I’M A QUEER
NON-BINARY PERSONAL TRAINER AND ONLINE COACH

At the age of 7 I came home from a summer camp one evening and was told that I had been given less food for lunch that week without me knowing so I would lose weight, and that I should be happy about that. I honestly just didn’t understand, but this was the first time I remember being told that my body wasn’t ‘right’.

By the time I was a teenager I had a wildly skewed view of my own body and food as a whole. I regularly told myself I wasn’t feminine enough, my body wasn’t small enough, I would never be happy with myself, and that nobody liked me. That lead to more unhealthy behaviours that eventually lead me down a path of an eating disorder and extremely bad body dysmorphia.

I didn’t realise at the time a lot of these issues were all stemming from my own unrecognised gender dysphoria, toxic diet culture, misogyny, sexism, capitalism, the media, AND IT WASN’T ACTUALLY MY FAULT. The aforementioned just weren’t mentioned, so how could anyone expect a teenager to know or understand.

By the time I was 18 I was put on medication for depression and anxiety by my GP without being told why. I was barely sleeping and everything in my head kept me up at night, but I couldn’t make any sense of it. I wasn’t ever directed to any mental health resources or given any guidance aside from ‘take the pills / feel better’. Over the next ten years I put myself through a lot of trauma, self harm and suicide attempts. I didn’t know why, I just knew I didn’t feel right.

Let’s fast forward... this time to me as an adult(ish). I’m on a bus back from a mental assessment in Brighton where I had been diagnosed with an eating disorder and told I needed some serious help. I had no clue, but suddenly everything started to make a lot more sense... I was at the peak of my eating disorder, my depression was all-consuming, I was incredibly unhappy and unfulfilled despite my life looking fine on paper, and I just couldn’t explain why. But after this things slowly started to fall into place and make more sense to me.

My recovery was not easy and I overhauled my entire life. I changed EVERYTHING. It wasn’t just about recovering from an ED anymore, I needed to help myself out of the hole I woke up in every morning. Truth be told I still wake up there sometimes these days, but it’s a lot less frequent. I started again. I had the resources, the language and the tools to define what was going on, so that meant I could figure out a plan and put the thing into action.

I make it sound really easy up there, but it was always hard, always uncomfortable and even with support in one area I still felt very alone and very lost 99% of the time. I truly don’t believe anyone should have to go through any of the above without help. The only constant I had throughout my recovery was the gym. It was an hour out of my day where I could go train, put music or a podcast, switch off from everything and lift some weights.

Therapy session after therapy session during my recovery I expressed my love of reading books and listening to podcasts to do with wellness and movement, but I was always getting frustrated at the fact none of them were that inclusive or geared towards people like me. I’m a non-binary person in eating disorder recovery wanting to lift heavy weights and feel good about myself. I don’t want to have to deal with diet chat, weight loss ‘solutions’, overly gendered conversations or other things that would steer me away from what was becoming an aid to my recovery.

I went on a quest to find more people like me online, and I did find them, but it wasn’t enough. I felt like I needed to be that person for myself and eventually that thought turned into me wanting to also be that for anyone else in my position.

So here we are. If you’ve read this far thank you for giving me a little of your time. I hope this gave you a little more insight into my background and why I now do what I do!