Ep. 75 Alice Liveing On The Dark Side Of Social Media, Influencing & Diet Culture

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1:17Because when your operations are smooth, your impact can be bigger. Visit business.warmart.com to get started. I hold an immense amount of guilt for the narrative that I played out, you know, online. Alice Living was offered her first six-figure book deal at age 22 whilst known online as Clean Eating Alice. What I really wanted from this episode was for it to be a really open and frank conversation about the reality of different trends on social media but also can have an impact on the people perpetuating the trend. I was on the front cover of Women's Health magazine. I had this rippling six-pack.

1:51At what point did you realise that your content needed to change? When an article came up in the Daily Mail that said Alice is the cause of eating disorders and I remember having a complete physical breakdown. The fact that we make teenagers so famous and put them in such a position of authority creates an environment that it makes that happen. I go on TikTok now Grace and I'm terrified by what I see. Guys you're doing what I did. Stop. In an industry that encourages exploitation if a 19 year old blows up tomorrow as soon as that person gets some negative press No one's going to stop for a second at dropping that and moving on to the next.

2:27I now am terrified of being online. There are going to be pockets of the internet that continue to perpetuate these toxic narratives. With social media now, like, it's probably far more pervasive, and I'm not sure how we do stop that. I'll tell you my kind of, like, rock-bottom moment.

2:50Hey, what is up, and welcome to Working Hard, Hardly Working. Today's episode features the super inspiring Alice Living. Alice is the definition of a multi-hyphenate, a personal trainer, best-selling author, founder, influencer. She was offered her first six-figure book deal at age 22, whilst known online as Clean Eating Alice. But since then, Alice's career has taken a turn, pivoting away from clean eating and towards balance, sustainable exercise, and well-being. What I really wanted from this episode was for it to be a kind of really open and frank conversation about the reality of social media and the reality of different trends on social media and how they can have an impact on all of us but also even on the people perpetuating the trend I didn't expect this conversation to be so honest and open to be honest I thought it was really really incredible how she was able to share that with us and I do think it's a kind of lesson on growth and why we don't need to be too harsh on ourselves about our past decisions I've never heard a conversation like this happen especially around things like social media and diet culture and the realities of kind of what social media used to be what social media can be now and the the issues with perpetuating trends within social media for kind of everyone I hope you enjoyed this episode if you do please don't forget to like and subscribe and review wherever you're listening it really helps the podcast and helps us to get snazzy office like this but also all of the incredible guests we're going to have this year and I cannot tell you how excited I am we have so much in store thank you so much for joining me thank you for having me I'm very excited to chat um I feel like we have a lot to talk about especially as people who kind of started a career within the fitness industry when you're shot into a position that you're in you kind of need to be in that position you need to do the thing you've had a really really interesting journey in terms of what you originally kind of came into fame for and then kind of talking about your journey since then and everything I just think it's incredibly interesting so I very much want to get into that but first of all I would love to speak a little bit about your kind of early career as a young person that sounds like you're not young now she looks at me with a youthful Globes.

5:10But when you were kind of a teenager, did you always want to kind of work in fitness? Were you always interested in fitness? Yeah. First of all, thank you so much for having me. Also, just I want to say how nice it is to like have seen your growth as well. You know, when you referenced them, we started at the same time. So it's amazing seeing you do so well. And I genuinely say that, like, I'm so happy for you. And I love that I'm sat here in this position. and it's so nice in answer to your question did I always want to work in fitness no um growing up I was never sporty when I think back to my kind of sporting journey I was the kid at school who would do anything to get out of every games lesson every opportunity that I had to move my body I was like running the other way you know I think that tied up in that as I started to recognize that exercise was something that I kind of had to do as part of my school experience I then pivoted to be like like, right, well, I guess I'll just do it from a fat loss perspective.

6:05You know, I was one of those kids who grew up at the time when you'd spend your, you know, time in the gym on the treadmill, just watching the calorie tick over and over and up and up. And you'd get to a certain number and be like, yeah, done. And that to me was exercise. And my relationship with fitness, with movement was pretty one dimensional. It was all about body composition. And I guess as well, coming from a dance background, that being a big part of my childhood, that was something that was always at the forefront of my mind anyway so again like I said I wasn't into like fitness as such but I did love to dance and wrapped up within that was this idea that you had to remain small that there was one certain body type that was kind of you know preferred and so I guess as I had that you know journey through sport and exercise it was all very much prefaced by well I'm going to just do it to make myself smaller then right which still very much was the case when you started your career as well like there are you know there have absolutely been different body trends and horrifically but i also you know it was still very much like be as small as possible um it was very much in the kind of just post the era of like all of the kind of tabloids the things you know you like the fact that you would literally have a magazine where with like a celebrity on the front being like looks like she's put on 10 pounds horror stories of like no one wants to live with her such an insane era which we obviously haven't truly grown out of but that obviously you know was still really the landscape when you started hosting about fitness yeah and I also think that even if we take a step back from that my understanding and my relationship with food exercise all these things didn't necessarily even start from there it started like in the home you know when I think about my mum's relationship with food and I do think that when we when we think about all of these you know experiences and all of our kind of strange relationships that we have with food and exercise as women you know I feel like we're in a much better place now but there's still a lot of like you said that stuff floating around we have to look back to our mothers and their mothers and their experiences and the fact that this stuff isn't new it's just often you know chameleoning into other form formulas but but actually you know I remember being as young as seven eight and you know going with my mum to her personal trainer uh where you know it was all about kind of you know I've got to lose weight and there was this big thing about exercise being totally connected to weight loss and and then not really being much else to it and so you know no wonder that's what I believed and you know when I started my own journey of training or whatever that I genuinely solely believe that exercise was there to change how we look and that it was rooted in in fat loss so yeah of course that was you know what I set out to do when I started my journey you know online at the time there was just absolutely nothing wrong with the fact that I was in an already fairly small lean body but yet that wasn't enough and I wanted to be smaller and I was praised for that journey right and before we come on to speak more about that in the beginning of your kind of career in fitness I want to talk a little bit about your career on the west end purely from a point of selfish interest yeah what did your days look like well so I was I was in a UK UK number one tour so I graduated from Bird College and I actually graduated early because I got my first job in Annie um which was really exciting and before anyone asked no I didn't play Annie everyone's like were you Annie no no guys I was I was in the um like adult ensemble and I actually covered Grace Barrel which is like the lead female part so that was fun and you know it was amazing to get a job in an industry that I had dreamt my whole life of being in like when I was a little girl like I would be going to you know musicals in the West End and just sitting there and being like why can't it be me oh my god it's such you I still go there and I'm like yeah and I think that like and and one of the things that I'm at peace with now which is why it's really nice that I can look back on those times with such fond memories is I did it and I'm really proud of myself for doing that like I did a year tour and in answer to your question like it was hard work like the hardest I've ever worked in my life at the time I had started the you know Instagram page so I was kind of doing stuff for that I was also training a lot because you know as we said exercise became a big part of changing my body composition and then at the same time doing eight to ten shows a week moving around to different cities in the UK every week so I remember starting up in Newcastle and when you're on a tour I think I was on roughly like 400 pounds a week just being totally honest which you know was difficult in the sense that a lot of that then had to go on my accommodation I was moving around every week and I oh they don't pay for your accommodation in the tour oh no no no yeah this is like yeah the crazy world of like here's a touring obviously with no job you wouldn't expect them to pay for that apart from them making you like if you relocated for secondment or something yeah you were given a moving fee but also you would have had to pay for short-term accommodation you would have had to pay for a hotel yeah it was it was pretty bad I mean we got per diems which was kind of like a bit of money towards our travel especially because we were traveling so much between each city you had to pay for the travel well yeah pretty much like a lot of people Yeah.

11:31Oh, babe. It was like, yeah, spit and sawdust real, like real hard work. And I have to tell you the story. Right. And this is where, like, I think it really gave me a good grounding of like genuine hard work. Right. That's not to say that I don't think other people don't work really hard, but it was for me that probably that experience that I needed that really took me back to basics and taught me such a high level of discipline. so my first stop on our uk tour was in newcastle and i was a complete newbie to touring never done it before so i had no idea in terms of like the you know if i did it again i'd be much more well versed but i rocked up in newcastle and i'd messaged this guy that was in the year below me at school who i knew was at uni there and i was like hey like have you got a spare room like can i stay in your place can i stay in your spare room and uh i just can't believe i even did that but I rocked up to he was like yeah sure I'm not actually there because it wasn't in uni time but you're welcome to stay in my room I was like great amazing free room so save myself a bit of money so I got to this house in Newcastle and I go in this like stoner lets me in he's like hey the room's upstairs and I'm cut to this room and um there were no bed sheets um there was no working light so I got back to the house after finishing rehearsals at like 11 p.m walked through the door like the light in my bedroom didn't work and the tap didn't turn off so it was just like dripping the whole night and I honestly lay there like this and just was like I can't do this I remember ringing my mom and crying and being like I can't do this mom I can't do this and she was like yeah you can you're gonna take yourself back to the theater tomorrow and you're gonna find yourself like my mom's always been really good at never like giving me a leg up like she's always been like find a solution Alice yeah do it so um went back to the theater ended up finding another room and some old man I mean now I think about it I'm not kidding you when I say I stayed in this man must have been like 65 something like that chain smoker had a spare room single bed in a high rise in Newcastle absolutely lovely man by the way but had no idea who he was just complete stranger and there I am having had failed digs on my first night rock got up to his house and I was like hey I'm gonna be staying with you for two weeks like here's my bags I've got to run to the theater but see you later left all my stuff there my worldly possessions and was like oh that's so wild and honestly and then the funniest part was like I said to you at the time I was like doing all the stuff on my Instagram as well so every morning he'd like come in and I was like arranging my bowl on the kitchen table with like my perfect like porridge or whatever I made she was like what is this girl doing around the outside not even kidding you I used to travel with plates in my suitcase like I gave up space in my suitcase so that I could travel with like plates and cooking stuff so that I could carry on posting on my Instagram like that was the level of commitment to the uh to the to the cause but yeah it was a crazy ride I I don't talk about it that much but there were some wild experiences in terms of like I remember one room that I stayed in in Portsmouth in this like lovely old lady's house who clearly had like some kind of cognitive decline I'd walk in and then like the kettle would just be like boiling and there'd be something on the hob and I had this tiny single bed in her house where I couldn't even get my suitcase in the room so like my suitcase had to be like outside the room and it was just it was really wild and I think that you know going back to what I said about teaching me hard work but also like giving me such a good grounding of like life outside of London and in different people's homes I stayed in so many different places I met so many amazing people and for all the like bad days there were some amazing ones like I remember staying with this family in Oxford and being like can I move in with you guys like I love you really like to be like with your family so um so yeah touring was really hard to anyone who does it it's like hats off to you and I think that just generally and I know that you come from kind of a theater and music background as well like it is difficult and I think that um I have so much respect for all performers but particularly those in musicals because I think it is really really tough to live in a world where you are getting like constant rejection the money's not even great so once you do even get a job it's like well I'm still struggling there's not great rights in terms of like what you're able to do within a contract you know I've got friends that are in shows and have had all sorts of difficult things go on so I did a year and then I was like I'm gonna just gonna take a bit of time out from from touring I was like mentally and physically exhausted I wrote my first book while I was on tour as well so I was doing eight shows a week within that first within that first yeah I was also writing my books I'd like finish the show at like 10 30 I think oh no 10 we came down because we had kids in the show so 10 we'd come down I'd go home and maybe work for two hours I'd then be up at 6am I'd sleep for like four hours be up the next morning go to the gym film a workout at the gym because I had to post that on my Instagram get to the theater we always had rehearsals because we had loads of kids in the show so we were constantly rehearsing in new kids so it was just it was a lot and I'll tell you my kind of like rock bottom moment but basically I don't know if anyone knows Annie the Musical but I had the part of Star to Be which is the girl that comes out with the suitcases and it's like NYC I won't sing it that was me you could sing it all yeah I'd like it that was me and um I remember that I was in Aylesbury at the theatre in Aylesbury and this was towards the end of the tour and this was at a point when I you know like you know when people say they're like mentally physically like drained I had nothing left in the tank bear in mind as well I was also suffering from disordered eating so my brain was not functioning and we can go into that but um I was at the theater in Aylesbury I had my mom in the audience because that's like close to my hometown where I grew up and uh I stepped out onto the stage just in this solo part where the stage is empty it's just me and it's just me in these two suitcases and I have maybe like a minute of singing on my own on the stage what do i do i come out i've done this show maybe a hundred times before maybe more my mind is blank nothing nothing comes out that is my worst so i literally stood there and i'm like i sing the first line and then i literally just look out at this audience and i'm like i have not got fucking clue what's supposed to come out my mouth next what do I do I'm like and then I was like like I sang crap like I sang I can't even tell you what I sang I can't tell you what words came out but I remember my mum coming to the stage door at the end of the show she was like what happens tonight she's seen the show before she's like what happens tonight she's like a little minor blip but yeah oh that is my worst that I can't even I'm actually getting hot thinking about it because I'm getting hot I'm like sweating it was really stressful but yeah that's probably one of my favorite stories from tour was um just having a complete and utter mind blank and i know i know there's lots of people in theater who've had the same it's like a weird thing in your brain where you've done something so many times before and then suddenly you're like because also you're not going about it because yeah yeah or god that makes me so deeply uncomfortable that is a that is food for my next few nightmares so thank you so much um you've alluded to it within that story obviously this was kind of simultaneous like you were simultaneously blowing up on social media and at a time where blowing up on social media meant a lot i don't say that to diminish people blowing up on social media now like i'm not fucking blowing up on social media now but it's more like the it's very different like in terms of the virality was reserved for people kind of really really really really really blowing up in a kind of personal brand sense who would also get book deals who would also get like all of these different things like it was a huge thing can you tell me the story of how you grew your page how it kind of started like what was happening then first of all there were just less of us so the opportunity to go viral was was you know higher but you're right that it was a very different type of kind of viral social media was really new and um it was in its infancy in the sense that like everyone was just kind of muddling about and doing their best but there was there was so much messiness to it that I actually really missed like I missed the kind of messiness and the the authenticity of of social media back then that's not to say that people can't be authentic now it's just very different in terms of its its like style but I started posting when I was at college so this was before I went on the tour really I set out to create a food diary I had this ambition that you know there was everyone took things about like a moment in their life that really changed them and I know that it wasn't one necessarily um big catalyst but there was definitely a meeting that I had with a teacher at my college and she sort of sat me down at the end of my I think it was at the end of my first year and she said something like you know and and bear in mind I'd gone to this college and I was definitely like lower down in terms of my capabilities like I remember feeling such imposter syndrome and I actually fell flat on my face actually flat on my ass on my in my first year jazz assessment and literally like one of the grounds swallowing me up like I just wasn't I wasn't great I remember her sitting me down I didn't get great marks in my first year assessments and she said to me you know Alice like you just really need to get stronger like you're lacking strength you don't have enough core strength to support you and it's really apparent like in the way that you dance that was what she said and like it wasn't said in a really harsh way but you know when something really sticks in your brain and so when I moved into like my second year and kind of through my college experience I was like you know I kind of took that as well I need to lose weight like my body's not right I need to change myself and I think that I had such a deep hunger to succeed in the theatre industry that it was almost as though like it was just a non-negotiable that that had to happen and I think that's really sad because you know theater is becoming so much more diverse slowly but it is um but at the time it really wasn't and so you know I I remember girls in my year who you know all of us were pretty petite very petite and still thinking that we weren't quite enough for you know what the industry wanted and we were told and you know there was a lot of kind of toxic um language used and stuff that I guess colored how we felt about ourselves but um yeah it was that moment that made me feel as though I needed to change my body and so I started this Instagram as a way of creating a food diary and really it was just taking pictures of pretty horrendous looking plates of food that were terribly cooked um very bland but they were my way of keeping some level of accountability in terms of what I was eating I never intended for for myself to go viral I never I like you know you and I both started at a time where being an influencer didn't even exist right we just were trying to build a community maybe or like engage with like-minded people I think for me mine was you know I'm going to start this page and initially it was private when I made it public it was solely so that I could engage with people who were doing similar things to myself I just enjoyed that level of interaction and I think when you're um you know I was living at the time in a house full of three guys and one girl and like none of them wanted to hear about my diet adventures so I was like well I'll share it with people online instead um so yeah I I didn't set out in any way for it to grow to what it did but it just so happened that it was at a time when there was a definite appetite for um diets and health and fitness related content you know we have to reference people like joe wicks and delicious the other who really were the kind of um first in terms of kayla it's seen as well another person who i remember as being the first in terms of this new wave of young um wellness kind of inspirations let's call it i think part of it and i don't mean this is a criticism of everything i completely i think this was the case with mine as well it was disguised as a health thing oh yeah when in a lot of the don't get me wrong part of it was and i you know was very much in pursuit of some idea of like health or thought that losing weight was going to make me healthier like whatever it might be but like the the appetite was for things that weren't were a rebellion against the kind of like heroin chic but were kind of not that different like it felt different and that's what people wanted they wanted this like super clean very kind of like healthy and colorful and all of this rather than like cigarettes and coffee like there was that there was that change which felt healthier and so therefore was like very much glorified in terms of like you know it was essentially what we should all aspire to because it was healthy we had no we definitely didn't understand things like orthorexia or anything like that at the time I think that's such an important point to make and I completely agree with you because I genuinely hand on heart when I first started doing everything that I was doing I genuinely thought I was pursuing health to me I had no idea that actually what I was doing was unbelievably restrictive incredibly disordered those things weren't even on my radar I was like I'm the pinnacle of health I've cut out all these things that you know because when I first went to uni like my first year at uni was spent like having total food freedom in the way that I'm really glad that I did I'm so happy I had that year because it was amazing but you know I was eating pizza for dinner every night I was having ice cream with my friends who would get dominoes every Sunday and I'd have like a pizza and a half like it was just like I had total food freedom so with that being my before let's say to then go to what I was doing and the kind of way that I was eating and my approach to exercise it felt completely normal healthy you know I didn't have any concept of it being dangerous or damaging and I don't think any of us did no and I feel like that's one of the things that I've struggled with as the discourse has changed in terms of like you only know that I've spoken to on this podcast with Steph Claire Smith with Deliciously Ella like there was it didn't blow up just because the person doing it I can imagine because we've you know we now kind of demonize the term clean eating that was very transparently in your the name of your business and like that's it's so interesting because you know you want to be able to move past it and look at it and be like yeah do you know what like i mean you've said openly like i had it was very disordered in my eating all it it was restrictive like all of these different things you didn't know that at the time and actually you were doing very much what you thought to be the right thing and actually the reason you had such a following was because other people aspired to be like that and it's so interesting i think in a kind of wider societal um sense when we look at like the different trends on social media and how things have changed and we're so quick to demonize past trends whilst also not having any acknowledgement of like the current or the fact that everyone within those trends was being lifted up because they were doing what everyone else wanted to see does that make sense i feel like i've explained that quite badly no you haven't at all that you've explained it really well and i completely agree with you and i think that i hold and continue to hold an immense amount of guilt for the narrative that i played out you know online and that's quite difficult you know because I will still have people who are convinced that I'm a fraud you know I've only changed my opinion because it's got me traction or you know because the discourse changed and therefore I had to and I am still you know messaged by people who are like well do you still believe what you wrote in your first book and you know there's a lot of stuff that I I had to play out really publicly in terms of a big climb down and a big acknowledgement of getting it wrong and I think that I've tried to do that with grace and you know I've tried to do it in a way that allows me to be vulnerable and and share the mistakes that I've made but I do think that there's a part of me that feels you know that there does need to be a conversation had about how it was a wider context of a movement rather than it being individual people really driving that narrative yeah and also I think that like it's really interesting because I think that it's so I think it's right that you've like had a conversation about it and I think it's right that you've said do you know what this is what I was part of this is what I believe now kind of that type of conversation what I think is even more important is the fact that we acknowledge that we are part of a culture that makes those things happen like I that was also your journey as much as it you know you say you hold a huge amount of guilt I'm I'm really sorry that like that must be really tough.

28:40I also think, and you know, like I can completely see like it's such a change industry. But I also think that that was also your journey. A lot of people go from teenager-dom, whatever it is, to kind of being an adult and have these big changes and change in like what was healthy, what was not healthy. The fact that we make teenagers or very young adults so famous and put them in such a position of authority creates an environment that it makes that happen and also like you were also the one who had to have that disordered eating yeah i don't say had to because you had to i mean that you you went through that as in you you know as much as you posting salads might have affected someone else it also affected you and that was a very real journey you had as well and you couldn't have realized that any other way than going through it much like we all will have had our own private journeys with unhealthy relationships with relationships with food with any of those things at the time we thought it was the right thing and therefore if you're in a position of authority you're going to be saying that's the right thing yeah that's nothing you know until yeah i know it later like i used to say all like on youtube used to like have such strong opinions about things that i look like now and i'm like you know nothing and i also think like isn't that life don't we have to get things wrong in order to get them right like who leaves school and suddenly makes every decision you know in the right way and never makes a mistake like I think and you know to a certain extent I've been grateful for the continued support in that transition but when I think back and I think about my experiences you know for example like I was 22 when I signed my first book deal like that is so young when I now think about 22 year old me and I think about the amount of you know I got six figure paycheck for that first book like what you know like who does that it says so much about us yeah and I had zero like I think I just got my personal training qualification I had zero nutritional qualifications and as much as I was driving that ambition to you know I'm having these opportunities given to me of course I'm going to take them like again like I said when the background was that year of hard work on tour someone you know a book agent turns around she says I'm going to give you x amount of money to write a book who's going to turn around and say actually no like I didn't have the the confidence that I have now and the importance of qualifications and know-how and all that sort of stuff like I didn't have that I think to myself like I didn't really have anyone protecting me I didn't I didn't and when an article came up in the Daily Mail that said Alice is the you know cause of eating disorders and I remember having a complete physical breakdown as in like i lost it and i was like how has this happened you know i just think to myself like i i i think there could have been i don't want to it's not it's not that i'm pointing any blame at all because i actually think that we were all just part of a really toxic time and i think that now I'm just grateful that I have really and I know this sounds a bit cliche to say but like done the work and had to unlearn a lot of stuff and like you know I do have guilt because I'd be crazy not to because I know that what I did had an impact on a lot of people so for me to just say oh you know I was just a product of my environment I don't necessarily feel that I do feel that there has to be some level of accountability right but at the same time I also think I I'm grateful for the journey that it's given me because I find myself now sat here and I'm like I'm in a good place you know I have good people around me I have amazing management I've got a business that's thriving I have a fiance like I have a life that I'm happy for and I again going back to my original point like I've made mistakes in order to get to this point and don't we all like don't we all fumble our way through i completely agree with all of that and i think it's really powerful and i'm so grateful to you for talking about it because i feel like that's actually how we reclaim the conversation as well when it's kind of that must have been really hard for a number of reasons i do think that when we talk about something like some things like this when it comes to social media we talk about them as if the person has committed a literal crime like as in like you saying like i you know what i did like all of this it literally sounds like you murdered someone and like I think there is a disproportionate nature of social media when we have this very black and white approach to something that like you know for example that article saying you know you cause eating disorders you also had your own eating disorder and we lived in a society where they would offer someone who perhaps has that and perhaps if anyone had looked at that and said that's a 22 year old I would actually say from a position of like if they got a nutritional expert in and that nutritional expert was like or psychologist or whatever was like oh by the way the thing i would be careful about is this no one's looking out for that everyone's looking out for like how they can make money sales yeah i know and like it is not like i think we there are a lot of questions to be asked when we are in a society that creates an environment that a 22 year old with in that scenario is offered six figures to write yeah and honestly like that's why I'm so great like I moved management after I signed that book deal I was with someone else and I moved to the management I'm with now who I've been with for like my basically now my entire career and like the level of safeguarding now and protection that I have experienced like this is more of speaking to a point to you know anyone who's an influencer or an up-and-coming content creator like having someone who is genuinely looking out for you makes all the difference to your career like I have felt so supported legally financially um emotionally you know from from a kind of pastoral perspective like just completely supported by my agency and by my manager in particular when my previous experience was was probably not so great you know um that made all the difference and I genuinely when I were to say what's given me the ability to carry on and to have longevity it's genuinely that's that's a big part of the puzzle for me yes it was me being able to do the work and being able to really like go on that journey of you know as we spoken about but I also think that that is a really important point to make I don't do this alone like I I'm grateful that someone you know Izzy my manager um found me supported me took me in a completely different direction that has continued to help me to thrive and has given me all of the protection that I need compared to that initial situation and that's also such a sign of a good person as well for many reasons because I can imagine that when you went through a huge transition in terms of your content in terms of what you're promoting in terms of not being a golden girl in terms of like you're talking about that press like any of these different things in an industry that encourages exploitation I mean that in a soft sense you essentially at that age that's what was happening it could have been very easy to see the cash dollar going in another direction and actually understanding and i do think that's one of the biggest issues with this industry is that the function of it and the function of the cycles and how fast those cycles move means that it is very tempting to you know if a 19 year old blows up tomorrow for whatever reason no one is going to stop to think for a second about how they can get the most out of that And equally, as soon as that person gets some negative press or falls down or is less exciting, no one's going to stop for a second at dropping that and moving on to the next one.

36:35It is by its nature pretty toxic, isn't it? You know, when you don't have the right people.

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37:38Try it out now at Wix.com. Your sausage mcbuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage mcbuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just$5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Prices and participation may vary. At what point did you realize that your content needed to change? Well, first of all, I think that I just started changing how I was approaching health and fitness. It wasn't that I led it from a content perspective. It was more that I recognized in myself that there was a lot of behaviors that were pretty disordered. And I had to work to go through those behaviors and understand why they were problematic and overcome them.

38:25And that makes it sound really easy. It wasn't. There was a woman that I came across who I referenced as like changing my life. She's amazing. And she was a client. I was a personal trainer at a gym in Southwest London and she was a client there, not of mine, actually, of a friend of mine. She is an acupuncturist and she said, come and see me for a session. I'd love to see you because I was having some issues with my periods. I wasn't having one you know like I think up until that point I knew I'd known that there was something like not right and I'd known that what I was doing was pretty unhealthy by that point like I'd started to understand the levels of like disordered eating that I was going through and and the impact that I was having on my body and you know and more um but I remember going to see Emma and like she sat me down and she was asking me all these questions and then she starts asking me like quite weird ones and when like anyone that has met or knows emma cannon like she's a bit of like a witch like she's kind of a bit like crazy in the best way possible just started asking all these weird questions and then she was like darling she was like can i be really honest with you and i was like yeah of course and she was like you are too thin your body is struggling you're doing too much exercise and i think that you need to eat more and we're going to help you get there in order to get your period back you've got to trust me and i was like oh my god like she literally you know when like your mum kind of sits you down and she's like what you're doing is not quite right and we just need to put a bit of work in to get you better and i think that it was like that she did it in such a like maternal caring way like it wasn't it wasn't some it didn't feel like the overwhelming noise that was coming from like disordered eating is bad what you're doing is bad it felt like someone actually was like genuinely caring for me and and like that I was going through the same thing that lots of other people were and she just oh my god helped me change my life like big time even just learning that like my body was just experiencing too much stress like I was just doing way too much and understanding that like no doctor had told me that you know I'd gone to the doctor however many times and had all sorts of conversations about PCOS and all these things that might be going on and actually really my body was just struggling right to function yeah and that's so classic as well because what I feel like there's so much within our healthcare system which worth saying is fantastic and very important and just needs to be invested in more but like the fact that no one will see there's especially when it comes to women like there's such a binary approach to like seeing someone being like well they're not a skeleton and also seeing someone and being like well like as in like either side it's like well yeah yeah i know just offer you one of these five things that you might have that we can treat i think we're getting better i i think even the conversations around like amenorrhea and in particular hypothalamic amenorrhea and for those that aren't sure that the loss of a period basically through too much stress on the body um low energy availability too much exercise stress you know whatever um we are talking more about it doctors do know more about it but you know it's hard because a lot of the time and this is such a big thing in my journey is like and actually it's a bigger thing like if we take a step back not even maybe necessarily with like you know body composition but just generally like you have to be ready to come to the decision to say goodbye to some of that stuff before you know before you allow those opinions in so i reckon that emma could have met me a year earlier and said those things to me and i'd have been like she doesn't know what she's talking about yeah but i think i was so ready and i so wanted to change that i took on board what she said so wholeheartedly and was like oh my god like this is this is obviously gonna you know this is what i need to do and i think i had to say goodbye to my quote-unquote dream body what i thought was my dream body that was something that i had to acknowledge that i was like i'm gonna have to lose it it has to go because i can't keep that and be healthy and that's like a grieving process because I'd worked to get to this point where I had this body that I thought was like you know I would take pictures of myself every day and I would you know have this I had this rippling six pack I was on the front cover of women's health magazine like I was told by people all the time oh you look amazing and I knew that that had to go I was like I can't keep this this is not healthy for me this is not what I need to be prioritizing so it was that and I think that you know anyone that's going through the same thing like it is a grieving process because you know like it or not like we are so linked to how we feel about our bodies and and that's so connected to confidence and mood and you know everything that we do is so connected so I just think that like it was almost that realization it was like I'm going to have to say goodbye to this body and I'm going to have to go on this journey where I start to accept that it's going to change.

43:23Always at the forefront of that was I need to do it because the life that I was living had become so small. Like I had no social life. Every occasion I would always manage to get out of anything that was revolved around food, I would have an excuse useful. I was like the queen of, you know, getting out of stuff and, and just like, it's almost like the walls just started to close in on me. I was unbelievably lonely. Like I cannot tell you, I was like chronically lonely. I would, I moved into a flat on my own because I thought that's what I wanted, but I would spend so many nights just like, just despondent and lonely and just like not living my life, but too afraid to go out and live it because I couldn't imagine going out and having food freedom or having the ability to like enjoy myself so you know like it just it it was a like that yeah there was a rock bottom moment and I and I recognized that the alternative was just so much richer in terms of what it could offer me and that in order to move forwards to heal that I had to yeah had to say goodbye to what I had and and and opt for change and I'm not gonna lie like it was difficult but like now I'm like god thank god I did that and I feel in such a better place for it of course but um but yeah I do think that there's that's a difficult journey that people do have to go on and anyone that does it you know um full respect because it is hard yeah no absolutely and I do think there is I mean there are horrifically statistics about how much eating disorders are even increasing and I think that you know at the time that we were I mean so many like there was so many i had so many friends who've sorry to interrupt no that's fine do you not think that it's like i go on tiktok now grace and i'm terrified by what i see it's turned into 2000s yeah 2010s and i almost social media yeah i look at it and i'm like guys you're doing what i did like i always just want to like shout and scream be like stop like this is not the solution but it's almost like every generation they have to make the same mistakes and i don't know how we undo that i do think an element of it is the fact that we now have social media and therefore the reason you were in a position that set an example to anyone else in the way you were eating was because you yourself were going through that journey just like i did just like all of my sisters did to some extent just like all of my friends did all to different extents all different people you know some had you know real eating disorders and some just you know had a little bit of a yo-yo diet here on there the fact that those people have newspaper type reach is exactly the recipe for that like the fact that you know I've seen it I find it really interesting how much criticism for example I've seen some fitness influencers get when they've come out essentially saying yeah do you know what I had an eating disorder between this year and this year and people like well I was following you and you were telling me that was good and it's like yeah yeah no I literally I thought that was good and I was also you know 20 or 30 and thought that was the right thing like that's the whole social media is a perpetuation of what we individually are going through or want to portray therefore it's always like there is an element of it that's going to be quite cyclical yeah like is it going to happen to every single 18 year old like with social media now like it's probably far more pervasive and I'm not sure how we do stop that yeah you're so smart grace wow I don't know it's very profound I'm like sat here I'm like yeah go girl yeah it you know you know you're right you're so right and I am fearful for for what's to come but i'm also hopeful that at least we have like to a certain extent amazing role models in the public eye in general like i just i remember my upbringing and i now reference the current kind of media talent that we have that you know that is kind of ever present and I think there is more diversity we're not fully there but there's definitely more and I am glad that there are you know celebrities who come in different body shapes and that there is more diversity across the board you know in every every category there's there's more of that does it go far enough no does it help the entire problem no but does it mean that some people might feel less alone you know yes um but i think you're absolutely right like social media isn't going away it's growing at an exponential rate and that means that there are going to be pockets of the internet that continue to perpetuate these toxic narratives and there's nothing that you or i sitting here can do to stop it except for the fact that we can only control what we can control right you can only control our own messaging our own narrative and what we do within that space and you know I made it my mission to never go back to where I was and to always have a really clear ethos and a really clear approach moving forwards having done my own healing um but you know like I can't change the world I wish I could yeah and that also doesn't mean that you won't have this is depressing it doesn't also mean that you won't have something else that you you know and that I won't have something that I'll live my life in a certain way for some time and I'll be like this is how you should be doing it and this is you know I try like I feel like one of a good rule is once you've learned never to tell people what they should be doing you you you learn that pretty harshly in terms of you know when you go back on something like like you have like I have I do think that like there's an element of that like I have no doubt that like when I I don't know might be when I have children like showing that on social media and being like oh well these are the three things that I think and then I'll look at that after my 17th child and think fuck now that's a terrible idea whatever it might be like it is the human experience will always be multiplied out to everyone else based on the fact that we have social media the one thing that i would say is like and i i'd love to hear what you feel about this but like i now just am terrified of being online like i actually i i'm at a point in my career where I'm not really like like I'm I'm not really growing I'm not really kind of like like I have my focuses that I feel like I'm doing good in but genuinely every time I go to like open my phone or to say something I am so fearful in a way that I've never been before like I always feel like people are just waiting for there to be a mistake or waiting for you to say the wrong thing and I I just I'm I'm concerned for like what that does for people like you and I in terms of like you know I I don't know what the point I'm trying to make but I guess like you know at the start of this conversation I said I loved the messiness of social media in 2015 or whenever it was that I started you know like the messiness and the mistakes and the and the kind of the like friendliness as well all wrapped up in that like that people were just nice and naturally as it's grown of course there's going to be so much discourse and so many people thinking and feeling different things and there being disagreements and you know many mistakes made by both you and i'm sure we've both had our fair share of them but i i just find it so much more difficult to deal with like i do not know how you do it i don't know how other people do it and how how how they have such a deep level of resilience like I'm such a people pleaser I was about to say it's because you're a people pleaser that's literally my answer is going to be it's because you're a no but what I actually think is that that's exactly why I stopped social media being my main job because I am a people pleaser and I like to be liked and I like to do the right thing and the very nature of social media means you cannot context collapse for every single person Like I will put one version of something out and I expect it to be received well by every single person.

51:45Like that is a nuts. Like when you think about that logically, that doesn't make any sense. When I tell a story to three of my friends, I'll tell it differently. So why? What about if I tell it to 500 ,000 people, half whom like me, half whom hate me, half whom have like no idea who I am, like whatever. And so like its nature is not compatible with people pleasing. and that is why I got to a point where I was like this is not the career for me and like I understand that it's hugely privileged privileged position to be in to make that decision I made that decision and had a few really tough years and literally sliced my income by an obscene amount but I also I'm really happy now and like I also and it's different you know it's different problems and like you know whatever sometimes I think I'm like I could be a influencer on a beach right now like what are you doing like why did you make that decision like lots of people want to be in that position and don't get me wrong I'm obviously still doing it to some extent but the important thing for me was getting to a point where I could say do you know what if you don't want me here I cannot be here for the next year and I'll still be fine yeah and even just having that option it's like a fuck off fund for like mental capacity but like I think that I don't know I also think that there was an element of that that by having that it enabled me to worry less because I also think that there is this issue with social media in that because we see it so black and white we have such disproportionate reactions to things like sometimes I see the reasons why some people were cancelled and like don't get me wrong like some of them are you know correct and like you know very valid and like I but other ones when it's like you're not actually angry about that like you cannot actually tell me that you're angry about that you saw that and you thought god that's out of touch and then you scroll past you're not actually angry like you haven't thought about that at all today you just know that that isn't pr friendly and there is this disproportionate reaction that we're starting to foster based on the fact that that disproportionate reaction itself also gets traction and i think that that's always going to be the reality of social media and i think the thing that made me more comfortable with it was being able to be like okay well I'm deciding to be here rather than needing to be here and that's probably just a mental thing as well because no one needs to be anywhere but actually I mean for me I needed to spend two years basically being like I'm going to put myself in a position where you know that can be the case but also that's allowed me to then spend less time yeah caring yeah and instead be able to because I also just went through a period of time where I was like so vanilla and so like flavorless on social media and then I looked at all of the people that I love to follow and all of them have like strong opinions and they say it how they mean and they clap back as well like sometimes people get angry at them and don't get me wrong there's a time and a place for being like do you know what I absolutely didn't mean it like that there's also a time and a place for being like you know I didn't mean it like that stop trying to catch me out go touch some grass like and like get over it and I think that every single person who I love to follow felt it was kind of like that and I also thought that I had like taken away every single part of my personality to be palatable to so many people that wouldn't even like me in real life and it's like is that my life's work like is that the reason I was put on this planet oh god yeah like so many amazing points guys you are you're you're a wise girl I love it but like this is a therapy session for sure yeah you're absolutely right but I feel like also at the same time this is where like the disproportionate reaction comes in on social media if any of the people who genuinely felt that strongly about I don't know it can be true at the same time that you affected someone's past and also that you not just didn't mean to because again that sounds like you've committed a crime and done something terrible and like you anyone who would meet you would know that you would never mean to hurt a fly and that's the nature of social media we're because we're able to create such movement we're also able to create harm at a level that is just before it that you couldn't have created harm at that level the reason you were able to it was able to be a movement was because of this like traction and because of the nature of like social media itself and i do think that's really interesting that some of the nicest people i've ever met in real life have had that to some extent yeah like in terms of if they've been big on social media nice grace feel really nice but i think it's so interesting that like we can create harm out of social media out of people who have never created harm in their yeah do you know do you know what's so funny though and i was literally having this conversation with my hairdresser the other day lol classic like therapy chat in there in the hairdressers but she was asking me about like she was like oh do you ever get trolls and things like that and I was like yeah I do and I said you know what's so hard is that in a week I'll get so many nice messages from people I guarantee you that it's on you know a Friday evening and I'll get a nasty message from someone and my sole mission is to go back and prove to that person that I'm a nice person and it will consume all of my energy and in a way that I'm just so not backboned enough to be able to deal with criticism and I'm working on it guys I am working on it but I I feel this like deep sense of like I've always been a girl who's tried to do things right and try to be the nice person and do the right thing and social media unfortunately allows for people to make an opinion on you regardless of who you actually are like I might be those things sure I might also not but you know Susan in Sheffield doesn't care because she's already going to make an opinion of me and I'm never going to change that but I have spent so many years online doing my best to prove to people that I'm likable that I'm nice that I'm good that I'm palatable you know and and I will go and I will bend over backwards to try and do that and I I'm at a point now where I am starting to recognize that you know and I said this to my hairdresser so I was like I'm just wasting so much time doing that yeah like I'm wasting so much time yeah well what i was gonna say as well is like that is not your purpose in life it is not your purpose to convince susan that you're a nice person you know you're a nice person all of the people around you know you're a nice person and also your purpose isn't even to be a nice person like kind yeah like fuck nice like we expect so much from like women in these types positions too because i can promise you that anyone else who existed at the same time it was a man would not have got the same response as well so it's like you have to be nice and you have to be palatable and you have to be digestible and like all of these different things but like alice that is not why you were put on this earth yeah like you can be nice to all of the people around you on the everyday it is not your duty to show up on social media and be nice to everyone i also think like guys i'm a personal trainer like let's be real just for a second like Like, I'm literally a personal trainer.

58:59Like, I'm not really that much more than that. So, like, when we talk about kind of, like, niceness and stuff, like, do you go up to every trainer in your, like, local Virgin Active and say, are you a nice person? Right. But, like, I sort of sometimes have this moment where I do have a bit of confidence and I'm like, I am literally a fitness influencer. Like, come on, guys. Stop letting that affect your life. But also, I do think that's it. Like, it's an element of it's very much a sexist thing, too, and no one can tell me it isn't because it's also the fact that like we in order for you to be successful people need to perceive you as nice otherwise your success is not worthy so and that is what we have to every for every single woman i talked about that in a rant i did the other day on instagram where i was literally like i was talking about a post i saw of alex cooper and like all of the things were an attack on her person which when you're talking when someone's somewhere to talk about like the business they're doing or whatever like we don't demand of men for them to be nice in order for what they do to be impressive whereas we condition the fact that someone is successful on the fact that they're nice and you can talk about all of the amazing things you've done and the amazing career you've had and like what you've built for yourself and if you're not nice it counts for nothing first of all you're fucking nice second of all it doesn't matter whether anyone thinks you're nice yeah like don't get me wrong it's important to be kind and it's important to be polite and all of these things but like if that's what social media is going to create an environment where you essentially need to be such a dull down version of yourself that you're so palatable to every single person because you would have to be in order to be received well by everyone and even then some people are going to receive you as fucking vanilla and going to be annoyed about that too it's just like i think that's really sad and i say it so passionately because i have been there and i have like stripped back every single part of my person and then I've been like fuck like fuck that yeah like that cannot be why I'm on this earth it also doesn't even and I don't say that to belittle it I say that because I think it's important to remember in a world where we've never dealt with this type of environment you're obviously now as you say a personal trainer in London what would you say if you were training yourself 10 years ago what would you say to the you that you were training oh that's such a good question I think I would say less is more it's probably one of my biggest learnings in fitness and in how I approach training clients training myself I think we place far too much emphasis on exercise than it actually is in terms of the you know health and well-being equation and I think that we undervalue recovery and the importance of recovery.

1:01:45I think when we take a step back and we understand like the amount of global stress that our body experiences in any given day, in any given week, month, year, I think that we have to recognize that that balance needs to be in line. And if we're doing loads of exercise, but we're also not really sleeping very well, and we're also working a mega stressful job and we've got, you know, relationship issues and we are um you know going through whatever else environmental stress whatever it may be um that's going to have an impact and so I think that I would say to myself you know dial it back basically I now use this kind of within my coaching and my you know particularly on my app and with my clients like this idea that we all have this internal dial that at any point in our lives we can turn up and we can turn down and learning that we are in control of that and that we can learn to dial things up if we need to you know if we're having a couple of months where we're a bit a bit slow on our training and we're maybe not doing so much we've been quite sedentary whatever you can turn the dial up but also really learning to turn it down and I think for me I would have gone back to that 22 year old self and I would have said learn to turn the dial down learn to take it back less is more um food is really important eat well sleep well you know do all the basics also don't overthink those things you know I think that we can become so obsessed with the minutiae of health and well-being we become so obsessed with like the ice baths and how many hours we should be sleeping and this app and that app and you know how much load should I be increasing my weights by every week and all these kind of things and I think that like really for most people it should actually be pretty basic it shouldn't be occupying such a huge part of your headspace it should be you know am i getting roughly seven to eight hours of sleep a night am i roughly training three to four times a week regularly am i eating a diet that's got variety and has you know got quite a lot of vegetables and enough protein and yeah like i just find myself getting a little bit frustrated by people that try and over complicate health and sell it as to this something that is so hard to reach and we're constantly striving for right yeah and it is so true as well that this is probably the first time in history that we've had a like that anyone that's not an athlete or something to that effect is like the quantity of people who train as if they are act as if they are eat as if they are i don't mean that as a criticism but i do think it's quite interesting that like for the first time ever rather than us like going to our jobs making our money coming home like having free time or whatever it might be there is like this huge amount of training as if it's you know like you are an athlete in some way and I think that you know what we have to recognize is athletes have an immense amount of support around them So like professional football team, women's football team, they will train every day, but they will nap every afternoon without fail.

1:04:51Or they will have restful periods of non-sleep deep rest where they are able to turn their dial down, able to allow their bodies to recover. And they are monitored to the nth degree. They have their nutrition sorted down to the nth degree. They're ensuring that they're eating enough. They're not working at another job. and you know I think we have to recognize that look this is one of the biggest things for me is like what's most important to me like for me I just took a step back from everything that I was doing age 21 where the priority was all about being sin and it was all about you know pushing my body and and trying to get the most to myself in the pursuit of like I don't know greatness and then I took a step back and I met my fiance and I developed a new friendship group and And I realized that like life is so much richer when those things are enjoyable things.

1:05:41Like I really love exercise, right? But because I love it, I've allowed myself to like, it doesn't rule my life. You know, I don't stress if I miss a day. I love food. And that means that a lot of my meals, I prioritize foods that I know are going to make me feel good. But I'm also able to like go for dinner with friends or order a takeaway with Patty if I want to. or you're like I've just given it less of a big priority in my life and maybe that's because I come from a background where it has been such a big occupation in my brain that for me I am someone who needs to take a step back and give it less power um and you know we still live in a in an environment where I think it's one in two women in the UK don't do enough exercise each week doing less than 30 minutes or something like that so like there's still this imbalance of those that do loads and those that don't do enough so you know my whole thing has been I kind of want to be that trainer that falls in the middle and it's like exercise is really important like don't get me wrong but it's got to be something that you enjoy that you're able to stick to long term that doesn't feel like it's ruling you and and you know that you can kind of just see it as like a happy addition to your life rather than something that is like a chore or a punishment whatever yeah no I think that's so so so important and I think that is the perfect place to wrap up given we have got off on I feel like we've had such a good conversation thank you so much as well no thank you I think this has been yeah it's been really incredible and thank you so much for being so open and honest and transparent I feel like we can't have these conversations unless we're actually having these conversations um and yeah I'm really grateful to you for having that with me.

1:07:27Thank you so much, Grace.

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