Melissa Leong: ‘Life is not easy. Life is ugly and hard and unpredictable’ | Australian life-style

At dwelling in Melbourne’s interior north, Melissa Leong is feeling apprehensive. She’s making ready to spend the day speaking about her new memoir, Guts, which reveals private struggles she has by no means earlier than spoken about publicly.

“This part – laying yourself bare, so to speak, multiple times a day – is challenging,” she says. “It’s mentally challenging. It’s emotionally challenging.”

The former MasterChef decide and Dessert Masters host describes herself as an introvert, a non-public one who likes to retreat and recuperate after a day on set. In her memoir, Leong has discovered a option to stability that want for privateness with being weak. She shares her battles with melancholy and nervousness, bouts of loneliness whereas filming MasterChef, and her experiences of bulimia, self-harm and sexual violence.

A working thread is Leong’s propensity for “blowing up” her life. She writes about leaving a safe job to dwell on a sheep dairy in Tasmania, and her divorce. “I have become a bit of an expert at it,” she writes, although she’s cautious of encouraging others to do the identical.

“If you are going to push the big red button, you do need to be prepared for some fallout, because it’s inherently a selfish thing,” Leong says. “And when I say selfish, I don’t mean selfish in a bad way.

“There are certain things we have come to realise, as women, that we can do and have for ourselves and our friends that don’t involve subscribing to societal norms.”

Leong says she shut herself away to write down about what felt true to her, together with her childhood within the predominantly white Sutherland Shire, Sydney, within the 80s; how power ache halted a promising musical profession (she began taking part in the piano aged three); her work as a make-up artist; quitting her first company job and breaking into the – surprisingly hostile on the time – world of meals writing.

“There’s a little sweetness in running your own race, emerging triumphant, and realising that everybody who didn’t believe you could do it is just way back there,” Leong says. “I’ve met a lot of people that have tried to set me back and that’s OK because resistance gives you something tangible to push against.”

The 43-year-old referred to as her ebook Guts as a result of she wished the title to precise visceral discomfort. “Life is not easy. Life is ugly and hard and unpredictable, and often less than ideal, and I liked that in one syllable you have this word that is loaded.”

She’s buoyed up by others within the trade who’ve written memoirs, together with Kumi Taguchi, whom she met throughout her time at SBS. She feels she’s in good firm alongside girls telling advanced tales. “Having people like Kumi on my side and in my corner have helped galvanise me.”

Leong writes that she has come to simply accept she was raped roughly 15 years in the past. She doesn’t identify the perpetrator however she hopes that sharing her story may assist others.

“The particular configuration of experiences I’ve had are mine but these are things that have happened to our friends, sisters, mothers, cousins.

“I share these things because I know that they’re not unique to me, and so if I can articulate them in a way that maybe someone else can’t articulate yet to themselves, if that means they feel less alone, then that’s a success to me.”

Now Leong is unapologetic about prioritising herself, “because for the majority of my life I have been a people-pleaser”.

“I have wanted to make other people around me happy to the detriment of my health, my wealth and myself, really.”

She jokes about not realizing if it’s age or perimenopause, however “if one of the side-effects is that I give less fucks, then I don’t care”.

Leong endured criticism from the second she was introduced as the primary feminine MasterChef decide in 2020. In the aftermath of her cohost Jock Zonfrillo’s loss of life in 2023, she was additional criticised for selecting to grieve privately. In Guts, Leong describes MasterChef as “a set of golden handcuffs” – directly an incredible alternative and in addition limiting.

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“I’m really proud of the time I put in; I learned a lot, I grew a lot, but I also just as equally wanted to continue moving, so that the expectations people had for me weren’t able to atrophy around me.”

After internet hosting two seasons of Dessert Masters, Leong took an sudden pivot to internet hosting UFC Fight Week. “It was as far in the opposite direction as I could imagine,” she says.

She’s an enormous fan of combined martial arts and is about 18 months into jiujitsu coaching, working in direction of a 3rd stripe on her white belt. “It’s the right combination of human instinct and critical thinking. Plus, it’s a great workout. If you’re stressed, getting really sweaty and exhausted a couple of times a week is quite good, for me anyway.”

Leong has additionally completed filming a brand new present in New Zealand referred to as Taste of Art, with the Amisfield government chef, Vaughan Mabee. Though the present is “back in the world of food – and studios and dresses and fine dining”, she hopes viewers will see an evolution in her profession.

She’s additionally on screens now as a contestant in The Amazing Race Australia: Celebrity Edition, swapping designer clothes and heels for tie-dye T-shirts and trainers. It’s been “quite freeing” to relinquish management and be on the whim of actuality TV’s gameplan, she says. “Being able to just trust was a wonderful exercise for me. I am a big subscriber to: just sign on to every experience life offers you.

“I think we learn a lot about ourselves through being uncomfortable. And not all of those lessons are soft, fluffy, kind, nice things but they’re nevertheless incredibly valuable.”

This philosophy helped with sharing the darker components of her life in Guts. Any doubts have been “overshadowed by the truth”, she says. “If I’m going to tell my story then I’m going to tell my story. I can’t sugarcoat the less-than-ideal things that have happened to me.

“These are things that have very much shaped me in the choices I’ve made in my life. The last few years have been a lot about survival and not much else, if I’m honest. But I sit here now really proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish.”