A Journey from Invisibility to Empowerment

Breaking Free from the Beauty Expectations of Essex

Imagine a world where you feel invisible, yet everyone can see your flaws. A world where you fight to fit in and do whatever you need to do to feel as though you belong. That was the world I grew up in. Imagine seeing magazine headlines daily with the likes of supermodels quoting "What it tastes like to be skinny." Or “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels?” That was my world, that was probably your world too.

My Struggles in Secondary School

Throughout my secondary school years, I struggled. I grew up in Essex, a beautiful place to some, but to many, the flip side was ugly, judgmental, materialistic, daunting breeding insecurity in those whose confidence was not natural or had not formed. I was so self-conscious which battered any confidence I had.

I would barely eat in order to be skinny. I would roll my skirt up short to try to be noticed. I would lie about my Dad's career as a police officer for the sheer thought of being bullied for it. I would simply follow suit, even to those that bullied me, just so I felt as though I belonged.

My Career as a Beauty Therapist

This lack of confidence, self-belief and bullying followed me into my days as a beauty therapist. I was great at my job, I was motivated and earned well on commission, and the owners of the business loved me, which made the staff members hate me. Yet again, another judgmental and unsupportive world I found myself in. As it was a commissioned based role, I worked every hour I possibly could I left my house at 5.30 am, getting home at 9 pm. I would take just a 10-minute lunch break to make sure I could pay my bills.

Of course, I was neglecting myself. In those 10 minutes, I would run to Starbucks to get myself a caramel frappe thinking that the calories would fill me, and the sugar would give me the energy boost I needed to keep going. The message of ‘Gotta stay skinny. Don’t want to eat food’ screaming in my ear.

I was good at being a beautician, it was my job and the 16 hour days was my norm, ‘so stick at it, you’re making money’.

The Turning Point: A Trip to Vegas

Then... I booked a girls' trip to Vegas, with my girlfriends who were gorgeous, slim, and beautiful, they would capture all the attention. I was desperate to just be noticed. So, I got myself into the best shape of my life so far in 2016 so that when I went out to Vegas I might get noticed. I smashed the gym (when I could) focusing on cardio, cardio, cardio… all with the same goal… skinny. I became addicted. I didn’t have a single rest day. I loved the high the endorphins gave me and I was in my view then, skinny, so I felt confident.

Although, even with the new found love of exercise I wasn’t actually healthy, I was overtraining, putting my body under huge strain (still mainly replacing food with that Starbucks) and had the worst acne of my life. My body was screaming at me to stop.

Even when I went to Vegas, my addiction continued and I had to sweat every single day, and before the pool parties in our hotel room I would workout!

Embracing Fitness and Self-Love

However, something happened while I was away and I realised that my job, and life was not serving me. I was not living. I was surviving.

At the beginning, I was training to please my then boyfriend, I thought it was what was needed for him to love me and to fix our problems, but with time, this changed. My self-love and my confidence grew. Finally, I started to understand who I was and what I wanted.

I was so passionate about fitness, and saw the power that exercise had had on me, that I wanted to learn more and I wanted to share this new passion with others, so I started to train to be a fitness instructor. I did this alongside being a beautician.

It was hard, but I was so focused and I had a goal; to change my life, most importantly, to LIVE my life.

The Transition to a Fitness Career

I became a pilates instructor, a group class instructor teaching Les Mills classes. I thought I had made it, but, I was teaching over 30 classes a week, on top of working as much as I could as a beautician still so I could pay my bills. At the age of 25 I had a ruptured groin, would barely eat a meal, simply graze, and drink TOO much coffee to have the buzz the class needed. You can only imagine how much my body was suffering, but I cared so much for what my body now looked like that I kept this up for over a year.

I had moved one problem to another.

I was still not looking after myself. My confidence came from my aesthetic look.

Discovering My Love for CrossFit

I started to play around with Cross Fit and later became an instructor. I started to see what my body was capable of. It was much more than burpees and the fast-paced workouts I thought I HAD to have.

In time, I appreciated my body thrived from lifting, building strength from head to toe. Forget just leg day; it was an all-over body every day. The challenges I set myself to increase the reps or the weight and realising those goals really started to let me see just what I was capable of.

The more I learned the more I realised I needed to change my habits beyond the gym, finally realising the importance of nutrition, rest and balance. My skin started to look better, my body got stronger and so did I.

I finally realised that I was a strong woman inside and out and my relationship with myself changed and confidence, genuine confidence, started to shine.

No longer did I aspire to look a certain way for society, I was doing this for myself.

Empowering Women Through Fitness

My journey led me to launch EmpoWer Me in 2023. I am so proud of myself to be where I am and to have found my purpose in life; Supporting, encouraging and inspiring women daily.

My mission is to support them to incorporate enjoyable exercise into their lives, so they feel strong both mentally and physically. I want to change the way we look at exercise and spread the message that quick fixes are NOT the way, we don’t need to punish our bodies, we need to nurture them and look after them, forever.

I want to help change the traditional society messaging that I was bombarded with when I was younger and change the way that the younger generations look at exercise and the way they treat themselves, to do and feel the opposite of how I felt.

My biggest learning and message is that consistency, showing up time and time again, trying, pushing yourself can make you feel incredible. It can give you the confidence, strength and energy to live life on your terms and with the self-love and respect you truly deserve.

Why I Do What I Do That is why I do what I do.

Note the image I had chosen for this blog was the old me, the smile I portrayed for the fight of being skinny and happy had me at my worst.

Thankfully she is left behind, but not forgotten.