This is Me: Mrs Hinch reveals weight struggles in new book

Instagram's queen of clean opens up about regretting a gastric band procedure that left her in debt and ill health in her early twenties.

Mrs Hinch, aka Sophie Hinchliffe, released her memoir this week.

While many of us thought that we were long ago done with teachers, along came Mrs Hinch, an online cleaning guru who lured us into the amazing world of organising buckets, timers and Flash.

You may already be one of Sophie Hinchliffe’s 3.7 million followers on Instagram, but what fans may not know is that the young Essex mum has long struggled with her weight and suffered a number of complications from a gastric band surgery she got in her early twenties.

Mrs Hinch reveals her struggles in her new memoir  This Is Me, and spoke to Ryan Tubridy about the surgery on RTÉ Radio One while promoting the book.

“I was very overweight and I just wanted to fit in,” she told Tubridy. “It ended up being a complete nightmare from day one.” 

After gaining weight in her teens, the social media star said that she found herself looking around at other girls and making the “drastic” decision to take a loan out and pay for bariatric surgery from a private clinic.

“At 21 you think you know everything but you don’t,” she said, adding that the surgery cost at least £6000 and that she was too young to consider the risks.

She thought the one in 4000 chance of the band slipping would never happen to her but it did, causing a number of complications when she became pregnant two years ago.

Though Hinchliffe said that it helped her lose over eight stone, she wouldn’t have gotten the procedure done if she’d known the implications.

“Looking back on it,” she told Tubridy, “I think it would have been better for me to sit down and maybe have more therapy or look into an actual real diet as opposed to just being able to physically go to a private clinic and hand money over and they're like ‘right we’ll operate next week’. It was crazy.” 

“What I find quite worrying is the fact that if you've got the money there, you can go and get anything done.” 

“I would just advise anyone that ever looks into anything like this please just seek so carefully, because it’s scary how much you can have done in this world by just handing over money,” she said.

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She also chatted about online trolls, her love of staying in and her dislike of the word influencer on the show.

She flashed back to the idea of being taught about good and bad influences in school while chatting about the topic and even though the cleaner, like everyone in the public eye, gets some harassment, it’s tough not to think she’s a good influence on her millions of fans who even use her name as a verb: ‘to Hinch’.

“No matter who you are in this world you need to clean at some point,” she said, describing how in her mid-twenties she started to find it therapeutic and began using cleaning as an escape for overthinking.

“I created an account and all of sudden it became this thing that was no longer embarrassing,” she said, describing how she finds solace in her online community of ‘Hinchers.’ 

“Not all of us like to go out and party. Some of us generally do like to stay at home and light a candle and it’s ok to be like that,” she said. “The boring life is the best life.” 

Although she does receive some tough criticism, which she also talks about in the book, she said that she tries to focus on the positive things people comment and that the “good far outweighs the negative.” 

This Is Me is available from Irish bookstores now and tips such as these can be found on @mrshinchhome on Instagram.

Some of Mrs Hinch’s top tips:

• Stock up on her essential products; such as The Pink Stuff, Flash Bathroom cleaner and 1001 carpet spray.
• Keep dryer sheets slipped between stored towels and sheets to keep them fresh, or use dryer sheets as a handy duster for blinds.
• For an easy blocked sink solution, pour bicarbonate of soda down the drain and follow with vinegar, a slosh of cleaner and a kettle full of boiling water. She also uses melts dishwasher tablets in the drain with boiling water to keep them clean.
• Bicarbonate of soda and vinegar can also be used to get stains off of mugs and flower vases.

For the tough job of cleaning the oven and buffing up the kitchen sink Mrs Hinch uses The Pink Stuff (€1.49 at Aldi).

• Pick a day to clean, like her fan favourite “Fresh’n Up Fridays”, and take a list around the room picking three things you want to get done that day. If this is too much try her “Hinch Half Hour”, setting a timer and trying to get as much done in just that space of time and moving on when it’s up.
• Keep cleaning supplies in a bucket you can carry around. Go into the room you want to tackle and work clockwise to help manage the load.