If you grew up watching Denise Austin do step aerobics in a leotard on your family’s television, you already have a sense of the household Katie Austin came from. Fitness was the setting of her childhood. Sports and movement were just what her family did. Her mom was a college gymnast. Her father played professional tennis. Katie went on to play Division I lacrosse at USC. Her sister was ranked number one in the country for the sport as well.
As an older millennial who logged serious hours with those VHS tapes, I came into this discussion already a fan of the family. I came away from it believing that Denise is even more of an idol than I realized – and that Katie, now 27 weeks pregnant with her first daughter, is doing something of her own.
Katie is its founder KA Appa lifestyle platform based on movement, meals and mindset, and has over two million social media followers who show up for her warm, unpretentious wellness. She’s also, as of this spring, a six-time Sports Illustrated swimsuit model who walked the runway for SI on Hulu six months pregnant — a moment she seemed fueled by goddess-like confidence. But Katie is nothing if not honest about it.
Katie Austin on Walking the SI Runway at 27 Weeks Pregnant: ‘It Took a Lot of Courage’
“Every year I walk into the runway show I’m very confident,” she told me. “For five years, yeah, I’ve been killing it. I have energy. I look great. And then this year, I didn’t really realize I’d feel such an identity change.”
She knew she was going to be pregnant for the shoot — she found out on New Year’s and the January shoot was already on the calendar. The catwalk show was less certain. He didn’t want to calculate it, he didn’t want to think too far ahead. Then he found out it was going to be shown on Hulu, to a national audience, and the whole thing took on another weight.
“The first year I’m doing this pregnant is my sixth year and it’s going to be on TV,” she said, laughing a little at the timing. He did not seriously consider retreating. But on the day of the performance, he felt things he didn’t expect. “I had this overwhelming feeling where I didn’t expect to feel this way. I didn’t expect to feel a huge identity shift and not feel so much about myself. And then there was the Internet to think about. How are people going to react? Are people going to be mean to me? Just a lot of things went through my mind that I didn’t actually think I believed.”
The striking thing is that alongside the vulnerability, he also felt something like relief. The years of quietly soaking it up on the catwalk, of being hyper-aware of her body under scrutiny — that particular pressure just fell away. “For once in my swimsuit modeling career, I subconsciously thought a lot about my body, and it was like, no. I’m actually growing a man. Since I was probably like 20 years old, subconsciously, if I’m in a bikini, I’d look down and make sure I’m sucking or something. And for once, I didn’t think about that.”
I told her I remembered that feeling. The strange liberation of pregnancy in a world that spent years telling you to take up less space.
How pregnancy humbled a lifelong athlete
Katie has built her brand around sustainable, well-being and the idea that movement should make you feel like yourself, not punish you into a smaller shape. Pregnancy, she said, has tested and validated that framework in ways she didn’t expect.
“Before I got pregnant, my best friends would tell me how their bodies were changing and I’d be like, girl, you’re becoming human. Why are you having a body crisis? And now that I’m going through it, I’m like, oh, no. I get it. I really do.”
The first trimester hit her hard. All-day nausea, not just morning sickness. The energy is gone. And the plans she had made for herself—the type-A, ex-gym routine around which she had built her entire identity—ceased to work. “I had this mindset where it’s always harder, better, faster, stronger. I had to realize when I got pregnant, hey, no, no, no. We’re going to redefine all of that here.”
What kept pulling her back was the most basic version of her own message: just move. “My first trimester was hell. The only thing I would try to get back to was walking every day or moving my body for just five, ten minutes. Moving my body, as cliche as it sounds, is something that makes me feel like myself again.”
He paused. “I wish I could look back on those first few weeks and be like, hey. You’re going to be fine. It takes a lot longer than you think to accept the changes. And that’s okay.”
What Denise Austin taught her daughter about bodies – and what Katie is passing on
Denise Austin’s thread of this conversation was, for me, the richest part. Katie talks about her mom the way you talk about someone you’ve always admired but only now really see.
“My mom always said to me, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve been traveling with you since I was six weeks old. Oh yeah, I did the postpartum workout video four weeks postpartum.” And I’m like, okay, yeah, whatever. Now that I’m in it, I literally can’t imagine doing that.”
Four weeks postpartum. On a string. On VHS. I mean, come on. This is awful.
“I think when you step into that role as a daughter, you respect your mom a lot more because you realize everything she’s done and how much sacrifice she’s made to always be there and put me and my sister first. It’s really nice to have her come full circle.”
She also noted, with sincere gratitude, the gap between what her mother had access to and what she does. “It was like, oh my god, I literally had wrist problems because I didn’t have a nursing pillow. And now there’s a million nursing pillows to choose from. She had to wash all our bottles by hand. Like, our moms didn’t have the crazy pumps or anything that we have now.”
When my daughter was born, I made a quiet promise to myself that I would raise her differently than I was raised around bodies and food. I would do my best to filter out the noise about what it looked like and put more emphasis on what it could do. Hearing Katie talk about how she grew up made me feel like her mom had figured out something that many of us are still trying to figure out.
“If you looked at my mom’s DVDs and VHS tapes, you’d probably think my sister and I would grow up with body image issues,” Katie said. “But my parents never, ever focused on the aesthetic side of our bodies. It was more about what they’re capable of. My mom always had a dinner full of protein and carbs on the table before we played a huge game. It was about how to fuel our bodies. It was never about the food culture.”
He has a girl and he thought of this. “We live in Los Angeles and it can be, I want to make sure my daughter has a certain look. And I think, no, no, no, we don’t focus on her body. I’ll try to get my kids involved in sports because it teaches you — how to work with others, time management, leadership. We wanted to compete. We never wanted to be the best.
What the Wellness Industry Gets Wrong About Pregnancy
Before we finished, I asked what the wellness and pregnancy space wanted to talk about more candidly. Her answer was more nuanced than I expected.
“I was so scared before I got pregnant because of what I saw on social media,” she said. “People in the world like to prey on the bad, I think. And I know motherhood can be very, very hard. But I think when we harp on how hard it is, your words matter and the energy you put into things. Sometimes I’m afraid to talk about how good I feel, because I don’t want it to look like you’re looking at me. So I choose happiness every day.”
She is really so hot in person. Down to earth, funny, genuinely grateful for where she comes from. The wellness area could use more of this.
