She became famous for her ‘clean’ diet and hardcore workouts, but behind the scenes Alice Liveing was dangerously underweight. “I hold my hands up – I was wrong,” she says, as a growing group of women – and health experts – reject toxic diet culture. 

Alice Liveing will never forget the day she selected an old favourite dress to wear to an event. “It was short, navy blue, with feathers round the bottom. I’d worn it to my first film premiere and remember feeling amazing in it,” she says. “But this time it wouldn’t go over my bum. It was a very conflicting moment: ‘Oh, I didn’t realise I’d changed that much.’ I had to grieve the body I was losing and that had been put on a pedestal, but also realise how much happier I was now.” 

Liveing’s complex range of emotions were understandable. A decade ago, Clean Eating Alice, to use her Instagram handle at the time, was one of the UK’s biggest ‘fit-fluencers’, forever flaunting her minuscule, muscular frame to her 700,000-odd followers, yet never hinting at the toll maintaining that physique was taking on her physical and mental health. “My skin looked terrible, my hair was falling out, I was sleeping poorly, always in a bad mood, had low energy levels, poor cognitive function,” she says. “But for so long I was oblivious to what I was doing to myself – or rather, I didn’t want to believe it.”

After all, ‘Alice with the abs’, as she was known, was attracting money, deals for cookbooks that overtook Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson in the charts, endless invitations to glamorous events and lucrative clothing deals. “At weekends I remember being exhausted from under-eating and overexercising, but still going to the gym, then putting make-up on and standing in front of the mirror and taking a photo to show off my body. Then I’d collapse on the bed and watch the comments come in: ‘OMG! Body goals!’ Those made me feel on top of the world. But, looking back, in some photos I look so unwell.”

Her periods stopped, but for a couple of years she ignored this until, aged 25 and having met Paddy Murphy, now her husband, she decided to consult a fertility specialist. “She told me, ‘You’re not eating enough and doing too much exercise. Your body is in a state of stress and if you carry on you won’t be able to have children.’ Those words changed my life. I needed someone to shake me up and say, ‘What you’re doing isn’t OK,’ because before that I’d been like a deer in headlights.”

Knowing a family was more important to her than a tiny body mass index, Liveing embarked on a slow about-turn to gain 10 kilograms, cutting back on exercise and consuming more calories. “But I definitely had difficult days when I restricted my food and fell back into bad behaviours.”

She also had to reconcile herself with losing the ultra-honed identity that had bought her so much kudos. In 2017, she dropped her ‘Clean Eating’ tag in favour of her real name. Recently she posted a shot on Instagram of her former ultra-ripped physique next to one of her today, healthy but six-pack free. “I’m definitely not claiming to speak for the body-positivity movement – I still have a very slim body – but that post really brought home how I’ve had to learn to love other parts of myself, to have confidence that there’s more to me than being the smallest person in the room,” she says.

We’re sitting in a cafe near Liveing’s home in southwest London. Radiating health, she’s chatty and upbeat in a smart pink trouser suit. Now 31, she works as a PT and runs her GiveMeStrength app, focusing on training for long-term health rather than #beachbodygoals, and has just published her fourth book, Give Me Strength. As well as offering fitness tips garnered from her time as a personal trainer, it outlines how, despite having no nutritional qualifications, she found herself preaching potentially “excessive, addictive” habits to her unquestioning followers.

“It was often painful to write, but I bear a lot of responsibility for perpetuating a potentially damaging narrative. I was so wrapped up in that world I didn’t recognise what I was doing was wrong, but that doesn’t matter. I’ve been brought up to own my mistakes,” she says.

Liveing was far from alone in espousing these hardcore regimes, with a generation of influencers making fortunes pushing carb-free, gluten-free, sugar-free diets – a culture many now distance themselves from – and/or high-intensity workouts.

“We celebrate health and fitness for good reasons, but we didn’t realise we were promoting disordered eating to the nth degree. It was like a badge of honour – you would do things like put zucchini in your porridge, totally weird but at the time really normalised.”

What no-one knew was Liveing was training to the point of exhaustion, avoiding occasions that involved food or, if she had to attend, inventing excuses about already having eaten, scanning menus in advance to pick the lowest-calorie options. “I was preoccupied with food. It becomes very isolating.”

Yet on social media she would post, for example, a shot of the pizza her friends had ordered, rather than the undressed salad she had chosen. “That’s the bit I feel guiltiest about – I was lying, being disingenuous, trying to get across this image of, ‘Everything’s fine, I don’t have food issues!’” She says “without doubt” many other health influencers are using the same ruses to conceal eating disorders. “It’s smoke and mirrors and it makes me so angry and frustrated. You don’t have to post what you eat at all – that’s far better than saying, ‘I had five doughnuts!’ when you didn’t.”

At 18 Liveing won a place at theatre school, where initially she subsisted, like most students, on beer and chocolate. But at the end of her first year, one of her tutors asked: “Do you want to have a serious career in this industry? Because if so, you need to be conscious of your body and right now you’re not nailing it.”

Liveing immediately began dieting, using knowledge gleaned from Google, and exercising, taking a basic PT course. Within months she had dropped from a size 12 to an eight. “It was massively celebrated: ‘Wow, you’ve lost weight, come stand at the front of my class! We’ll put you up for good roles.’ My friends’ reaction was, ‘She’s so disciplined!’ even though I wasn’t eating enough.”

The Instagram she’d started to hold her training regime to account rapidly amassed followers, and she was offered a two-book deal. “I was 22 with no qualifications to justify me writing a book, but I was being offered life-changing money. Once the dust had settled I had a feeling I was out of my depth, but I’d signed a contract and everything just snowballed.”

After her fertility reality check, Liveing had a lot of therapy and actively distanced herself from the ‘fitspo’ crowd. “A huge number of content creators and influencers have difficult relationships with food – I don’t blame them, because they’re a product of an environment where they’re told they’re amazing for looking a certain way. But I can’t be in those spaces, I feel very triggered.”

She has unfollowed anyone who makes her feel bad about herself. “What’s more important, upsetting someone for a day, or changing my life?” she asks.

Liveing still eats a “relatively” balanced diet and trains – the difference is everything now is in moderation: when she’s tired she’ll have a day off exercising, if she fancies an ice cream she’ll eat one. After we talk, she’s off to meet friends at a dinner for Murphy’s birthday. Previously she would have been tying herself in knots about such an occasion. Now she’s excited. “I haven’t looked at the menu in advance. I’ll have dessert and won’t think twice about it. There’s joy in my life again.”

5 things Alice wants you to know about training

​​The PT recently took to Instagram to share these learnings

#1. Being lean doesn’t mean that you’re automatically ‘healthy’

Health is complex and looks very different for everyone. Just because someone looks like they train, doesn’t necessarily equal optimal health. Similarly, just because someone doesn’t match your perceived version of ‘fit’, doesn’t mean they aren’t.

#2. You can’t shame yourself into making behavioural changes

Shame doesn’t make you work harder, become fitter or make lasting changes. You can’t shame yourself thinner, or healthier, or fitter, or better. Developing a kinder, happier and better relationship with yourself and your body will foster the most positive and lasting changes to your health and your training. 

#3. More training doesn’t equal better results

The amount of exercise you need to get vast health benefits is actually a lot less than you think. You don’t need to train every day, and you don’t need to spend hours in the gym. 

#4. Lifting weights will not make you ‘bulky’ 

It’s incredibly hard to lay down skeletal muscle tissue. You’re not going to bulk-build muscle after a few months of training. 

#5. Resistance training is one of the best things you can do for your health right now

I don’t want to sound dramatic, and of course I’m biased, but the evidence is only growing for how beneficial being strong is throughout our lives.