Last year, we met a girl in a MTV series on an incredible journey. She was bubbly and ambitious, yet vulnerable and not yet sure of herself at times. Within her we saw a bit of ourselves. As Chelsea Settles transformed her body, and as a result her entire life in front of us, we’d watch her get closer to her goals and we were inspired to map out some of our own.
We caught up with Chelsea, and she filled us in about her life after the show, and how her journey still continues long after filming ended. In the final part of the StyleBlazer 5 Days of Fitness series, we believe her message about beauty and picking yourself up after falling down resonates with all women. We hope that she inspires you to pursue your dreams in 2013, and for the rest of your life.
Photo: Chelsea Settles
Life when the director called cut…
“I left L.A. maybe three months after we stopped filming because I wanted to be near my family. It was actually the worst decision of my life. The people I grew up around, they were acting so weird. I don’t look at myself like any differently. I had an amazing opportunity but I’m still just Chelsea. I don’t need all of the bells and whistles that have come along with any of that. It was also hard to be back in a space where there was so much negative energy around, and I just felt like I was right back where I was when I was 325 pounds and feeling miserable. I’m actually finally out of my contract. I would never do another docuseries ever [laughs]. It was so hard for me, just filming for 12 hours, 8 hours some days, and the show was only 50 minutes. I feel like people didn’t get an accurate look of who I really am. I’m glad that I wasn’t shown in a bad way so I don’t want to sound ungrateful. Not something that I expected. But I might be overreacting a little [laughs]. I was just really thinking, I want to lose weight.
“I think the show started a little after I got home, so I kind of went to Crazy Town. I remember going three days without eating. Nothing. Just water. Because I was just under such pressure and stress and I knew that I would never be able to make it, doing that. But I had lots of interviews. And I remember doing a spread in Us Weekly, and to get to my lowest weight, I stopped eating. I was eating baby spinach, balsamic vinegar, probably intaking 700 calories or lower and wondering why I was feeling sick and weak. Just when people look to you for inspiration and you’re doing crap like that, I felt so horrible. It just wasn’t a good feeling.
I completely stopped living for myself, and that’s what caused the whole crash. I was living because, I have to keep losing weight. I’m going to let a ton of people down that look to me as a role model, as an inspiration. I started isolating myself, I kicked my boyfriend at the time to the side, and just completely withdrew from everything. And I honestly had to spend 2012 rebuilding. By March of 2012 I was just completely shot. So I had to spend the rest of the year picking myself back up, and trying to go back to basics, and figure out what it is that I wanted with my life, the relationships that I had with friends, and opening myself back up and allow them to understand what I was going through at the time. Yeah, you have to exercise, you have to eat your food. We all understand calories in, calories out. But if you don’t understand, your mental is the thing that’s controlling it, you’re really not going to get very far. You have to get to the root of what your problem was. And once you get to that, everything else makes sense. And then you’re able to figure out that food isn’t the enemy, and it’s also not a therapist either.
Now my diet is super clean. 80% of the time I’m eating clean, 20% of the team I can splurge. And really I don’t even like to. I had to rethink my relationship with food. I was an emotional eater. And I think it’s just knowing that’s what life is about. Our lives are being played out in cycles. So you might have a period where you’re doing stellar in everything in your life. And then there are times when it’s crap. You can’t attack yourself and think that you’re alone. Everybody else goes through the same things, it’s just that they don’t express it. People hide it. I think if people were more transparent with some of the stuff that they go through, people would feel like a lot better in a weird way.
What’s Chelsea’s workout and diet regimen now? Does she still love Kim Kardashian? Click to read more.
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