Insta Icon Alexis Ren Goes Deep On Her Recovery From Disordered Eating

She told me to smile

A post shared by ALEXIS REN (@alexisren) on Mar 9, 2017 at 7:49pm PST

In a feature piece for the mag, Ren elaborated on a series of tweets from last year, in which the 20-year-old model and influencer began to unpack what she described as an unhealthy relationship with food.

I am now healthy and able to eat full meals without guilt. I workout because I love it…not to punish myself.

— Alexis Ren (@AlexisRenG) April 30, 2017

I was in a toxic state of mind, and I’m so grateful to be out of that fucking mindset.-

— Alexis Ren (@AlexisRenG) April 30, 2017

Ren says her problematic relationship with food and exercise first presented itself after working in Australia in the wake of her mother’s death. When she returned to Los Angeles, her modelling agency pointed out she had gained weight. 

“I just felt so out of control,” Ren says, and that the comments from her agency were what kickstarted an unhealthy period of her life. Her mother had been a nutritionist; Ren says “I felt bad because I knew I was letting my mom down by doing everything that she wouldn’t have wanted me to do.”

That included a period where Ren says “a vicious cycle” emerged. Along with exercising excessively, Ren says “where when I did eat, I just felt worse, so I didn’t want to eat, and ate less and less and less”

That tied in with her self-perception, as Ren says “I felt like my body was the only reason why people liked me.”

Fortunately, after her relationship with Insta-dude Jay Alvarrez dissolved, Ren says she was able to seek help from a health nutritional coach. While her troubled thought processes about food are “always kind of there, like with my mom’s death,” she now has healthy strategies to mitigate their impact.