The founder of Sweat and Bikini Body Guide looks back on a decade of lunges.
By 2015, she had launched a $20-a-month app called Sweat with Kayla.
Itsines currently has 16 million followers on Instagram.
Thats roughly the populations of Greece and Norway combined.
She is now listed on the Sweat website as its co-founder and one of its trainers.
Shes been up for two hours already.
But before all of that, she has the wee hours of the morning to herself.
Some quiet time to shower and put on a face.
I like to put makeup on, she explains.
I dont want to look disheveled.
I like to present myself at least with my hair in a ponytail and a little bit of makeup.
Because I wear sports clothes, I could look like I just dont have it together.
Its hard to imagine Itsines (pronounced It-seen-es) ever seeming like she doesnt have it together.
(Do I even need to say at this point that shes an eldest sister?)
Of course millions of people trusted her to guide them through 28 minutes of aerobic exercise.
Like Jane Fonda and Arnold Schwarzenegger before her, Itsines is, to some degree, selling herself.
Itsines knows this, knows comparison is an inevitable part of her work.
Still, she says she wants to discourage it.
Her life, she says, has been unusually easy.
I grew up in a household of love, food, and lots of family, she tells me.
Dinners were crowded affairs, and having 14 or 15 kids around the table was the norm.
If she didnt get her homework done, her dad would stay up late and help her finish it.
Itsines still lives in Adelaide, a city she describes as quite cold and gloomy.
She would happily move, but says, Id have to take my whole family with me.
Itsines parents areboth educators, but she didnt love school growing up.
She was an energetic kid who liked sports and bossing around her cousins and didnt like doing homework.
A year into university, she dropped out to pursue personal training full time.
Her family wasnt overly enthused.
To tell you the truth, I was mortified, Itsines mother, Anna, wrote over email.
It wasnt clear how Itsines would make a living off of personal training.
Anna said shed hoped Itsines would follow her parents into education.
I should have known though, she says.
When Kayla was little, she would be outside doing chin-ups with her dad.
One memory from this time stands out in particular.
It was a frigid morning, and she was training a group of about eight women.
Shivering, she thought, This is the funnest job.
I have loud music on; Im wearing a onesie.
I was like, This is so fun, I never want this to stop.
No one else wanted it to stop either, it turned out.
Interested followers started reaching out from around Australia asking to train with her.
Her then-boyfriend, Tobias Pearce, encouraged her to put together a program she could sell online.
She liked to be there in person to correct a clients form and to offer encouragement.
Plus, she wasnt sure who would buy it.
She designed the Instagram post announcing the program on Microsoft Paint.
(On literal Paint!
Do you remember Paint?!)
She thought that if 10 people bought it, she would be happy.
Significantly more than 10 people bought BBG.
People started sending her their transformation photos.
She didnt believe they were from her program at first.
I was like, I know it works, but you dont have me there, she says.
They were like, We dont need you there.
Her clientele, she said, were people who didnt feel ready to go into the gym.
Many of them felt the gym was for bros. theyd be like, Yeah, of course, Itsines says.
But some guys treated it like a nightclub, and its not a nightclub.
She realized how big BBG was getting when she started doing boot camps.
At one boot camp in Perth, the line of women was blocks long.
She was so nervous she wanted to cry.
So I was like, All right guys, Im going to start with star jumps.
At the same time as BBG was taking off, body positivity was increasingly de rigueur.
The mainstream conversation surrounding womens health and fitness appeared to be shifting, albeit slightly and slowly.
Itsines has been open about her feelings about the backlash.
Do I regret calling my guides Bikini Body?
My answer is yes, she toldBloombergin 2016.
Thats why when I released the app, I called it Sweat With Kayla.
Sweat is so empowering.
In 2021, Itsines officially renamed the BBG programs High Intensity With Kayla Itsines.
I stuck to the same thing the whole time, she says forcefully.
Ive always said, 30 minutes or less is all you need for a workout.
Just three, four times a week, and then walk every other day.
When it comes to food, she says, just eat whatever you want.
Well, not whatever you want, but a healthy, balanced diet.
But she insists she has never preached restriction.
You are not going to have them around forever.
Itsines is both troubled and heartened by the changes shes observed over her career.
and moved toward a focus on mindfulness and mental health.
Itsines didnt know about the Ozempic craze when I brought it up.
Her white teeth disappear behind downturned lips, and her ponytail seems to deflate slightly.
Stuff like this sends me backwards.
It sends me so far back from what Ive been trying to achieve with women.
Then she pauses for a moment to consider, as if constitutionally incapable of being inconsiderate.
But am I a person who is genetically small?
So how do you know what it feels like to want to take something like that to lose weight?
Maybe someone has four kids, she muses, maybe they have a hectic job.
Its understanding peoples positions as well.
I grew up in a bubble, and I still am in a bubble.
No one has their whole family on the same street.
Like, are you joking?
I still have my grandparents.
Ive never lost anyone.
I dont actually know what pain is.
Her assistant chimes in.
You have felt hurt, she says from off camera.
You have felt things.
Her personal life has undergone a sea change over the past few years.
She and Tobias Pearce, her former business partner, got engaged and had a baby, Arna.
Woodroffe and Itsines story is something out of a cozy rom-com.
Did you expect anything else?
They met through his sister, who worked at a coffee shop nearby.
He told her he didnt like it.
I was like, whatever, the bungalows cool, Itsines says, rolling her eyes.
And he was cool.
And I was cool.
And then he was single.
And I was single.
And then it just is what it is now.
We have a kid, and were still best friends.
There was one hurt she hasnt talked about.
A scare during her pregnancy with Jax.
But 20 weeks in, doctors found a mass of fluid in the brain.
They wouldnt be able to tell if everything would be OK for eight or nine weeks.
A nurse told her not to Google the condition, that it would only freak her out.
So for two months, she and Woodroffe waited.
Shes not a woo-woo sort of person, but she would take whatever hope she could get.
Eight weeks later, the scan came back, and everything was OK.
The baby was fine, and it was a boy.
In half a second, her face rearranges itself.
All sentimentality and fear is erased, and the no-nonsense trainer is back.
Like, its a box jump.
Photographs by Eliza Harrison
Photo Director: Alex Pollack
SVP Fashion: Tiffany Reid
SVP Creative: Karen Hibbert
