My health journey

This is something I get asked about a lot; healthy eating, loosing weight, feeling good about yourself and your body, and I think it’s time I share my story about my personal demons and how my lifestyle has dramatically changed over the last couple of years.

When I was 16 I moved to boarding school (If you don’t know what ‘boarding school’ is, it’s basically like Harry Potter without the magic. You live and sleep at school!). Over my two years at boarding school I developed an undiagnosed binge eating disorder, this basically means I would eat stupid amounts of food in a short period of time and continue to eat until I was in physical pain and feeling ridiculously guilty. This was often followed by having a couple of days eating only liquid-based meals, or skipping meals completely to try and rid myself of this guilt. It was NOT healthy, really screwed with my head and meant in my last year of school I became fairly anti-social and would avoid going out with friends. It was not a happy time, I was struggling with a mental health problem and didn’t realise how much it was affecting my mindset and life! After leaving the restraints of boarding school, I regained my self confidence, positive mindset and I took a gap year. I found myself living on a beach in Sydney, Australia. Everyone around me was jogging, eating gorgeously coloured, fresh food and they all had that annoyingly glowy, tanned aura about them. Damn you and your perfectly brown faces Australia! So I started to get involved; going for jogs, walks and runs, feeding my body with Acai Bowls left, right and centre. I loved the lifestyle and the way it made me feel, I became much more at ease and stopped controlling my diet and exercising so strictly. I started living without thinking again! Finally! I had recovered and found my true passion for good food and regular exercise again.

Once I came home, after 8 months of travelling, I implemented this way of living to my home life and soon found myself spending a lot of time blending frozen bananas and standing on my wooden kitchen table photographing the results. Madness, I know. A passion for cooking, making and blending became a very big part of my life. I am SO happy to have a section on this site where I can share my creations with you all and hopefully inspire you to really love what you put into your body. I still struggle with my body image, I see my body in a very different way to anyone else (as most of us do!) and am coming to terms with that. But recently I’ve really pushed to make sure I don’t let these intrusive, negative and downright stupid thoughts change the way I love, live and feed myself. All you beautiful young girls (and boys!) reading this, following what I do, telling me I’m inspiring or that you relate to me in some way: I want to be better so I can be better for myself, but I also want to be better for you! I want to be a positive role model whilst still being honest with you all – I’m only human after all!

The words ‘eating disorder’ have such dark connotations but so many people deal with problems much like mine and all kinds of crappy mental health issues in their lifetime, especially in the teenage years. This is a normal thing to do or feel, but it’s not okay! We just need to talk to each other about the struggles we are having! So many people at this very moment are feeling very alone, isolated, depressed and really ‘screwed in the head’, there’s no other way to put it. So if you are dealing/struggling with any kind of mental health related problems, whether to do with food and your body or not, even if you are undiagnosed, just talk to someone. Be bold, be honest and seek help – you will be surprised by the kind of support you receive. Equally, look to help people around you. Speak up if you think someone is suffering, mental health problems are NORMAL and should be discussed, we just need to view them this way in order to help.