Galey Alix on How Anorexia and Bulimia Turned Her Life Upside Down: 'I No Longer Keep It a Secret' (Exclusive)
“Even though I'm an extreme do-it-yourself-er, the one thing you don't want to DIY is your mental health," the 'Home In a Heartbeat' designer told PEOPLE
HGTV
Galey AlixGaley Alix is opening up about the lowest point of her life, and how it led to her fresh start and new career as an HGTV star.
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, the Home in a Heartbeat host told her then-fiancé that she had been grappling with an eating disorder — and he walked away.
“I told him that I'd been hiding a very severe eating disorder and I was really struggling, and I needed to find a therapist,” she tells PEOPLE. “And he did not want to marry me anymore because I had been dishonest by hiding my struggle.”
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 now happily dating Bachelorette alum 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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The HGTV star admitted that she still doesn’t know how to feel about how her former fiancé handled the situation. “I still battle with if I can even be upset with him because I did feel like I was dishonest by not telling him I was struggling,” she shares. “But something that my therapist has drilled into my head is that, particularly with an eating disorder, it's very shameful and it thrives in secrecy. So, part of the disorder is that it convinces you that everything's okay and you're just doing a little diet just to be better — and it's not something you need to tell anybody about.”
The HGTV star says that, after seeking out a therapist, eating disorder nutritionist and other experts, as well as opening up to her loved ones, she realized that “your secrets make you sicker.”
“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 to NationalEatingDisorders.org.
Home in a Heartbeat is streaming exclusively on MAX.
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