When Riley Hemson lost weight, she gained followers. But it soon turned toxic.

Riley Hemson was born in New Zealand in the 1990s, a decade notoriously unkind to women's bodies. It was the height of Weight Watchers and diet shakes, when the 'in' aesthetic was heroin chic, and the beauty standard was impossibly — and literally — narrow.

As an active, sporty kid who happened to be bigger than many of her peers, Riley didn't see herself reflected anywhere in popular culture. Not in a positive way, at least.

Watch: The difference between intuitive eating and dieting. Post continues after video.

"Whenever I would see a bigger body, it was the one being made fun of in a movie," Riley told Mamamia's No Filter podcast. "It would be the one on the magazine cover being ripped to shreds about their cellulite."

Riley's family steeled her against most of it. They celebrated her achievements in sports and at school, as well as her ability to make people laugh. But then came her early 20s, when a bad breakup, an ankle injury and mental health struggles saw her abandon her active lifestyle.

"I'd look in the mirror and go, 'I don't like the way that I am. I've always been bigger, but I've put on weight in a short period of time. My life doesn't feel good at the moment,'" she said.

Her solution? "[I told myself] I'm going to make an Instagram page, I'm going to lose the weight, and I'm going to become successful and worthy."

Listen to Riley Hemson on No Filter here. Post continues below.

In 2016, she started an Instagram profile: @healthychick101. She posted pictures of meals, workout routines, and her disappearing body. Soon, thousands of people followed along with her.

Riley was achieving her goal, but she was far from healthy.

"I remember I went on a trip with my friends, and I was doing a protein shake for breakfast, protein shake for lunch and only having dinner," she said. "So it got toxic."

As Riley lost more weight and gained more followers, she came to a realisation.

"I realised that I am still the same person. I still have the same values, I still have the same friends," she said. "And actually, I'm not going to get to a point where I lose 25 kilos and go, 'Life just got a million times better. I'm, all of a sudden, worthy.' That's just not how it works."

Riley stopped dieting. She started living and documenting a more balanced, authentic existence — one centred around self-acceptance.

"I did get messages from people saying, 'This isn't what I followed you for. You're pushing an unhealthy lifestyle now,'" she said. "Which, to me, was wild because the 'shake-shake-dinner' can be healthy, but now that I'm telling people 'just love yourself and look after yourself', that doesn't resonate?"

Thankfully, plenty of people made the change alongside her, and plenty more joined along the way.

Riley now has more than 644,000 followers on Instagram. She's launched two fashion labels (Jorja and Joseph, and Remmie by Riley) that cater to women from size 6 to 24, and she's modelled for L'Oreal Paris.

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She's also recently found fans in a new corner of the internet with her #realisticrunningdiaries. Tucked between the posed and polished pictures on Riley's Instagram, are clips of her pounding the pavement on her regular runs. There's pep-talking, sweat, shoelaces coming undone, and a swear word or three. "Four kilometres down," she says in one 2024 video, "and I'm honestly feeling OK… If 'OK' means I can hardly breathe and my legs are on fire."

Speaking of the appeal of her running diaries, Riley said, "There are people that love running, so they are loving seeing me fall in love with it. And then are people that are just like me; they have hated it and aren't good at it, but they're going, 'I'm going to give it a crack.'"

Sadly, this fast-expanding audience means she comes up against hateful, trolling comments more and more. She has strategies to avoid them: setting up her Instagram to filter out certain words, only allowing followers to comment, and never looking at forums or Facebook comments beneath articles about herself. But occasionally, she said, one of her posts "goes viral and hits the wrong audience".

It often happens on content featuring her fiancé, Vita.

"I'll get comments about it sometimes, like, 'He's definitely cheating on her' — just because I'm bigger," she said. "People, I guess, look at our relationship and go, 'How did she get someone like that?'"

But that's precisely why she won't stop posting.

"I love to share our relationship and show that you can be in love with whoever you want to be in love with," she said. "And not only is it 'you're more than your body', but you're actually amazing at whatever size you are and whoever you are."

The fact that she can promote that message, that she can be a role model and advocate for size inclusivity, is more than she ever imagined possible as a young girl in the '90s.

"I do genuinely find so much fulfilment in what I do," she said. "To be able to represent girls in a curvy body and just being yourself and not taking it too seriously… it's crazy, and it's so special."

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Feature image: Supplied.