Five years ago, the word ‘rest’ wasn’t in Annie’s vocab. She worked multiple jobs, studied a (very) hard degree, pushed herself at the gym, and tried to maintain a social life. All for funsies.
When the world forced her to slow down and she wasn’t initially accepted into her architecture masters, something happened. She was diagnosed with fibromyalgia — a lifelong condition she’d have to manage. Then, she flared up big time with contact dermatitis.
This was when she knew she needed to make a lifestyle change, stat.
Annie and I have been friends for years through Yours Only, and she’s now the owner of Street Pilates in Melbourne.
Let’s let Annie take the floor and tell her story.
Annie, when we first met, you were quite burnt out. There was a lot going on.
When we met, it was the depths of lockdown. I’d just lost my job, I was obsessed with the gym. I’d workout multiple times a day, seven days a week. I had my days scheduled down to the minute.
I knew what time I was getting up, making my protein shake, jumping in the car, everything was meticulously planned.
I was working in social media marketing, coaching at a high school, and I was also studying to become an architect.
So you thought you’d become an architect?
I did. Architecture was my plan since I was 16, there was no other vision. I had a full five year plan. I knew I was going to do my interior architecture degree, then do my Masters of regular architecture. I then wanted to get my building license.
There was no room for anything else. I didn't let there be.
What was your breaking point for you to be like, ‘I'm not gonna be an architect’?
The whole course took me about five and a half years. I then got knocked back from my masters, which shook me, because I finished my degree with honors.
It all came down to back end stuff. What uni I went to, credit scores, all those kinds of things. It was out of my control.
I had to either re-do half of my course to get in, or I’d have to extend my Masters by an extra two years. And both of them were not really on my cards.
I had a breakdown, but then I got in.
After two and a half months, someone dropped out of their place, and they contacted me and said, ‘we've got a spot for you. It's got your name on it.’
But in those two months, my life did a full 360. I changed my whole mentality, and I turned it down.
Let’s talk about your health story, and how you decided to open Street.
I was heavily into the gym, and with that came a strong focus on calorie control, various supplements, protein powders, and pre-workouts.
One day, while boxing, I felt a little twang in my wrist. I ignored it, but about six weeks later, it still wasn’t getting better.
Eventually, they told me I had actually fractured my hand, and I had no idea. A physio asked me, “How couldn’t you tell that you fractured the inside of your wrist? Doesn’t it hurt?”
And I said, “I feel like that all the time.”
That’s when he brought up the concept of fibromyalgia, but I completely shut it down.
He kept mentioning things like a “lifelong diagnosis,” and I thought, no way. I’m fit as a fiddle. So I ignored it. But over the next three months, I slowly burned out, lost my job, and went into lockdown. My wrist eventually healed, but that’s when I started looking into it more seriously.
So what are the symptoms of fibromyalgia?
It’s different for everyone. For me, it’s lots of pain in the body all the time — everywhere. It’s always my wrists, elbows, knees, my main joints.
I used to get trembles, and really bad swelling.
Even though I was super active, I couldn't drop any weight. So then it became a fixation. I always felt I needed to go harder, and do more. I basically stressed myself out to the point of burnout because I wasn't getting any results. But I refused to look at why.
So what's your day to day look like now?
I get up at about 5am most days a week and come to Street, the Pilates studio I opened two years ago.
When I go home, I go for a walk — headphones on, podcast in. Just one hour to de-compress after a lot of energy spent in the studio. Then, I'm normally at my desk for quite a while. Sometimes I'll teach again at night. But, I'm normally in bed now by 8:30pm.
I find teaching the best part of my day to day and my job. It's the part that I love the most.
And you've also dealt with dermatitis?
That was how this started. After lockdown, I had to deal with a lot of stuff. I couldn’t run from it anymore, because we were all stuck at home. It makes you look at things internally.
I went to the hospital to visit my baby nephew, and they had hospital grade hand sanitizer, which we all had to use. I had really bad hay fever that day. I touched my face, and from there I got a tiny red mark.
Over time, it grew until it was all over my eyes. I'd never had a skin issue in my life.
And what did you use on it?
My face was so sensitive and my body was so inflamed with everything else going on, that medications were not my friend at this point.
I’d just started a social media page to get through my fibro, which was when I was looking at getting into Pilates. So I posted a photo of my dermatitis and said, “really weird things are happening to my skin”.
Someone that was following me messaged and said they knew of a product that really helped them, which was Yours Only. I remember reaching out to you Ash and sending photos.
So then, what product did you use?
You sent me the
CLEAN Cleanser and
COAT Moisturiser together. I remember I used to get really bad cracking after a flare up. Everything I'd tried up until that point was full of fragrances.
I started using
CLEAN Cleanser every day as my face wash. I got rid of my full lineup of skincare. Straight after one use, my skin would settle down from their flare up. Then, I would just continue reapplying
COAT Moisturiser to help with the flakes.
