Steph and Laura created a wellness app without a weight-loss focus. This is what happened next
A decade ago wellness was often conflated with “clean” eating, bikini body programs and orthorexia. Today, it looks different.
In 2015, when Laura Henshaw and Steph Claire Smith started their health and wellness app, Kic, wellness was often conflated with “clean” eating, bikini body programs and orthorexia.
Wellness was about external appearances, regardless of how well you were inside, at least among many women in their 20s, including the two Melburnian models.
Steph Claire Smith and Laura Henshaw.
It was their own experiences of being entrenched in toxic diet culture that drove their desire to create something different.
“I had a lot of food noise and [was] always in a state of deprivation,” says Henshaw, now 32.
“As women we’re constantly told that our worth equals our weight and the size of our bodies matter. We are so much more than that.”
Smith concurs.
“We started Kic off the back of our own horrible habits and relationship with food and exercise,” says the 31-year-old mother of two. “We really didn’t listen to our bodies at all.”
Yet, as they birthed the idea of an e-book and then the app, they were advised that a viable business within wellness was impossible if they did not sell weight loss. They rejected that advice.
“That’s not true to us,” says Henshaw, whose son, Atlas, was born in December.
But it’s complicated to disentangle from ideas that have had such a stranglehold on you. Especially when your appearance is tied to the image of a brand followed by other young women who aspire to look like you.
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The first iteration of Kic was Keep It Clean. “Clean” eating can refer to a diet of minimally processed foods, but is also associated with rigid, low-calorie diets that demonise whole food groups such as gluten or carbohydrates.
“It’s important to acknowledge we are two size 8 white women who are accepted by the modelling industry,” Henshaw admits. “That meant we had a platform where people were looking to us for health and wellness inspiration and advice.”
That is a big responsibility when you are trying to find your own way through the noise.
“It’s a journey even now,” Henshaw says. “I don’t know anyone who has complete [peace] … What helped was reframing why I move my body and why I eat well. Your body is your one home, and you want to take care of it.”