Growing up with a fitness icon for a mom prepared Katie Austin for almost everything. Pregnancy was a different story.
Katie has built her brand around sustainable, feel-good wellness and the idea that movement should make you feel like yourself, not punish you into a smaller shape.
If you grew up watching Denise Austin do step aerobics in a leotard on your family’s TV, you already have a sense of the household Katie Austin came from. Fitness was the backdrop of her childhood. Sports and movement were simply what her family did. Her mom was a college gymnast. Her dad played professional tennis. Katie went on to play Division I lacrosse at USC. Her sister was ranked number one in the nation for the sport as well.
As an elder millennial who logged serious hours with those VHS tapes, I went into this conversation already a fan of the family. I came out of it thinking Denise is even more of an icon than I realized — and that Katie, now 27 weeks pregnant with her first daughter, is doing something all her own.
Katie is the founder of the KA App, a lifestyle platform built around movement, meals, and mindset, and she has over two million social media followers who show up for her particular brand of warm, unpretentious wellness. She is also, as of this spring, a six-time Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model who walked the SI runway on Hulu at six months pregnant — a moment that looked like it was 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 that I go into the runway show I have a pretty good amount of confidence,” she told me. “For five years, I was like, yes, slaying it. I have energy. I look great. And then this year, I didn’t really realize that I would feel such an identity shift.”
She had known she’d be pregnant for the shoot — she found out on New Year’s Day, and the January shoot was already on the calendar. The runway show was less certain. She didn’t want to count on it, didn’t want to think too far ahead. Then she found out it would air on Hulu, to a nationwide audience, and the whole thing took on a different 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. She didn’t seriously consider backing out. But the day of the show, she felt things she hadn’t anticipated. “I had this very overwhelming feeling where I wasn’t really expecting to feel that way. I wasn’t expecting to feel a huge identity shift and feel not as much like myself. And then there was the internet to think about. How are people gonna react? Are people gonna be mean to me? It was just a lot of things that kind of went through my mind that I didn’t think were actually going to come up like they did.”
What’s striking is that alongside the vulnerability, she also felt something like relief. The years of quietly sucking it in on the runway, of being hyperaware of her body under scrutiny — that particular pressure just fell away. “For once in my swimsuit modeling career, I’ve subconsciously thought about my body a lot, and this was like, no. I’m actually growing a human. Since I was probably like 20 years old, I’ve been subconsciously, if I’m in a bikini, looking down and making sure I’m sucking in or something. And for once, I didn’t have to think about that.”
I told her I remembered that feeling. The strange liberation of pregnancy in a world that has spent years telling you to take up less space.
How pregnancy humbled a lifelong athlete
Katie has built her brand around sustainable, feel-good wellness and the idea that movement should make you feel like yourself, not punish you into a smaller shape. Pregnancy, she said, has both 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 growing a 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 get it.”
The first trimester hit her hard. Full-day sickness, not just morning sickness. Energy gone. And the plans she’d made for herself — the type-A, former-athlete routine she’d built her whole identity around — stopped working. “I had this mentality where it’s always like harder, better, faster, stronger. I had to realize when I got pregnant, hey, no, no, no. We’re gonna redefine all of this here.”
What kept pulling her back was the most basic version of her own message: just move. “My first trimester was hell. The one thing that I would just try to go 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.”
She paused. “I just wish I could look back at myself in those early weeks and be like, hey. You’re gonna be just fine. It takes so much 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 down
The Denise Austin 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 are only now truly seeing.
“My mom always told me, ‘Oh, yeah, I traveled with you from six weeks old. Oh, yeah, I did my postpartum workout video at 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. In a leotard. On VHS. I mean, come ON. That is bonkers.
“I think when you step into this role as a daughter, you have so much more respect for your mom because you’re realizing everything that she did and how many sacrifices she made to always be present and put me and my sister first. It’s really cool to have it come full circle.”
She also noted, with genuine gratitude, the gap between what her mother had access to and what she does. “She was like, oh my gosh, I literally had wrist issues from not having a breastfeeding pillow. And now there are a million breastfeeding pillows to choose from. She had to hand wash all of our bottles. Like, our moms did not have the crazy pumps or anything that we have now.”
When my own daughter was born, I made a quiet promise to myself that I’d raise her differently than I was raised around bodies and food. I’d do my best to filter out noise about what she looked like, and put more emphasis on what she could do. Hearing Katie talk about how she was raised made me feel like her mom had figured something out that a lot of us are still working toward.
“If you look at my mom’s DVDs and VHS tapes, you would 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 would always have a protein and carb filled dinner on the table before we had a huge game. It was all about how to fuel our bodies. It was never along the lines of diet culture.”
She’s having a girl, and she’s thought about this. “We live in Los Angeles and it can be like, I want to make sure my daughter looks a certain way. And I’m like, no, no, no, we’re not focusing on her body. I will try my best to get my kids involved in sports because of how much it teaches you — how to work with others, time management, leadership. We wanted to compete. We wanted to be the best at our sport. It was never about anything else.”
What the wellness industry gets wrong about pregnancy
Before we wrapped up, I asked what she wished the wellness and pregnancy space talked about more honestly. Her answer was more nuanced than I expected.
“I lived in so much fear 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 really, really hard. But I think when we harp on how hard it is, your words matter and the energy you put in matters. Sometimes I’m scared to open up about how great I feel, because I don’t want it to come across as look at me. It’s more like — no, you can do this. If that’s toxic positivity, then sue me, but that’s how I choose happiness every day.”
She really is that warm in person. Grounded, funny, genuinely grateful for where she comes from. The wellness space could use more of it.
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