Finding Her Bliss Matilda's Body Secrets

Why she felt compelled to write a book

 

- Ashleigh McEnaney

She hasn’t settled on a date, a dress or the venue, but there’s one thing bride-to-be Matilda Rice is sure of when it comes to her big day – she won’t be shredding for the wedding!

“I could get married tomorrow just as I am and I’d be over the moon,” smiles the reality TV darling, who revealed her engagement to The Bachelor NZ’s Art Green in Woman’s Day last month.

But the happy, healthy 26-year-old – whose debut book, The Lazy Girl’s Guide to Living a Beautiful Life, launches next week – hasn’t always been so body confident. While living in London in 2012, Matilda’s self-esteem hit rock bottom as she battled an unhealthy obsession with diet and exercise.

“I was in a very weird and toxic place with my health,” she recalls. “I was obsessed with being skinny and fixated on being 55kg. I’d only eat carbs after exercise, which I pushed myself to do every day, and I was counting my calories on the app MyFitnessPal – I even went as far as to weigh my spinach!”

Then 22, Matilda was working as a TV programmer and believed she was being healthy, but the bubbly blonde failed to see the effect her fixation with food was having on her mental wellbeing.

“I lost all confidence in my job,” she remembers. “I felt in over my head, like I wasn’t good enough to be where I was. I was stuck in a really shitty spiral and feeling quite depressed about living so far away from my family.”