Alice Liveing bares all about her fitness journey in new ‘Vision of Health’ Podcast
Alice Liveing opens up about her fitness and wellness journey as part of the newly launched ‘Vision of Health’ podcast hosted by medical doctor, media and TV medic and personal trainer Dr Frankie Jackson-Spence
A household name, PT to a range of celeb clients and well-respected author, Alice’s wellness journey is one that we can all resonate with. Having trained in the performing arts, Alice’s awareness of her body began from a very young age.
Speaking to Dr Frankie Jackson-Spence for the next episode of her ‘Vision of Health’ podcast which airs on Monday 11th December, Alice candidly discusses how her ‘Vision of Health’ has changed over the years, detailing her transition from ‘Clean Eating Alice’ to ‘Alice Liveing’ and how she had to unlearn disordered eating and exercise habits to find what true health meant to her.
“My journey is no different from many others. I started in an incredibly image-obsessed industry. From the ages of 7, 8 or 9, I had my dance teacher telling me that I could never be a ballerina but my physique wasn’t right and I didn’t look the part.”
“The reality was that I saw bodies around me that looked different to mine, and my only conclusion was, ‘Well clearly I need to change something about myself’.”
“Whether you are in the theatre industry or not, I think a lot of us can wrap up the idea that we need to be smaller to be more successful; that our body size and our shape and everything about how we look is integral to how we are then seen by the world.”
Alice tells Frankie how she set out on her fat loss journey which she documented online under the name ‘Clean Eating Alice’, which she said initially a lot of people resonated with.
Having lost a huge amount of body fat, there came a point when Alice’s relationship with food had become unhealthy resulting in her losing her period. She even recalls going on to the stage for a performance of Annie and her words just not coming out as her brain wasn’t able to compute what was happening.
“There was a real lightbulb moment for me when I realised that my pursuit of health wasn’t actually health, and actually what I was doing was pursuing an ever-smaller physique at the expense of what was truly health.”
“The shift from Clean Eating Alice to Alice Liveing was the opportunity for me to unlearn a lot of really bad habits, exercise and to genuinely find what true health was to me.”
Having gone through this experience, Alice shares how her work is about really finding what health means for each individual.
Discussing how fitness professionals are portrayed on social media, Dr Frankie commented: “People who look a certain way [on social media] tend to grow really quickly and tend to have a lot of people buying into their idea of health. But from a health perspective, having a six-pack doesn’t mean that you are the best personal trainer in terms of getting the best out of your clients or necessarily being healthy yourself. You may have really bad habits like smoking or you may suffer from poor mental health, and these are things you can’t see from the external appearance. Ultimately, our health goes beyond what we look like.”
Echoing these thoughts, Alice said: “I am a realist. Sex sells. Ultimately we know that within the fitness industry… we know that showing more flesh or having an aspirational physique helps you to garner interest and people are drawn to you because that is the world we live in.”
“I’m not going to be the ‘tits and arse personal trainer’ that some others might be, but what I will be is the smartest. I will be the one that has the knowledge to back up everything I’m telling you to do. I’m going to be the one that is hungry to learn, and the one that is going to deliver genuine, accessible, and realistic fitness advice.”
When asked by Dr Frankie what advice she’d give to others, Alice said: “Really readdress within yourself what health means to you. If you are wrapping your health, wellbeing, desirability, success, likeability into a body shape or into a look, that is a very hard place to find yourself because sustaining that is pretty unfulfilling and hard.
“It’s about understanding what happiness means to you. Using myself as an example, the body that I inhabit now is the body that allows me to live a genuinely fulfilling life, it’s the body that allows me to go for pizza with my friends, or go out for drinks with my girlfriends, or be able to skip the gym for a week because I’m feeling stressed, tired and busy.
“It’s the body that lets me do all those things and have that flexibility and that means this is the body that gives me that life, the life that I genuinely enjoy. When I think about the body I used to be in, it was a life that was ruled by discipline, and so now this might not be my dream body, but it is the body that lets me have a life that I dreamed of.”
Alice is just one of the many experts appearing on Dr Frankie’s podcast which looks to bridge the gap between the scientific evidence base and the everyday person wanting to live a healthier lifestyle.
