Alice Liveing, a fitness influencer who encourages her clients to build strength over their looks, has revealed she regrets making a living as a “clean eating” influencer.
The 30-year-old Instagram star and author of Give Me Strength now runs a fitness program that focuses on how clients can build muscle to become stronger beyond aesthetic incentives.
However, she is also the previous author of The Body Bible, which she published under the name ‘Clean Eating Alice’, which was marketed as ‘a guide to adopting a better way of living’.
Now, speaking to The Sunday Times, the London-based influencer has reflected on her previous ‘Alice with the Abs’ character, in which she appeared in her Instagram content with a muscular but petite figure, revealing that her weight had dropped so much. , her periods stopped.
London-based fitness influencer Alice Liveing has revealed her regret for once writing a ‘Body Bible’ dedicated to healthy eating.
Despite becoming a bestselling cookbook author and receiving publishing deals that celebrity chefs would envy, Alice has revealed that her dedication to so-called “clean eating” left her with poor sleep, thin hair and “terrible” skin.
She revealed that she was 25 years old and had just met her now-husband Paddy when she visited a fertility specialist to find out why her periods had stopped; but she was shocked by the doctor’s assessment.
“He told me, ‘You’re not eating enough and you’re exercising too much, your body is in a state of stress and if you keep going like this you won’t be able to have children.’ Those words changed my life,” Alice said.
After hearing the news that she might have difficulty conceiving, Alice began following a program to gain 10kg, in which she exercised less and ate more. However, as she gained weight, the influencer revealed that she found it difficult to always follow the program and that she fell back into “bad behavior” from time to time.
Alice, who now dedicates her career to helping people be healthy no matter their weight, admits her old Instagram persona was “smoke and mirrors.”
The fitness influencer (pictured at last year’s National Television Awards) now runs the Give Me Strength app.
As her life changed, so did her career, and Alice removed ‘Clean Eating’ from her Instagram caption in 2017.
The Now Living page is filled with encouraging images of a woman at a healthy weight encouraging others to improve their strength and fuel their bodies accordingly.
She has just written her latest book, Give Me Strength (which is also the name of her fitness app), but has revealed that the writing process was “painful”.
Alice said: “I bear a lot of responsibility for perpetuating a potentially harmful narrative.”
He added that he didn’t realize what he was doing was “wrong,” but added that he can now “own his mistakes.”
Recalling her life as Clean Eating Alice, the influencer revealed that she was often exhausted and would privately avoid social events that involved food or make excuses about having already eaten when attending dinner parties.
It was when Alice met her current husband Paddy (right) that she received a warning that she might have difficulty having children. Pictured with Marvin and Rochelle Humes at Wimbledon
Despite this, Alice pretended to be different online, sometimes posting snaps of herself enjoying pizza with her friends on Instagram (even though she had ordered a salad for dinner).
“That’s what I feel the most guilty about: I was lying, being fake,” she said, adding that her previous life on Instagram was “smoke and mirrors.”
The influencer traces her problems with food back to when she was a student at drama school.
After a year of drinking and eating junk food, as many students do, Alice says one of her tutors told her she should be “conscious of her body” if she ever wanted to seriously pursue showbiz.
The words clearly stung when Alice took a personal training course, started dieting and dropped from a size 12 to a size 8 in a few months.
She started her Instagram account alongside her body transformation and quickly gained several thousand followers. Aged 22 and, in her words, “unqualified to write a book,” she was offered “life-changing money” to write books on healthy eating and weight loss.
Now, as Alice embarks on a new mission to encourage people to be healthy rather than “eat clean,” she has suggested that some people within the “fitspo” community are struggling with the same eating issues she once had to deal with.
However, Alice herself finds “joy” in both life and food.