AJ: Today, my guest is Alex Light. Alex Light is a body confidence, self-acceptance, and lifestyle influencer from London. After struggling from various seating disorders, Alex’s virtual platform transformed from a beauty and fashion blog into a glimpse into her personal struggle. Throughout her journey on social media, Alex has gained an expansive insight into the reality behind eating disorders, as well as weight stigmas and diet culture.

After a long recovery, Alex is dedicated to providing a safe space for anyone in the grips of an eating disorder or bad body image, and has written a Sunday Times bestselling book, ‘You are not a before picture,’ and co-hosts the podcast. ‘Should I delete that?’ I’m thrilled to have Alex here, because I have had my own personal battles with eating disorders and body image, as well as my daughter.

So this is something that is close to my own heart, and I know many of my followers and my mum, parenting friends, who are going through things with their daughters. This is hopefully going to be a chat that people might get a little bit of insight out of, resonate with, and find a little bit inspiring.

So, Welcome to the podcast, Alex.

AL: Hi. Thank you for that lovely intro, and I’m so sorry to hear that about you and your daughter. I’m really sorry. I know how tough it can be, especially as a parent as well.

AJ: Yes. I think it’s actually not as uncommon as we think. I know you are very open about your story; I would love for you to share with my listeners your story and how you’ve got to where you are today, Alex.

AL: Yes, for sure. So my history with food, or with disordered eating and unhealthy eating patterns, really goes back a very long time. Probably since the moment I realised that what I consumed could manipulate how my body looked. I was aware from a very, very young age that my body didn’t seem to fit ‘the ideal’.’

I was always chubby as a kid. I was never fat, and I have never been fat. I think it’s important to state that, but I wasn’t as thin as my peers. Certainly, as soon as I became aware of my body, I became aware of the fact that it didn’t look how it was supposed to look, I was supposed to be thinner. I started with diets, and I did truly can sit here and say that I’ve done every diet under the sun, apart from the ones that have come up over the past few years, but absolutely every diet known to man. That was all throughout secondary school, and a little bit before that in primary school.

Then secondary school was just taken up by dieting with varying results. Usually I would lose some weight and then put back on the weight, and often I’d put on more weight, which is part of the diet cycle. I’m not entirely sure I’ve ever been able to put my finger on what happened. I started it in a job as a fashion journalist. I suddenly became immersed in a world of fashion celebrity, where thinness was glorified even more than it is in our culture, in our society, and where fatness is really vilified and to be avoided at all costs. Something inside my head kind of clicked, for lack of a better, less positive expression, but my mindset shifted, and I started eating less and less. Rather than dieting, I was able to just eat less and less and less, until things became really bad, and I became really ill, and I had to seek professional help for eating disorders.

That was the start of my recovery, which has taken a really long time. That’s something that I always mention. I always think it’s important to mention and discuss that recovery is a long process. I think so often we see it as this thing, that’s like once you admit you have a problem and you get help, and bam! You’ve recovered.

That just wasn’t the case for me. It took me a really, really long time to get to a place where I was able to free myself from disordered eating. So while I was in the thick of my eating disorder, I started my fashion and beauty platform on Instagram, and I got a following. I had about 40,000 followers and I was sharing content that was really aspirational, it was very much edited and curated. I would edit my body in all the photos. I would nip in my waist and thin my legs, edit out any signs of human skin, and get rid of my double chin.

I had this platform, and I was putting this content out when I started with recovery and started to learn about diet culture. Initially, I thought, ‘What’s that?’ I thought it was something that sounded made up by these people that are trying to make me better. I didn’t think it was a real thing, but it planted a seed.

The more I began to learn about diet culture, the more I was galvanised into action. I felt myself become aware, and I realised that what I was doing. What I was putting out into the world was at odds with what was going on behind the scenes, and also with my newly formed beliefs.

When I was learning about diet culture, I felt really angry that it was this system of beliefs that basically were in place to line the pockets of the diet industry and a lot of people, usually men, right? So I decided to transform my platform, which was not easy. It was really difficult, but I was determined.

To start, I just dipped my toe in. It was all very gradual. I started to talk about my eating disorder, my struggles with weight throughout my life. I think prior to that I had just been showing a very thin woman, and everyone would say, ‘You look amazing. What’s your secret? You’re my thin-spiration.’It was actually quite cool to say, ‘Actually, that might be what you think of me, but there is a hell of a story behind this, and it’s not a good story, and this is not a weight that I’m actually supposed to be at,’ and it just went from there.

Then my platform just grew from there and everything I talked about, and it was really organic, and I felt really like it really fit with the new belief system that I was forming and what I wanted to do. I felt like I had wasted so much time with my disordered eating and my eating disorder. Because as anyone knows who’s been through an eating disorder or just a chronic dieter, you will know the amount of time, energy, and head space it zaps from you.

But being able to speak about it and help bring attention and awareness to it and help anyone who was in a similar situation to where I’d been, made me feel like that wasted time had been worth it, and that it wasn’t wasted.

AJ: Firstly, that’s immensely brave. I think the big takeaway from that for me is the bravery in the journey that you’ve been through, and the shift into feeling confident in sharing that. Personally, I was hugely influenced, like yourself. I’m 47. I don’t know how old you are, Alex, but back then it was thin culture, and I was brought up around my mother always on some kind of diet.

I was probably around 16 or 17 when my own personal eating disorders started to develop. It sounds like yours was developing from an even younger age than that. How did your family respond? I know from being a mother, I’ve been through it myself, but I’ve also seen my daughter going through it. I suppose I came at it from my own journey. I felt, maybe a little bit naively, that I should be better placed to support my daughter. It’s a very visible thing, and you can’t really hide it for that long from family members. How did they deal with that?

AL: My family knew that I’d been on a diet since forever. So initially they were like, ‘Cool, oh my God, it’s working. You’re losing weight. ‘I say this with absolutely no judgment on them, because until you know something, you don’t know it. We’re all victims of this culture and societal conditioning.

I guess, for a long time it felt like they thought, ‘She’s like achieving something she really wanted to achieve,’ and then all of a sudden it kind of slipped into, ‘This is starting to get into more worrying territory now,’ but as anyone who’s been in the grip of an eating disorder will know, when people tell you that you look too thin, it feels like a compliment. It’s probably not intended as a compliment, but that’s how you take it, because you’ve been desperate for thinness above all else, and you’re suddenly achieving it. You don’t care that you’re too thin, that’s a good thing. You want to be too thin.

You know, I hope this isn’t like too triggering to say all of this, and I’m sure you will put a trigger warning at the top of this episode. Yes, I didn’t really take any notice. I was like, ‘I’m too thin. Thank you. ‘It was only when things got really bad, and it was very noticeable, that I realised the way I was approaching food was extremely unhealthy.

Then my mum just sat me down and said, ‘I’m taking you to see someone. We need to get some help,’ and I feel like I was in such a bad way and so broken down by the eating disorder that I just accepted the help. And I said, ‘Okay, thank you because I can’t carry on like this. ‘It was a huge moment of relief, because I’d been so secretive and felt so much shame around what I had been experiencing that I had never, ever spoken to anyone about it. So it felt like a problem shared is a problem halved. It really felt like that, and it felt like it was in someone else’s hands now. That felt like a huge relief.

But the education around eating disorders is very low, and the funds for it are very low. So there’s not a definitive treatment plan or answer. Unfortunately, you have to have money, and I was lucky that I had private medical insurance through my work, but a lot of people just don’t have access to eating disorder services, which is really scary.

AJ: So I think, so my personal experience, um, I know you touched on this as well, actually, you don’t get hungry. When my eating disorder manifested, it was very controlled, so I was still eating, but it was very controlled. I don’t think I’ve talked about this openly before, but I would eat jars of baby food. Because I figured if that’s been nutritionally created as a meal for a baby, then there’s just the essentials I need in that jar, and that would be a dinner for me. My family didn’t know what was going on. But I do remember getting to a point of opening up to my father, because it becomes all consuming.

It’s actually where my interest in nutrition came from, because you get so savvy at reading the facts, what’s in a product, the calories, etc. So it’s interesting that that’s now where some of that nutritional knowledge started from. I personally didn’t seek professional help, I actually had some support from my father, he taught me some holistic methods. He didn’t like to label, so his attitude was, ‘Kid, it’s just a phase you’re going through. ‘He was very pragmatic, and by not being labelled and being told it is a phase, I felt supported by his strength. I don’t know how else to explain that.

I don’t think ever fully leaves you in your life. I think there’s an element that just stays in the back of your mind somewhere. My daughter is good and she’s healthy now, but I was horrified to see it playing out in her as well. I remember as a parent going through all the methods of helping, thinking, ‘Okay, so I’ll discuss it,’ and then that was wrong, so I had to try something else. Then you don’t want to talk about food at the table, because it’s a sticking point. You get to the point where you feel like literally grabbing them by the shoulders and saying, ‘Look, you are literally killing yourself. I can see you disappearing before my eyes,’ and that doesn’t help.

So what worked for me wasn’t the answer with my daughter, and I think that’s a really important point with people who are struggling with eating disorders of whatever type. You mentioned the medical support, and I have numerous mum friends whose daughters are so immensely ill with eating disorders, and whatever support is there, it’s not working and it’s not right.

I think there really needs to be a shakeup of how we’re supporting these young adults with their confidence, body issues, and everything else. I think with your platform, Alex, you’re in a good position to hopefully push some change. That’s a nice segue, because earlier this year you were recently in the House of Commons. Tell me about that.

AL: Yes. I gave evidence to the inquiry around body image and how the government can work to improve body image. So this statistic found that the average teaching and assessment time on eating disorders in undergraduate courses amounts to just 1.8 hours, and one in five medical schools do not offer any training on eating disorders at all. Which is horrifying, given how commonplace eating disorders are, and secondly, given the fact that anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of all psychiatric disorders. So that’s very, very scary. They need real help.

Even disordered eating, people say, ‘But it’s only if it impacts your life that you really need help,’ but disordered eating hugely impacts people’s lives. Being a chronic dieter and flitting from one diet to the next can be debilitating to our lives. That’s the evidence I gave, and I said I was very lucky to have had access to help, and not just help, but to sustained help, not just 6 sessions of CBT.

I really would like to think that only 6 sessions will help, but for many people it’s not going to be enough. For me, it certainly wasn’t enough. It felt like my issues were so deep rooted that. It took years for me to unpick them. Education in schools is something that I really fought for as well.

AJ: I think also if I’m thinking about my daughter’s situation, I’ve actually done an Instagram live with my daughter. She’s now 23, and she’s open about all these conversations. I actually feel that there was, and still is, a coolness about being thin.

I think sometimes with a group of girls, it can be a phase they go through, and then there’s the occasional one in a group that will grab hold of it, and it becomes a problem. From experience, I know that the medical profession is offering antidepressants to these young girls, as part of the fix, because there obviously isn’t the other support out there. As a GP, they’re probably thinking that they’ve got to do something, and then that is unfortunately setting that young person up for a lifelong relationship with drugs that they actually don’t need. They need a different kind of support.

I would love to ask; do you feel fixed?

AL: Do you know, that’s an interesting question. I don’t actually think I’ve been asked that before. I suppose that relies on our definition of fixed. I think my goal always used to be that, and I would see posts on Instagram about self-love and people loving their bodies. I thought that I had to get to a place where I loved my body, and I shifted the goal post there to body neutrality, which was hugely helpful for me.

So rather than working towards a goal of body love, I am working towards a goal of body neutrality. I really believe that is where I sit most of the time, in that I feel like I’ve made peace with my body and I’m comfortable in my skin. I obviously still have days where I don’t like how I look, and I do find that when other things aren’t quite right in my life, that it’s body and food that becomes my go-to in terms of unhealthy-ness. I don’t know if there will be times where I relapse in my life. I’d like to think that there won’t be, but I also don’t want to put the pressure on myself to say that I know there will never be any.

I learned that through recovery from bulimia as well. I would say, ‘Right, I’ve done a week without purging,’ or ‘Two weeks without purging,’ and had these goals I was setting for myself. Then as I failed to meet these goals or I’d have a relapse or what felt like one, it would take me right back to square one. Whereas when I took the pressure off myself, it felt much more manageable. I guess that’s how I like to see it, rather than thinking of myself as feeling completely fixed.

I feel in a place where now where food and how I look doesn’t impact my life, and that is blissful for me. After a lifetime of being obsessed with how my body looks, what wait I am, the food I’m eating, that feels freeing and liberating and just wonderful.

So in that sense, yes. Do you think you feel fixed?

AJ: Yes, so interestingly, as I was asking you, that I was considering that question for myself. I eat a broad diet and I eat what I want to. I’ve definitely found that as I’ve aged and become menopausal, my body has dramatically changed, and I’m struggling with those changes that are now taking place. It’s not that I’m changing my diet at all, but it’s just another thing. I know I’m not the only woman, whether you’ve previously had an eating disorder or not, that at a certain age in your life, who feels like, ‘Oh God, what’s happening?’ It’s almost a body that you don’t recognise anymore.

Like you said, fixed isn’t the end point. You did a brilliant post a few weeks ago on your Instagram, and you shared photos of women through the ages, and how the women’s physique has been so criticised, and also how much it’s changed as to what the ideal is. From the 1900’s, when it was the tiny, tiny sinched in waist, to Twiggy. Then the slightly more Amazonian physique of the eighties, and now we’ve obviously got the Kim Kardashian ideal.

Have we got one of those for men’s bodies? It does not exist because they haven’t been scrutinised like that, and even reflecting on that, it’s bloody crazy.

AL: Yes, I know. It’s so crazy, isn’t it?

There are some things that you can track, like the dad bod, which has become more popular in the past however many years, and at certain points it was better to be more ripped. But essentially, and this is what it boils down to, is that in our society, a woman’s value lies with how she looks. Whereas a man’s value lies with his power. Women’s value lying with how we look is a great tool for keeping men on top, because body image concerns keep us busy. It takes up our money, it keeps us quiet, and it keeps us obedient, because we all know how difficult it is to try and lose weight and to make ourselves thin.

It’s really difficult to change your natural body shape. It requires a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of head space, and just capacity in general. It’s so interesting how difficult we find it to engage critically or to engage in critical thinking. We kind of just go along with things, right?

Until my therapist told me that diet culture exists and that my desire to be thin wasn’t innate, I thought I was born wanting to be thin. I said, ‘All women are, it’s just a thing. ‘My therapist told me, ‘Look at different cultures in Africa, it’s more desirable to be bigger. ‘I would never, ever have questioned or challenged it, and that’s the case for so many of us. We just go along thinking that it’s a woman’s place to be thin and look pretty, and it’s a man’s place to hold down the fort and provide the money and hold the power.

So do you feel, and I’m not sure what my answer is to this question. If we look at those changing women’s physiques and the ideals, do you actually think men drive them or.

AJ: I’m not sure what my answer would be, but if we look at those changing women’s physiques and the ideals, do you actually think they’re driven by men or by women?

AL: It’s interesting, because whenever I talk about this, I often get comments from people saying that women uphold beauty standards. While that might feel like it’s the case, it actually all boils down to the patriarchy, because beauty standards allow the patriarchy to thrive.

So while it might feel that it’s women that are in control with this, yes, they might be, because yes, they are part of the system too. So they do have a part in upholding the beauty standards, but they originate from the patriarchy, and they benefit the patriarchy. They do not benefit women in any way. So I think that’s really important to note.

I don’t think it’s healthy or productive to blame women. In this instance, I feel like the attention has to be on, ‘where does this originate?’ ‘Who is it benefiting?’ and then, ‘Why is it thriving, because of the patriarchy?’ if we’re talking about body image. It’s a $192.2 billion industry, largely run by men, and that’s really scary.

AJ: I found myself back in the dating pool in my adult life as a single parent of three kids. For years I was doing the online dating thing, and with that it’s photos and choosing other people’s looks and images. I was very aware that you’re choosing someone on how they look, and I definitely found myself going down that rabbit hole. It could be a whole podcast in itself, the dating profile stuff. I have a lovely partner now, but I remember this particular, this particular man. I was going to say gentleman, but I’m going to go with a man that I went on a few dates with. He was a bit older than me. I remember we were having a giggle over each other’s photos, and he commented, ‘Well, honey, I think you look a little bit heavy on the bottom half in that photo.’

AL: Outrageous.

AJ: I really didn’t know how to respond to that. I think I just sucked it up and just ignored it.

But even now I’m recalling it to you. This was probably 4 or 5 years ago, but those comments stay with people. To that person, it’s a flippant remark, and then suddenly you go down that rabbit hole when you’re looking at other photos. Maybe that’s a generational thing, because he was an older man, but it was bloody rude.

AL: That is so rude.

AJ: I laugh now, I now find it funny.

AL: It’s outrageous. The thing is, yes, he’s probably from a generation where women have to be thin, and probably for him, women shouldn’t have like big bums or big thighs. But now the beauty standard is that you need to have big bums and big thighs. It used to be, ‘oh God, does my bum look big in this?’ And now it’s ‘does my bum look big enough in this?’ However, that does not excuse, in any way, that man commenting on your appearance.

You’re a better woman than I am for not responding, because I would’ve seen red. The absolute audacity of him to think that you owe him looking a certain way. You don’t owe him or any man anything.

AJ: I would like to jump back to your shift on your social media. You were doing fashion and beauty, and you made the conscious shift into sharing more about your experiences, body positivity, and that side of things. That is immensely brave to do, with Instagram and social media, at that time, still being concerned with the perfect image, lighting, and the angle.

Did you feel that was a risk for you? While you were in that shift, what was going on for you?

AL: It felt terrifying. I think because I’d previously held so much shame around my issues with weight. A big part of that is the stigma around eating disorders and the false narrative that it’s a vanity issue, which it isn’t at all. But I thought that it was. I’d bought into that narrative, and I thought, ‘Well, it’s just me, I’m just really vain.’

That felt very shameful, and I was terrified to make that shift. Ultimately, it worked well, but at the time, I had a right to be scared to make that shift, because I lost contracts with brands, I’d been working with who wanted that aspirational curated content.

They didn’t want my more accessible, authentic content that no longer aligned with them. That’s what most of them said. Now they would be mortified, because there’s been this huge shift towards authenticity, diversity, and inclusivity, and making sure that everyone feels involved.

This was about 5 years ago, so not even that long ago, and that’s the reaction that a lot of brands took to my shift. So I did have reason to be scared. What spurred me on was that in spite of that, the reaction from the people that followed me was huge. I had previously felt like I was the only person in the world that was experiencing what I was experiencing.

I’d heard a little bit about eating disorders through one or two documentaries that I’d heard of in my time, and I had Googled some stuff, but it didn’t feel like there was much access to it. I just felt so alone that I was completely alone in the world with this.

As soon as I started talking about it, I got an influx of messages; a lot of messages from people that I knew, but I had never known that they were going through this. They hadn’t known about me either, because there was just so much shame and secrecy around this.

The response was so overwhelming and huge that I knew I was going in the right direction here. I knew that this was right, and I know that there’s real substance to this. It’s not that there wasn’t substance to what I was doing before, it just felt for me like something was missing. When I made this shift, I felt passionate about it, and it was really exciting to me. I wanted to see what change I could make in this area.

AJ: I’m getting the vibe that there’s possibly just a feeling of ease in being your authentic self because it’s hard to pretend to be someone else and to be some think you’re not, isn’t it?

AL: It’s really difficult. It’s time consuming and fighting your reality, which is what I was doing with trying to be thin. I was constantly trying to fight my reality, my DNA, my genetics, and fight what I was supposed to be. That’s really difficult, and it takes up a lot of your time. At the end of the day, you’re just fighting your reality, and that’s really painful and unproductive.

It feels wonderful to be yourself, exactly who you are, and lean into that and not be apologetic about that and be okay with it. I’m not saying that you have to love it and love yourself completely, but to be okay with it and to be at peace with who you are, that’s really powerful.

AJ: You’ve shared some of the positivity that you’ve had from people with that shift that you made, but I’m presuming you might have also experienced some negativity online. How do you overcome that or deal with that?

AL: This one’s tough. I feel like it’s something that I’m still dealing with, but not from a body sense.

When I first started doing this stuff and I first started showing my body, people would say the classic, ‘You are overweight, you need to lose 10 pounds. ‘You would be so much prettier if you lost weight.’ At the time, those comments crushed me, because it felt like they were echoing the voice of my eating disorder. It felt like, ‘I knew it. Everything that I once felt and I’ve overcome, I was actually right and they’re right. I do need to lose this, and I am overweight,’ and that sort of thing.

So a lot of that triggered me initially, it really did. It set me back in my recovery, and then I started to grow a thick skin to it, and I started to develop a ‘fuck you,’ attitude towards it, and saying, ‘How dare you, and who are you to say, and what is overweight?’

I really worked on that, and my account grew rapidly over the pandemic, so I was fast tracked in that sense. I had to develop a quick skin in a really short amount of time, and it was intense. But I feel like now there isn’t much that people can say to me about my physical appearance that’s actually going to bother me.

I’m sure you’ll have experienced stuff too, and it’s just brutal, but it’s kind of the world that we’re, we’re living in.

AJ: It is, and I think also everybody feels like they have a right to have an opinion and voice their opinion, which has its positivity. But then obviously there are people that are voicing opinions that aren’t kind.

A lot of what I do is skin and aging, and that is a whole other aspect of loads of the issues that we’ve talked about. Especially with women being judged more on how they age compared to men. How do you feel about the aging process?

AL: This is interesting and something that I hadn’t thought about much till recently, because I’m about to turn 34, so it’s never been something at the forefront of my mind. My friend, who I’m sure you’ll know, Nadine Beckett, and I had a lengthy discussion about aging and age positivity, and how skincare and beauty are two of my biggest passions. I was a beauty journalist for years, and I still adore it. I love it. We were talking about how to reconcile working in an industry that is so fat-phobic and ageist. Because it is such a gendered issue too.

For women, it’s seen as a terrible thing to age, whereas for men it’s like, ‘He is aging like a fine wine, or he is a silver fox. ‘They’re given so much grace with aging, whereas women really aren’t. It’s such a shame because it’s such a privilege and an honour to age.

AJ: We all age. It’s a privilege to age, and one sure thing that unites us all around the world. I know I’m in the industry of making people feel and look good and younger. That’s part of my facial treatments and my clinic, which is part of my job. But I also feel that the conversation around positive aging and having a little bit more confidence in how women age is so essential. A face that has wrinkles and is confident is just as beautiful, if not more so, than a face that has had lots and lots of work done.

You mentioned your love of beauty. Are there any desert island skincare or beauty products that you just couldn’t survive without?

AL: Yes. Loads and loads. I don’t know where to start. So CeraVe Hydrating Cleanser is one of my absolute favourites. Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair, I love and always have, as well as La Roche Posay Anthelios, the factor 50. Then Living Proof Dry Shampoo and It Cosmetics Superhero Mascara. I do love the Chanel Soleil Tan de Chanel, that big, gorgeous cream bronzer, I do love that.

AJ: The Living Proof Dry Shampoo, awesome. The IT Cosmetics mascara, absolutely. So you’ve picked a few of my favourites as well. Any favourite lipsticks?

AL: It’s quite random, but do you remember the brand that did the lip velvet lipsticks, Bourgeois? That’s my ultimate favourite. The brand left the UK, but it’s coming back really soon, which I’m so excited about because they are my favourite lip products ever. I love them, they’re beautiful, soft, and buttery, and they smell so good as well. So I’m really excited about that.

I actually do love the Jones Road Lip and Cheek Tint, it’s really beautiful. I love that in the coral shade. That’s really nice.

AJ: Right, I’m writing that down. I’ve not, not come across that. I would love to talk for a moment about your book. We must mention your book. Tell, tell us about that.

AL: The book was totally born out of a lack of space on Instagram for me to fully express what I needed to, to help people feel better about their body. I would get DMs all the time from women saying, ‘I want to feel better about my body. I want to do the journey that you have, but how?’ It was really difficult for me to try and sum that up in a response on DMs. There is so much work that I need to do research it, because if I’m going to try and help people feel better about their bodies, I wanted to throw everything at it.

I thought, ‘Let’s throw the kitchen sink at it and make sure that we’ve got all angles and all areas covered. ‘So that’s what the book was about, and I was determined for this to be the ultimate body image bible. I wanted to really get to the root of why we feel this way about our bodies, why we feel bad about them, and delve into the history behind it. It was hands down the most fascinating research for me to do. It was just so, so interesting.

There’s so much that has gone into it, and so much that has helped it become the industry that it is today, the diet industry. It’s had a really good reception, which is nice. I’ve had so many lovely messages that say from people saying that it has actually helped them, which is all I can ask for. So I’m very, very happy.

AJ: I guess it’s been read by quite a few people, because it is already a Sunday Times Best Seller, isn’t it?

AL: Yes, that was very exciting. I bought something like 7 copies of the Sunday Times, and then I got home and thought, ‘I didn’t need to buy 7,’ so I have this big stack of newspapers. But it was really exciting.

AJ: So tell me, what is next for Alex Light?

AL: I just want to keep doing what I’m doing and keep chipping away at the diet industry, diet culture, and beauty standards. I just want to help. I cringe at myself saying this, but I genuinely do want to help as many women, specifically, feel better about their bodies, as I possibly can.

What better job satisfaction could I ask for than to do that? So that’s the idea to just keep doing that. Helping us free ourselves from the prison of what so many of us and so many generations of us women have faced for so long.

AJ: Alex, you are such a needed voice in the world. On the social media platforms, you really are. This has been an absolute joy. Where can we find you?

AL: I am on Instagram @alexlight_ldn. Thank you so much for having me on.

Honestly, it’s been an absolute pleasure to chat to you. Thank you for your vulnerability and opening up about your history. I’m sure it’ll be so valuable to so many of the people that follow you and listen to this, so that’s really cool.