what the outside says is the best way.

And I say, you gotta experiment with trusting that, that inner voice, and it doesn't always pan out sometimes. But, having the idea, I was talking with someone about this the other day self-trust and the belief that it's gonna all work out does not mean that it's the belief that it's gonna work out how I think it should.

And that is really, that is something I've really had to come to terms with, especially with WeShape , since we're in the middle of a funding round. We have exceeded what we can self-fund. So we're really reliant on outside investors who are not really familiar with this niche that I'm trying to go after.

They keep trying to put me in other, you know, fitness camps. I'm like, no, we're not doing that. And so just that trusting and knowing that I have an idea of how I think I want this to pan out. But the universe is holding me and I just need to trust that it might not be exactly how I want it, but I'm here for the, here for the journey.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. I think and when we release, we have kind of the end goals, but when we release which path needs to get us there. Like the universe will totally surprise you with, oh, I thought I had to go down this road. And it, and the universe is "No.. There's this other road over here." that's just as amazing.

And there's so much that's gonna come of it. Okay, we're running out of time. There's one thing, I mean, there's so many more things I have here, but one of the two. Okay. Two things that I really wanna touch on. First, bringing it back to you were saying this woman, she wants to lose weight. You're asking her why?

Why? I do this all the time. I call it the why funnel. Let's just keep asking why. Let's go through that funnel. Why do I want that? Okay. Why do I want that? What's that gonna give me? And I think whether it's with fitness, with nutrition, with relationships, we don't realize it, but we have this subconscious script, this subconscious belief saying something like, I will be happy when blank.

I can't be happy until blank. And so kind of bringing it back to what you were saying earlier, If we're pursuing the six pack abs or the, you know, big, tight lifted booty or whatever it is to be happy, to your point, we're probably gonna get there and realize still not that happy. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't, it can't contribute to happiness, but ask yourself that question.

Is that kind of the rhetoric going down in the deeper subconscious of my mind? I'm almost like I'm holding my breath until I get this thing I can't have X, Y, or Z. And if that's the case, can we give ourselves permission and kind of expand that belief to go, I have everything I need to be happy right now.

I don't need to wait until I get this, or this. Now if I find happiness now and then I get the six pack, great. That can add to that. But it's not the thing that's going to give me the happiness that I'm so depleted of.

Katie Bramlett: And I'm curious on your take on this, because I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

Again, like just even the word happiness, I'm like, life isn't always happy. Is should that be the goal? I don't know I'm discovering this myself, but I think more about like, How can I feel satisfied? Because you can be satisfied even when something doesn't go your way. But if we're super reliant on that, that feeling of happiness, sometimes I wonder if we're going down a path that maybe doesn't all the way exist, right?

And so it's like, how can I be satisfied with, like accepting what is, how can I be satisfied with the person that I am today with the body that I have today. And so I don't know why, but lately I've been shifting my own intention around that word a little bit. Because sometimes I think that word reminds me of like Disney fairy tales, you know?

And I think that happiness is a part of the human experience, but I think that there are other parts that if we try to continue to like, I'll do this so that I'm happy even, it's like nothing that we do will. Always equate that because we're not always happy. And so I don't know about what you think about that cuz this is like a new discovery that I'm going down, but I've just been questioning that word a lot lately.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: So I'll speak to my own experience with it too, which is kind of twofold. One I've seen with clients and with myself, if there's a really deep desperation for happiness, it's almost always at least some component is that we actually have a deep well of grief that we're trying to outweigh.

I see. And so that's a piece of it. If I'm searching for happiness, and by the way, like for me it was food and so I was overspending tons and tons of money on food because food made me happy and it helped balance out this well of grief. That I was constantly trying to keep it bay.

When I finally figured out what that core wound was and was doing the healing work around it. The cravings for all these things, just like miraculously drifted away. Because it was like, yes, this bleeding wound is needing this attention. So I find, yeah, when there's a deep need for happiness, there's oftentimes a lot of repressed grief that we need to look at in process. To that point, when I was kind of stuck in that pattern, it was about happiness. Oh, if I could go on these trips and make this amount of money that will make me feel happy. And the craziest thing is, and I said this in the solo episode a few months back, last year was the worst year of my life.

I came to terms with being sexually abused by my father. So many horrible things, and yet I have never had more joy and contentment and I, and so for me, like joy and contentment, I think are what you're communicating to. Where. I could wake up because this grief and this anger, and this fear, and this panic was like finally leaving my body.

I could wake up and look at the life as it is currently and be like, I fucking love this life. And it doesn't mean that I can't push for more and to create more of that, but there was just like this level of contentment and joy and peace and safety that I was able to get without having to change a single thing.

Whereas before the rhetoric was like, whatever it is, whether I'm looking for joy, peace, safety, this, that, this, it was like, it's always elusive. Whereas now being able to realize nothing needs to change, really. I have all those things right now and I'm just really in search of, Not in search of, but I'm trying to foster more joy, more peace, more alignment.

As I continue to know myself and what do those things look like? What boundaries do I need to put in place? All these different things.

Katie Bramlett: I think that's really fascinating to ask the question like, why am I looking for this level of happiness? And then correlate that to what you're saying Ooh, that's likely trying to, there's likely something else that's happening here.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Okay. The second thing I wanna touch on really quickly, we still got a few minutes left. I'm gonna milk our time for all we can is I think one of the things, and I've seen this again, I think so many of the topics we're talking about here related to fitness can cross over onto so many other areas of life.

Yes. But one of the things I wanna talk about is this rhetoric or this kind of, it's like implicitly communicated that. We use fitness as a dogma, it becomes a religion. It becomes a set of rules that we get to control and manipulate and manage every little detail of. And there's a couple things I wanna say here.

One, just that we might be using it as a form of control to soothe the really dysregulated system. So that's one piece. But I think the other key thing here is when there's kind of this dogma and this morality attached to our workout routine and how hard we're killing ourselves and what we are not eating then, but we're not also communicating, "Hey, health is multifaceted.

If you're not losing weight or if you have chronic fatigue, there could be any number of things going on." And I think that's a huge thing missing from most traditional fitness, health rhetoric is that it's multifaceted. And then when it also has this kind of moral label attached to it. If someone's killing themselves and they're not losing the weight, they feel like a failure, or they feel like, oh, I need to be doing more.

Or if they're completely fatigued and depleted and they don't do the hard workout, they feel like they're lazy. And that, I think can contribute to that shame, contribute to that corrosiveness of the industry as a whole.

Katie Bramlett: I, you know, looking through the lens, there's two different lenses that they always come together and it's around, you know, food and exercise and If we're looking through that lens and it's just smothered in judgment, good, bad, right, wrong it, we're likely not connecting with ourself in a meaningful, authentic way.

And so I think just asking yourself like, what is my relationship with food? Am I sitting in judgment all day over the things I'm putting in my body? Am I labeling things good, bad, healthy, not healthy, toxic? You know, am I exercising as a form of connecting with myself or I'm beating myself up when I'm not pushing hard enough?

It's I think just it's very layered and it's complicated, but I think it's important to discuss the idea that you're not a good or bad person based on what you eat or how you exercise. Right. We've kind of gone astray, right? I feel like we've taken this potentially beautiful experience with movement and the body and connection with self, and

we have put it in a package to sell it to people that is rooted in judgment and criticism and shame. And I'm like, oh my gosh, we gotta go back. The beautiful experience is still available for us. And same with food. Like food is what a place of community for food. Right? What a place of joy and pleasure.

And we have taken that and we have wrapped it and sold it in a package that's eat this so that you can be healthier, do this so that you can get the this toxic thing outta your body. It's it makes me a little bit crazy. To think that we've taken these beautiful expressions of what the human body can connect with and we've tried to sell it as something else, and it's usually selling to a part of you that will make you feel bad so that you buy it.

So there is an opportunity to have a beautiful connection with movement, with your body, with yourself. There's a, there's an equally beautiful opportunity to connect with food and community and the things that we put in our bodies. And it doesn't have to be the way that it is. We can make a decision to not participate that at any point.

Yeah. I really hope that, we have the four pillars of WeShape , which are centered around movement community, beliefs and intention. And oftentimes people come into our community with the mindset I should work out. So that's why I'm here. And my hope is once they've gone on a journey with us they'll go through the pillars and they'll end with intention.

And the intention will shift from, I should be here to, because I need to work out to, I am here because I'm learning how to deepen the connection with myself. And that inner knowing is so powerful and I'm gonna continue to try to connect with it. And coming from that intention is completely different than I should do a workout.

We'll reel it in though. I think that's a really beautiful place to end. Can you just share though, a little bit where people can find you and what your handles are, those kinds of things? Yes.

Katie Bramlett: So our social media handles, we have two, we have @ WeShape, that's all movement based content. And then we have @ WeShapePodcast where we talk a lot more about some of the things we're talking about here.

Actually have a link for your listeners, if they wanna do a two week free trial with We Shape, it's weshape.com/accrescent

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Okay, perfect. For the audience. I know no one knows how to spell " accrescent" , so it'll be linked in the show notes too. That's my fault. But Katie, thank you so much. This has been wonderful.

I think this is gonna be a really expansive conversation for people.

Katie Bramlett: Thank you so much for having me. Such a pleasure to be here.