Stop Comparing Your Chapter 1 to Someone Else’s Chapter 20

Last month, one of my long-term clients did a photoshoot. Tan, lighting, glam, the works all at the end of a 12-week cut. The photos were stunning. She looked incredible.

And almost immediately, two of my other clients, both of whom had only just started with me, pointed at her and said some version of “I want to look like that.”

Here’s the part that stopped me. The woman they were comparing themselves to was eating 1300 calories a day four years ago. She was 10kg heavier than she is now. She used to walk into the gym and point out other women and say “I want to look like her” - exactly the same thing. She has been working at this, week in, week out, for three years. She now eats 2300 calories a day. The photoshoot they were looking at? That was her chapter 20.

They were on chapter 1. And they couldn’t see it.

Instagram Is Not Reality. It Has Never Been Reality.

I’ll just say it: Instagram is the worst thing that’s happened to women’s relationships with their own bodies. And I say that as someone who works in this space and uses it every day.

The photos you’re scrolling past are not what those women look like in real life. I see it constantly -gym-goers I know in person, who post photos that bear almost no resemblance to how they actually look standing next to you in the squat rack. It’s a tan. It’s the right angle. It’s the right lighting. It’s the right pose, held for half a second. It’s a flexed, dehydrated, peak-week version of someone, and it’s been chosen out of 200 photos that didn’t make the cut.

And underneath that single photo? Years. Years of training. Years of getting their nutrition right. Years of falling off and starting again. Years of unsexy, unposted, slow progress.

You are not seeing chapter 20. You are seeing the highlight reel of chapter 20. And you’re holding your chapter 1 up against it and wondering why you don’t measure up.

What Chapter 1 Actually Looks Like (Nobody Posts This Part)

Chapter 1 is not glamorous. It’s not a 12-week transformation post. It’s not a before-and-after side-by-side with abs you didn’t know you had.

Chapter 1 looks like this. You’re not sure if what you’re doing is working. You can’t tell if you should keep being patient or if it’s time to change something. You want your body to transform overnight and rationally, you know it can’t…but emotionally, every week that goes by without a visible change feels like proof that you’re failing. You walk into the gym and feel like everyone is watching you. Gymtimidation is real, and anyone who tells you it isn’t has forgotten what it felt like to be new.

Chapter 1 is figuring out how to weigh your food and getting it wrong. It’s protein targets you don’t quite hit. It’s a session you skip. It’s stepping on the scales after a hard week and seeing the number go up. It’s wondering, quietly, whether you’re built differently to other people.

None of this is on Instagram. None of it. Because it’s not photogenic and it doesn’t go viral. But every single woman whose chapter 20 you’re admiring lived through every single bit of this. Including the ones who look like they were “just born that way.”

The Only Comparison That’s Actually Fair

Here’s the only comparison that’s logical, fair, and useful: you, today, versus you, yesterday.

That’s it. That’s the whole framework.

Are you doing better than yesterday? Are you doing better than last week? Last month? Last year? That’s the only data set where the variables actually match. Same body, same life, same starting point. Comparing yourself to anyone else is comparing apples to a completely different fruit, in a different country, after three years of growing.

Pull it in even tighter when you need to. Some weeks “better than last year” feels too big. Fine. Just go to “better than yesterday.” Did you walk a bit more? Did you hit your protein? Did you go to the session you didn’t want to go to? Did you stop after one glass of wine instead of three? That’s progress. That’s chapter 1 turning into chapter 2.

Three years of “better than yesterday” is what builds the body and the life that someone else will eventually scroll past on Instagram and feel inadequate about. That’s the irony. The chapter 20 you’re jealous of was built one chapter-1 day at a time.

What to Do Next Time You Catch Yourself Comparing

You’re going to catch yourself doing it. That’s fine. The goal isn’t to never compare because that’s not realistic when we’re all walking around with a comparison machine in our pockets. The goal is to catch it faster and redirect.

When it happens, ask yourself two questions. What chapter is she in? And what chapter am I in? If you don’t know, you can safely assume hers is further along. Then ask: what would “better than yesterday” look like for me, right now, today? And go do that.

That’s it. You don’t need to unfollow everyone (although honestly, a clean-out doesn’t hurt). You don’t need to never look at Instagram again. You just need to remember that what you’re seeing is the edited highlight of someone else’s long, messy, unposted journey and your only job is to keep writing your own.

If you’re at the very start of your chapter 1 and you’re sick of feeling behind before you’ve even begun, that’s exactly what we work on inside coaching. We get clear on what your “better than yesterday” actually looks like, build a plan that fits your real life, and start stacking the kind of unsexy, unposted weeks that quietly turn into your chapter 20.

You can book a free discovery call here when you’re ready.