Life with Alexandra Nixon

Social media fitspo Alexandra Nixon has been running her fitness instagram account for almost two years. Starting out to stay accountable she’s grown a following of over 35K and with good reason! Her feed is full of real talk, motivation and inspiration. Her bubbly personality and contagious smile are just some of the reasons her account is so popular! So let’s get to it!

Thank you so much for taking the time Alex. Give us a run down on all things you, what’s your story?

Alex: Hey! I’m 23, live just outside of London and have been sharing my fitness journey on my Instagram @activealexandra for around 2 years. I’ve always loved sports whilst at school I would be on the netball team, hockey team and athletics team but never considered working out at the gym.

As I got older and started following people on Instagram I guess I realised I could get fitter and healthier than I was. I followed Kayla Itsines in 2015 and was amazed by the transformations on her page but I was sceptical, I didn’t believe these transformations were real or possible but I started clicking on the peoples accounts who she posted about and followed them.

I decided to try BBG for myself and create a fitness focused Instagram for accountability and to be part of the online community to keep me motivated. Not long in to starting BBG, I broke my shoulder by falling off a horse and had to undergo surgery to fix it. Being unable to do anything for myself let alone workout really made me appreciate my body and what it could do when I wasn’t injured. It showed me how sluggish I felt and mentally drained when I couldn’t be active so as soon as my arm had healed a little, I got back into the gym and continued BBG with my arm in a sling. I did one arm push ups and had to modify any jumping exercises to lower impact but I felt so much happier being active.

As much as I wish I wasn’t injured, this injury really kickstarted my fitness journey and I tried my best to re-gain full movement as I was told it’s unlikely I would. The BBG community allowed me to meet so many like minded people and the support everyone gave each other was incredibly inspiring.

After following BBG for a while and getting into the best shape of my life at the time, I realised I wanted to build a little more muscle. I started to educate myself on how best to do this and moved from BBG to lifting weights and reduced my cardio whilst increasing the amount of food I ate. I loved learning about this so much that I decided to train as a Level 2 Fitness Instructor so I had more knowledge to share with people online and one day if I decided to change my career path I could.

From then on, I’ve just been posting all about my fitness journey, the things that interest me and the things you guys say would help you and I love it so I really appreciate all of the support from everyone!

Have you always been a health and fitness nut? If not, what got you over the line?

Alex: 100% not. Before BBG I didn’t really ever consider what I ate or when to workout.

I’m so glad I found Kayla on Instagram! Though I would never have considered myself overweight, I wasn’t fit and healthy at all. If I continued living my life that way I could be in a very different place right now, both physically and mentally!

I would say finding BBG and then getting badly injured is what got me over the line, wasn’t nice at the time… you don’t realise how important your arm is until you can’t use it, but there’s always a positive to be found in any situation if you look deep enough!

People can say that social media is doing more harm than good. As a social media influencer, what are your thoughts?

Alex: I think if we analyse anything in the world as much as social media, we will find there’s good and bad things about everything in life.

I think social media is an amazing platform for health and fitness that gives everyone and anyone access to tips, workouts, recipes, motivation and inspiration to change their lifestyle and become the best version of their self whatever that looks like to them.

I think it’s sometimes hard to tell what’s real and what’s not, what’s a fact and what’s an opinion . Is hard not to get sucked into comparing yourself to others or following fad diets because people you like ‘claim’ that’s how they achieved their best self. However, with so many influencers using their large platforms and being honest about this aspect, I think it reminds us to take everything we see with a grain of salt, don’t believe everything we see and if we remember to do this, there is way more good on Instagram than bad!

Check out my favourite influencers for amazing content, I love @alexia_clark for workouts, @laurenfitness for education, @chessiekingg for positivity/ self love, @kayla_itsines for transformations and @kelseywells for all round day to day inspo.

What is your biggest frustration when it comes to the health industry?

Alex: The bigger the health industry is getting, the more social influencers there are which seem to just be in it for the money and don’t care about their credibility if the pay check is right.

I think making a career out of social media is great. Getting paid to promote and inform your followers of products you use and love is great but unfortunately some people influence products upon people that they don’t even use themselves or even believe are good products just for the cash.

This is going to happen in any industry though with the growth of social media so you’ve just got to make your own decisions or take the time to research something further before you use it.

I’ve been influenced into thinking I need to take every supplement that exists as a ‘normal’ person. I’m not competing, or doing anything extreme, I’m just living a healthy and fit lifestyle. Now I’ve done my own research I know I don’t need these supplements. It is down to you and your diet, if you feel you need the supplement to support your lifestyle. It isn’t critical for results as I was once made to believe.

Do you have a favourite quote or saying? What does it mean to you?

Alex: My favourite quote is “Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain”. I bought this as a wall sticker a couple of years ago for my university bedroom and I feel like waking up and going to bed with the same positivity mental attitude after reading it day in day out helped me get through a lot of things life throws at you!

To me, it means not every situation is going to go how you want it to but instead of wasting energy being unhappy, make the most of it, the lessons learnt and the strength gained.

If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be and why?

Alex: It’s good to have ambitions and goals and to focus on these but don’t focus on what you want so much that you don’t appreciate what you have at the time.

Don’t wish time away wanting more, be happy in the moment because when you look back and everything has worked out, any time and energy wasted being unhappy/upset will have never been worth it!

And finally! What are your three absolutely CAN’T live without foods?

I think anyone who follows me knows my number one is CHOCOLATE! A life without chocolate to me is a life just not worth living hahaha, ok maybe a little extreme but chocolate is happiness and you can eat anything in moderation and still live a healthy and fit lifestyle.
I love love love Steak, such a quick and easy source of protein too.
I’m not sure I’m majorly obsessed over anything else. I do really like sweet potato though?! Sweet potato mash, jacket, chips, you can do so much with it and I like variation!