Emily Skye: happier and healthier after putting on 13 kilograms
Emily Skye, one of social media's most well known fitness personalities, has revealed that putting on 13 kilograms has helped her to become happier and healthier.
The Australian, from the Gold Coast, has opened up about her battle with her body and cautioned her 1.8 million Instagram followers against liking her thinner 'before' photo without reading her story.
"This is before I started strength training," the 31-year-old personal trainer wrote of the first photo. "I was obsessed with being as skinny as I could be. I was starving myself & was really unhealthy & unhappy. I suffered depression & had terrible body image."
Skye, a former model who began documenting her fitness journey and foray into health seven years ago, said she swapped cardio for strength training and stopped obssessing about what she ate.
She now eats "more than I've ever eaten in my life" and feels better in her body.
"I'm ... happier, healthier, stronger & fitter than I have ever been. I no longer obsess over the way I look. I eat & train to feel my best, for overall 'health' & longevity," she wrote.
"I LOVE having muscle & I feel more confident than ever."
"When I first started lifting weights seven years ago, I was finally starting to become healthy & happy for the first time in my life. I had friends at the time telling me I wasn't healthy and was taking it 'too far,'" she recalled. "This devastated me ... I couldn't believe that the people who were supposed to love me weren't happy for me even though I was obviously much happier & healthier than I'd ever been.
"I now surround myself with positive, supportive people who are true friends to me!" she explained. "I love my life & I'm so grateful I decided to make those changes several years ago & committed to my healthy lifestyle."
Skye is not the first 'fitspo' celebrity to remind that skinny does not make for happy or healthy.
American trainer Kelsey Wells recently revealed that putting on eight kilograms and going up two pant sizes made her realise that scales are not a measure of 'success'.
"According to my old self and flawed standards, I would be failing miserably," Wells writes. "THANK GOODNESS I finally learnt to start measuring my progress by things that matter – strength, ability, endurance, health, and HAPPINESS."
She added that although she is only two kilograms lighter than her heaviest weight after giving birth, her body composition has changed.
"I have never had more muscle and less body fat than I do now," Wells says in the post, which has had more than 18,000 likes. "I have never been healthier than I am now. I have never been more comfortable in my own skin than I am now."
The realisation made her throw away scales so she could focus on how she felt and treated her body instead.
"And if I didn't say #screwthescale long ago, I would have gave up on my journey [sic]. So to the little teeny tiny voice in the back of my head that still said "wtf is this - not 140!?" last week when I stepped on the scale, I say SCREW. YOU. And I think you should probably say the same to your scale too."
Fairfax Media
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