'I looked like I was living it up as a bikini model – but there was a dark side'

Lots of people dream of having a super-toned, lean body - but one woman admitted it's not all it's cracked up to be. Chessie King, 31, boasts over 600,000 followers on Instagram thanks to her candid snaps and refreshing approach to body image . She works to show it's completely normal for women not to feel "perfect" all the time.

When she was in her 20s, she competed in bikini modelling competitions and she's opened up about the "dark side" of them in the past. She admitted women suffer intense exhaustion from the relentless fitness regimes and super strict diets they have to follow. At one point, Chessie was told by officials that she was carrying "too much water weight", so she made it her mission to do anything to make herself look good.



She developed an "unhealthy" obsession with working out and took calorie counting to the extreme. "For 18 weeks I trained and ate differently than I ever had before," she said. "That was kind of the furthest extreme I went to.

Coming out of that was harder than going into it. There wasn't much advice on how to come out of it. I had a mini-stroke from doing it.

" Eventually she knew enough was enough – and she decided to love her body more instead of punishing it. She worked hard to overcome her obsession with what her body looked like, and her journey is still evolving. Becoming a mum also helped to change her perspective on body image, and it's encouraged her to love so many more things about the skin she's in.

Chessie, from London, added: "Being a mum has given me a new love for my body. It gave me a new purpose, and still does. I'm so aware of how much my body can do.

I no longer see exercise as a punishment." Now the mum's focus is all about wellness. She'd much rather be healthy than have a body that looks good for "two seconds in a tiny bikini on stage".

Chessie said, nowadays, one of the biggest problems she sees is that people want "quick fixes" to lose weight, but it's not as simple as that. She said it's about a lot more than "chasing perfection", and that healthy looks different on everyone too. She's recently been working with Virgin Active , as new research has revealed the most confusing wellness trends of 2024.

The Instagram star is keen to call out the "fakery" within the wellness industry as nearly half (48%) of active adults are confused about where to turn for real wellness information. Moreover, it was also noted that 50% see trends that contradict each other. She's on a mission to show that wellness is more about being holistic than looking a certain way.

.