What does it mean to be healthy?
For Kelsey Heenan, it’s not just a toned body and a perfect diet.
The 33-year-old fitness influencer puts mental health above the physical after suffering from an eating disorder, which she often discusses candidly to her 411,000 followers on Instagram.
“It basically got to the point where I was so undernourished that I needed treatment ASAP,” Heenan told The Post, describing it as a “horrible, scary time” in her life following her college basketball career.
Despite being the oldest patient in the treatment center at 21 years old, Heenan went through the process of healing, learning the skills she needed to bounce back stronger, which she will speak about during the Strong New York Fitness and Wellness Festival at Chelsea Piers on Oct. 1.
Now, the LA-based content creator and business owner dedicates her time to helping others — both mentally and physically — who might be struggling like she once was.
“Fitness and nutrition should be part of our lives, but they don’t need to rule our lives,” she advised.
She explained a lot of times, people become “occupied with always needing to be a certain weight or a certain size” and “these things end up failing us.”
“We don’t end up failing our diets, we don’t end up failing our workout programs — these programs weren’t set up for our success, because they don’t fit with the lifestyle that we have,” she said.
Plus, there’s no feasible way someone who leads a busy lifestyle or has children can be in the gym for hours on end, she said. To put it blatantly, it’s unrealistic.
“There’s not only one right way to do things, so figuring out what feels best for your body for the goals that you have, and having the goal of being consistent over time,” she added.
On her Instagram page, she regularly posts workout routines while also preaching best practices for staying confident, sharing words of encouragement with her followers.
In one clip with 212,000 views, she shares the story of overhearing a random woman in a dressing room who was complaining she was “too fat” to wear whatever she was trying on.
“That broke my heart into a million pieces,” Heenan said in the video. “You can wear anything you want. Confidence is a lot like a muscle that you need to work out regularly to be able to grow stronger.”
“Respecting the body,” she said, is the most important practice to partake in, especially when negative feelings about body image bubble up.
“We can’t always control the thoughts that pop into our head,” she said, but observing them is key.
“[But] we can look at ourselves with respect and objectively say, ‘Look, my body does so much for me, I’m not loving exactly what I’m seeing in the mirror right now but that’s a reflection of just the outward. There are so many other things that bring value.”
Making note of those attributes that “bring value” and aren’t superficial is part of building a “strong foundation” of self and personal health. Picking a diet or workout program just for the sake of looking better in the mirror, then, won’t be successful without that “foundation.”
“It’s the respect factor, which takes ongoing work, and it’s a journey. But then also, it’s a relationship with food, relationship with exercise,” she added, urging people to reconsider their arbitrary food rules and question if they’re beneficial. “It’s about what is inhibiting a person’s ability.”
Cutting sugars and carbohydrates, for example, could just be furthering the amounting of stress and create more obstacles than roads towards a healthy relationship with the body. In fact, no one should have “strict food rules,” she argues, because it “doesn’t serve us well.”
“Food is so much more than just nutrients. It’s a part of our culture. It’s a part of community. It’s a part of celebrations for birthdays and events and all these things,” she said. “So how do we make these two things meet — where we can understand nutrients and prioritize those, but then also be able to understand that food is so much more than that — and do so without judgment?”
But of course, headbutting with a multi-billion dollar diet culture industry comes with obstacles of its own. Like anything on the internet, trolls run amuck, but Heenan is determined to dismantle people’s perceptions of what they think “health” is.
“A lot of times, people get tunnel vision in one aspect because of their experience and what they’ve learned in their own lives,” she said of her approach, which involves vying for middle ground.
“If someone is super, super strict in the nutrition … never ever thinks about new nutrients and never moves their body, that’s not going to be a healthy long-term strategy.”
Heenan’s approach to nutrition and fitness expands far beyond the bounds of a phone screen. In 2014, she and her husband founded HIIT Burn, complete with their own app, and the pair produces four workout challenges per year as motivation.
“There’s so many places you can go to get nutrition information, but what a lot of things are missing is that mental-emotional connection and understanding the emotional aspect of nutrition,” she said. “I try to bridge that gap for people and create a safe space for people to be able to have those conversations and be able to work through some of those things.”
Her message, albeit “painful” and difficult to share, clearly resonates with her thousands of followers — although she would “never wish those things on anybody.”
“Being able to have open conversation about the struggles that I have and have had, has been a wonderful way to continue building confidence in myself because it’s like, ‘Wow, I’m not alone,’ and we can continue to grow together.”
If you or someone you love is struggling with an eating disorder, you can get help. Call the National Eating Disorder Association helpline at (800) 931-2237 or visit nationaleatingdisorders.org.
