Rock It Like Roxanne

The winner of Shape Fit Girl 2018 coolly conquers whatever life throws at her, be it financial woes, a failed business partnership, and gaining 10kg over eight months from stress plus emotional eating.

- Estelle Low

In many ways, Roxanne Gan is a star. On Instagram (@roxanne_yoga), she has an impressive 118K followers and growing, most of who follow her for yoga tips and tutorials, as well as her fitness and body transformation journey. (More on that later.)

Besides offering workout tips on social media, she’s also a full-time yoga instructor at Virgin Active, where she teaches classes and does yoga programme planning. This new position comes after her yoga and fitness teaching stints at Hom Yoga, now defunct Affinity Yoga, True Fitness, True Yoga, Pure Yoga and private clubs over the last seven years.

Her fitness credentials are amazing and life smoothsailing, but the road to success was not easy. In her early twenties, Roxanne struggled with almost every aspect of her life: studies, finances, relationships, fitness, diet and body image.

“It went downhill after I exited a relationship in 2009,” she shares. To refrain from dwelling on it, she threw herself into exercise, doing a mix of running, yoga and body combat for two hours a day, six times a week.

All those workouts did not stop her from piling on weight, as she neglected her diet, often binging on junk food and fast food due to stress. As an undergrad majoring in economics and finance at the Singapore Institute of Management, she dreaded studying, and had to take on various part-time jobs – such as giving tuition and teaching spinning classes – to finance her private school fees.

“I was doing what my parents expected of me, to get a degree before finding a stable job. But I’ve never been strong academically, so those three years of university were painful,” she recalls.

In eight months, her weight ballooned from 48kg to 58kg – the heaviest she’s ever been. “My self-esteem was at an all-time low. I just wanted to hide at home every day. If I had to go out, I would put on the baggiest clothes.”