Known to her 1.8 million Instagram followers as Em the Nutritionist,Emily English’s polished proficiency and passion for food seem like they’ve been baked in since birth. However, as she reveals in the first episode of Women’s Health‘s new podcast series, Just As Well, her relationship with eating hasn’t always been easy.
As a young girl, our April cover star had a wholesome and abundant approach, inheriting a love for food and cooking from her family. Restriction or demonising weren’t on the menu: ‘Neither my mum or my granny dieted,’ she told Gemma Atkinson and WH Editor-in-Chief, Claire Sanderson. ‘We all ate normal food. I was never really exposed to diet culture.’
After being scouted at V Festival aged 17 to become a model for ASOS, however, she then joined a ‘proper fashion agency’, where ‘they criticised the size of my thighs and told me to lose weight. I went from having an incredibly normal, healthy relationship with food to overnight…developing an eating disorder,’ she says.
Evenings spent ‘going on Google’ led her to the ‘horrible, toxic world of unregulated nutritional advice. It stole so much of my life away from me for months and months. But if you ask me what was it that made the switch go, I can’t explain it.’
She stopped eating with her family and began reducing food – and herself – to grams on a scale. ‘My mum could no longer cook for me. I became obsessed with weighing everything. Weighing my body was this pure mass equation.’
It took seeing ‘the most incredible CBT therapist‘, Jane, who’d also had an eating disorder, to help her heal. ‘She really understood me and helped pull me out of it [to] have this amazing bird’s eye view of what I value. We can get so hyper fixated on these specific points of what we want to achieve that we stop actually looking at the bigger picture.’
Revelations like this led Emily to realise her appetite for answers was so voracious that she wanted to pursue a degree in nutrition at King’s, slicing up previous notions about her knowledge. ‘As someone who thought, “Oh, I know a lot about the human body and science,” I knew nothing about nutrition. So I ended up going to university to study it. I would never have…if I didn’t have an eating disorder.’
Now, as a qualified professional, she’s still ‘grateful’ for that period, as it cultivated an empathy and understanding she calls upon ‘every single time I meet a client or speak to people over my social media’.
It’s also why she extends such high standards to her own content, adamant that it be constructive, academically sound and sensitive. ‘I always want to hold that level of accountability and responsibility for the nutrition advice I share, because it’s not just food… it’s mindset and mental health.’
As of July 2024, over 725,000 people in the UK have an eating disorder, estimates the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). In Western countries, between 5.5% and 18% of young females have experienced a DSM-5-defined eating disorder by early adulthood.
If you need help with your or someone else’s relationship with food:
- Get in touch with your GP, so you or whom you’re concerned about can be referred for specialist help
- Contact Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, on 0808 801 0677 or beateatingdisorders.org.uk
- Speak to eating disorder support service Seed on 01482 718130 or seed.charity
Just As Well is the wellness podcast for women who want real science, practical advice, and great chat. Hosted by Gemma Atkinson and Women’s Health Editor in chief Claire Sanderson, two working mums in their 40s who balance training with busy lifestyles. Listen or watch here
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