Roz Purcell : ‘Every week I question why I’m on social media’

We're discussing her new book 'No Fuss Vegan' on this week's Girls With Goals.

It's been a a decade since Roz Purcell burst onto the modelling scene through the Miss Universe pageant. Since then, she's carved out a successful modelling career at home and abroad but it's her love of food that's taking centre stage at the moment. 'No Fuss Vegan' is Roz's third cookbook and the former model joined us on the latest episode of Girls With Goals to talk about how her life has changed over the last ten years and how the pressures placed on her within the modelling industry became the catalyst to a life overhaul. You can listen to the full episode by clicking below: On the episode we discussed the pressures that go along with being a 'personality' online. Roz revealed that she questions herself constantly about being on social media and whether anybody should be engaging with platforms that don't bring us joy:

"I do not enjoy it, I find it a really hard place to be. You just end up comparing yourself to other people. The majority of people on there are just sharing these unattainable lifestyles. Anyone would look at me ten years ago and be like 'It's so unattainable the way she looks' but I didn't even think I looked like that... I was probably at my lowest ever so, you know, pictures can be very misleading and I think that social media is a lot of that and I think that it needs to change and it needs to be influencers and everyone out there who start changing their content."

Roz went on to describe her complicated relationship with food and admitted that the modelling industry, with constant measuring and habitual weight checks, wreaked havoc on her eating habits. She explained how she coped with this challenging time in her life:

"In my early twenties I was a very different person. I didn't really talk about what was going on, if anyone asked me any questions about work or what was going on with me I would just change the subject. I guess looking back now my parents were kind of typical Tipp parents, they were like 'Oh, well she dealt with it anyway'.

Roz's sister was diagnosed with Chronic myeloid leukaemia around this time, a cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow, the former model admits this was a huge changing point for her entire family:

"My sister had a very rough time getting diagnosed with CML... I began to look at my own body not just as a thing that's for show but that has an actual function and it does so much for us every single minute that we take for granted so, I guess a huge family thing like that was a trigger for me to actually go get help and change my mindset."

Aside from chatting to us on Girls With Goals we also convinced/forced Roz to run through some of the recipes from her new book, she went cooking with Cassie Stokes and you can check out the results below: