Three years ago, Alix was engaged to a man she says she “thought was the love of my life.” Right before walking down the aisle, theHome in a Heartbeathost told her then-fiancé that she had been grappling with an eating disorder — and he walked away.
Heartbroken, Alix returned home to Florida, where she had just resigned from her job as an executive at Goldman Sachs to move to Connecticut and start her married life. And she deleted Instagram, where she had been posting videos documenting how she was renovating her and her former fiancé’s soon-to-be home.
“I was in the lowest point of my life,” she says.
But, she says, it was this darkest time that forced her to get the help she needed for her struggles with anorexia and bulimia. “Even though I’m an extreme do-it-yourself-er, the one thing you don’t want to DIY is your mental health, and it’s important to ask for help,” Alix says. “The only reason I got better is I basically asked for help for the first time.”
First, “I asked it of my fiancé,” she says, “and it didn’t work out for me — but I didn’t stop asking.”
Alix, who is nowhappily datingBachelorettealum Dale Moss, said that she now believes her life unfolded exactly the way it was supposed to.
“If it hadn’t been so devastating and dramatic in the worst way, I don’t think I would’ve hit the low I needed to hit so that I could stand up differently in a new life,” she tells PEOPLE. “So I’m really grateful for it.”
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“I no longer keep it a secret,” she says.
During her self-imposed social media hiatus, Alix’s videos blew up on Instagram, and when she logged back in she was surprised to find herself a sudden design influencer. Her new audience led to her eventually landing her show, and gave her a platform to connect with others on a deeper level.
“That was a big realization for me. Like, ‘Okay, so why do I have all these followers now? Why are my videos getting millions of views? What’s the purpose? It can’t just be to motivate people to do things in their house and pull up their sleeves and grab a hammer. There’s got to be something more meaningful behind this.”
The purpose she ultimately found? Sharing her story — and particularly her struggles. “Maybe that’s the reason,” she says. “It’s supposed to reach somebody else and maybe help them in the same way that I needed help.”
Through the help she received, Alix says she found that “it was never really about the food . . . it was about control.”
“It’s never even been about my weight,” she shares. “My eating disorder didn’t come from me feeling like I was overweight and I needed to look smaller. What it came from was feeling out of control, and so I needed to control something, and I decided kind of against my will that what I could control was the amount of food I’m taking in or how I’m getting rid of it and that became almost an obsessive thing.”
Now, the self-professed “control freak” uses a host of techniques she learned in therapy to deal with her mental health struggles and help her “not feel as big of a need to control.”
‘“But do I still fight that every day?” the star said. “Absolutely.”
If you or someone you know is battling an eating disorder, please contact the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237 or go toNationalEatingDisorders.org.
Home in a Heartbeatis streaming exclusively on MAX.
source: people.com
