How fitness expert Emily Skye gained 13kg and turned her life around
EMILY Skye wasn’t always the super fit, healthy lifestyle ambassador and glowing female role model she is today.
Seven years ago, a shadow of her current self weighing just 47kg, she admits she was depressed, underweight and unhealthy.
Today, with more than 13 million social media fans around the world, the Australian fitness star is, quite literally, kicking butt in the global fitness and health industry.
With rock-hard abs, an enviable set of pins and a derrière to die for, the Central Coast-born beauty certainly knows what hard work looks like. And she’s on a mission to share her knowledge with the rest of the world.
Emily, who is currently in New York with Reebok, has partnered with the sportswear giant for their new “Hands” initiative, which is making thousands of top-notch trainers from the ReebokONE network available for free personal training sessions across the US.
News.com.au caught up with the model-turned-trainer, mid-plank, to hear about her incredible journey from skinny to strong and how she turned her life around.
“It didn’t happen overnight,” the 31-year-old says. “I wasn’t happy and everything I tried to be didn’t make me happy. I was either trying to be perfect, which as we all know doesn’t exist, or I was trying to be like someone else.”
As a former model, Emily says her experience in the cutthroat industry, combined with a deep-rooted obsession with “being thin”, led to an unhealthy and unhappy time in her life. “I was either not eating enough food or eating too much of the bad stuff and I was so skinny because my body wasn’t eating the right food,” she said. “None of it made me happy, being skinny never made me happy, being as perfect as I could be never made me happy.”
Poor diet and excess cardio, as well as constantly comparing herself to women she saw on the pages of magazines and on social media saw Emily spiralling down a dangerous path, she says.
“I was doing a little bit of modelling, which was just so competitive and unhealthy, the whole perfection thing does my head in.”
The personal trainer credits meeting her boyfriend and business partner, fellow fitness guru Declan Redmond, with changing her mindset and teaching her how to maintain a “glass half full” mentality.
“I was always focused on the negative, everything was always, ‘woe is me’. It was a horrible way to live, so I knew I had to make changes in all different areas and one of those things was getting healthier.”
A few months ago, Emily shared a composite photo of herself with her 1.9 million followers on Instagram. On the left was a picture of herself in 2008, weighing 47kg. “This is before I started strength training. I was only doing cardio and I was obsessed with being as skinny as I could be,” she captioned the image. “I was starving myself and was really unhealthy and unhappy. I suffered depression and had terrible body image.”
On the right, a stronger, healthier, muscular and fresh-faced Emily Skye in 2016, weighing 60kg.
“I now weigh 13kg more, I lift heavy weights and do a little bit of HIIT. I don’t do ANY long cardio sessions and I eat more than I’ve ever eaten in my life,” she wrote, revealing how she adjusted exercise regimen. “I’m also happier, healthier, stronger and fitter than I have ever been. I no longer obsess over the way I look. I eat and train to feel my best, for overall ‘health’ and longevity.
“I LOVE having muscle and I feel more confident than ever.”
Before and after
The inspiring post attracted tens of thousands of comments, most of them positive, but Emily says she’s still fighting a daily uphill battle to convince many of her clients that “skinny” doesn’t necessarily equate to “healthy”.
“I’m constantly putting it out there that strong is better, that health is now about how you feel and your mental health, rather than how you look.
“I don’t talk about weight and the scales, but there are still a lot of young girls out there that are obsessed with the ‘skinny’ thing. But they’re looking at people who are genetically really skinny, and that’s why looking at anyone else can be dangerous,” she warned.
“You can use people to inspire you and motivate you to be your best but you can’t say you want to look exactly like that. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be slim and fit but I feel like if the focus is on skinny, you’re going to use unhealthy measures to get there.”
#Fitspo
Emily admits it took a fair amount of trial and error — along with sheer grit, determination and buckets of sweat — to get to where she is today. At first, she says she wasn’t provided with the right exercise and dietary advice from so-called experts, which resulted in rapid weight fluctuation and damage to her metabolism.
“I once went nine months without eating any dessert, and mentally that is not healthy,” she recalled.
“I went pretty hardcore, eating no carbs, doing a lot of cardio. I was so lean and I was shaking all the time but it wasn’t fulfilling, I was hating it and it wasn’t fun.”
Today, while the social media star says she’s not as lean as she once was, she’s fitter, faster, stronger and can’t remember a time when she’s ever felt happier.
“My body, it can run fast and it can jump high and it can lift heavy weights, I feel great,” she said. “Instead of beating yourself up and focusing on a few belly rolls, or saying, ‘my stupid body’, my ugly body, I hate myself’, if you shift from that into training for fitness and the way you feel and to have a goal that is about getting fit then you’ll feel much better.”
Currently living and working on the Gold Coast, the fitness influencer says these days her number one goal is to reach as many people as possible to educate them and make a positive impact.
“We want to get people moving more, get them eating healthy foods, educate them. We’re on a mission to try to help as many people as possible,” she said.
“I just want just want people, especially women, to appreciate what the body can do. It’s all part of being alive and the journey.”
This objective speaks to why Emily teamed up with Reebok for the brand’s 2017 campaign, HANDS, an initiative focused on physically and socially connecting individuals through fitness.
“People want the quick fix but they don’t want to keep at it. But if you really want something, you’ve got to work at it and know that you’re probably going to fall down many times along the way but you’ve got to keep getting up if you want to make it happen.”
The Truth About Exercise48:29
Scientists are uncovering the new and surprising truths about what exercise is really doing to our bodies, and why we all respond to it differently.
Originally published as ‘How gaining weight changed my life’