HK fitness YouTuber Emi Wong tells us the mistakes she made when she first started getting fit, and tips on doing it right
The fitness guru tells us what motivated her to quit her day job and pursue what she truly loves
Emi Wong is serious about both physical and mental health.Local fitness guru Emi Wong has won legions of online followers thanks to her uplifting YouTube videos. Her fitness and lifestyle channel “Emi Wong • StayFitandTravel” now has more than 500,000 subscribers. But Wong’s wellness videos don’t merely represent her online persona; off camera, she is every bit as dedicated.
Young Post caught up with Wong last month at the Goji Studios in Mong Kok – where she was running an exercise workshop – to get to know Wong in person.
“I started working out about three to four years ago. Back then, I had just started a full-time job, and I wanted to set some personal goals outside of work,” she said.
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Wong knew that her lifestyle wasn’t as healthy as it could be, and was inspired by other online fitness gurus to do something about it.
“I thought maybe one day I could look as fit and toned as well, so that’s how I started working out.”
She quickly realised, though, that this wasn’t quite the right attitude. Her goal shouldn’t be to look fit and healthy, but to feel it on the inside as well.
“At first, my lifestyle didn’t necessarily become healthier because I became too obsessed with the whole thing … I worked out way too much, and was obsessed with eating a hundred per cent clean.” Wong admitted that she couldn’t even stand having dressing on her food, and would wash it off before eating it.
“I had, to some extent, developed an eating disorder, and it took me some time to recover.”
Now, thankfully, she is in a much healthier place, where she is less concerned about calories, and more focused on her mental health, as well as her physical health, too.
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For readers who want to begin their own fitness journey, Wong said they should start small.
“Don’t go too crazy or change everything in your life, because that’s not sustainable,” she said. Wong instead recommends making one little change at a time, and gradually introduce more into your daily life.
Wong filmed her first YouTube video a year and a half ago, at a time in her life when she felt like her day job was not fulfilling enough. It was, she said, the best decision she’s ever made in her life.
Wong creates, films, and edits all of her own content, and said that filming a workout video is much more gruelling than actually working out alone.
“You need to make every single movement one hundred per cent perfect … no matter how tired I am, I cannot drop my leg for even one second.”
It takes Wong around 12 hours to edit one video. “There are a lot of behind-the-scene challenges to overcome that people might not know about.”
A month ago, Wong left her job to work full-time on her YouTube channel. She is, she said, busier than ever before. Wong doesn’t mind the increased workload too much, though; she knows it’s a sign that her channel is doing well, and – as she tells her viewers in her vids – she is making sure to count her blessings.
Edited by Charlotte Ames-Ettridge