When Your Weakness Becomes Your Why

Proverbs 31:25 - “She is clothed with strength and dignity and laughs without fear of the future.”

When I was 13 years old, I lost my Grandpa who was quite literally, my person. This loss triggered what would become a nearly 8-year battle with anorexia. It has taken me years of self-reflection to identify what triggered my eating disorder; My Grandpa. At 13 I was training night and day, 7 days a week to land a spot on the varsity roster for my high school team. With a fire lit deep within me, fueled by the loss of the man I looked up to the most, I trained harder. I trained harder and longer, and I fueled less. I saw my weight decrease, I saw my pitches slow down, but I didn’t notice the correlation. As I got older, I recovered and relapsed around 4 times during my high school years, cycling my relapse outside of softball season so I could perform most optimally.

In 2015, my senior year of high school, I had my peak year, landing a 2nd place finish in the Minnesota State High School League State Tournament, breaking the record for longest state finals game in Minnesota history, incredible stats, and not to mention a few out of state division one offers and a walk-on request. After the state tournament, I moved on to finish my final year with my elite team before moving onto the collegiate stage.

Fall of 2015, my freshman year of college, I experienced the worst relapse ever. The one that ended my college career before it even had a chance to begin. Not because I was injured or anything like that, but because my eating disorder habits had gotten so severe that I decided I would rather quit my sport than come to terms with the fact that I was quite literally destroying my body for a piece of mind I will never reach. That summer, God did a guiding work in my life, and I enrolled in my first nutrition course with a professor I still adore and admire to this day. Since my nearly 6 years of nutrition education, I have learned the best strategies to fuel athletes in order for them to reach their highest potential.

Now, I work with high school athletes to improve their game through good nutrition strategies and timing. My reasoning? To be the light for athletes who are experiencing situations similar to what I had encountered so they know they never have to do it alone. I am here. You are strong. You are enough. Your weight does not equate to your worth and if I could tell my 13-19-year-old self-anything it’d be this:

“You have NO idea all the good that is to become of you, from your struggles.”

Kennedy Haney

Hi All, I’m Kennedy Haney, a dietitian specializing in sports nutrition, hailing from the great state of Minnesota. I’m an ex-softball-er with a deep passion for fueling young athletes so they never encounter the struggles I experienced.