- Hongkonger Emi Wong has been posting popular YouTube workout videos on fitness and hygiene during the virus lockdown
- Newly married, she talks about how her husband’s support helped her stop her unhealthy partying and overcome her eating disorder
Lunges with a floor sweeper. Squats with laundry detergent bottles. Just weeks before her wedding, YouTube fitness guru Emi Wong released an Instagram video during the coronavirus outbreak with a healthy reminder for her 1.6 million subscribers. "Keep both hygiene and immune system up," read the captions on her video, showing that cleaning and exercises can go hand in hand.
Many people in Hong Kong are working from home and avoiding crowds to reduce the likelihood of infection. But being homebound can be boring, as Wong's followers have complained. Even as she was counting down the days to her private wedding in Thailand to Chad, the certified personal trainer posted this clip: "Time is not an excuse any more. Instead of lying around and watching TV, get up and get your endorphins going."
While she and Chad expressed concerns their two years of nuptial planning would be disrupted by the global health emergency, she kept up the stream of encouraging advice and demonstrations. Wong's workout videos are the most in-demand content on the YouTube channel she launched in 2017. A 10-minute clip on a full body high-intensity interval training (HIIT) workout clocked over 8 million views, for example.
"Not everyone has the luxury of both time and money to spend hours in the gym every single day, but a lot of my workout videos are 10 to 20 minutes," and anyone can do them at home, Wong says, to explain her channel's popularity.
Wong tied the knot in a lavish but low-key ceremony in Phuket early this week despite the odds against it going ahead. She wasn't always the picture of health that shines through in her videos, though; Wong underwent a lifestyle transformation that led to her online success.
While studying international business and global management at the University of Hong Kong, and for years after she graduated in 2013, Wong was a hard partying girl, drinking herself into unconsciousness three or four times a week, living by the Yolo (You Only Live Once) motto.
"I knew it wasn't healthy, but I didn't care," recalls the 28-year-old. Wong also battled bulimia, an eating disorder characterised by bingeing and self-induced vomiting.
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tag a friend who is bored at home let's clean and workout keep both hygiene and immune system up tag 一個覺得係屋企好悶嘅朋友 一舉兩得
A post shared by Emi Wong 王艾米 (@emiwong_) on Feb 6, 2020 at 5:00am PST
A health crisis commonly prompts a re-examination of one's lifestyle, as it did for Wong. About a year after graduation, she had her appendix removed, but complications arose post-surgery. Stomach cramps, especially after meals, led to hospital visits. "I had to be very careful about my eating. I had to stop drinking at the time. That's when I first realised my health is not guaranteed," she recalls.
In her early 20s, seeing other people's before-and-after fitness transformation posts on Instagram inspired Wong to exercise more. She yearned for toned abs. "I thought I just needed to exercise so I could lose weight," she says. But it spiralled into an unhealthy obsession. She exercised excessively " two or three times a day.
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While employed at an alcoholic drinks company, at business dinners she was hyper aware of fattening food on her plate. "I would see sauce on pieces of chicken … to get rid of the sauce, I washed the chicken in a bowl of hot water," she recalls. Then she reached a low point, where she vomited after eating almost daily for months. "I thought I was being really smart … but I knew from the media this wasn't a good thing," she said about her secretive practice.
The turning point came after a Valentine's Day buffet. She binged on French fries, then purged them. When her then-boyfriend Chad, now her husband, asked why she had spent so long in the bathroom, she told him the truth " all of it. "When he said one day I could get cancer, I got really scared," she recalls, adding that this eventually brought the purging to a halt.
Research suggests chronic vomiting and the acid damage it causes to the oesophagus lining may lead to Barrett's oesophagus, a condition considered a risk factor for cancer. A study published in Cancer Epidemiology found patients with a history of being hospitalised for an eating disorder have a six-fold risk of oesophageal cancer. University of Edinburgh researchers based this on a review of hospital, cancer and mortality records in Scotland from 1981 and 2012 for 3,617 individuals admitted to a hospital for an eating disorder. The authors noted other cancer risk factors in these patients to explain the results, such as their higher than average rates of being hospitalised for alcohol and smoking-related conditions.
Wong kept a promise to Chad to inform him every time she purged after meals. He would remind her of the health consequences. "That slowly took effect, I did it less and less to the point I stopped," she said.
Opening up about her bulimia to more people, including her Instagram followers, helped, too, as she learned the power of not letting an unhealthy behaviour stay hidden inside. "When you tell more people about it, it makes you feel accountable," she said, adding that it fuelled her motivation to end that habit.
Wong no longer obsesses about food and exercising. Now, this teetotaller exercises four times a week in HIIT workouts " except while on holidays so she can cherish the experience.
"When you're young, you think you're on top of the world and can do anything you want," says Wong. But youth fades and health problems will arise, depending on your actions early in life.
Not that she encourages a monk-like existence. She advocates practising everything in moderation, and gaining more knowledge about health and wellness. "It's very important to have a sustainable lifestyle."
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