In Conversation with Celebrity Fitness Trainer Kit Rich

Last week I had the incredible privilege of having lunch with an old high school acquaintance named Kit Rich to talk about self-image, body conflict, and the connection between physical and emotional health and wellbeing. The bulk of our conversation focused on mental health factors related to exercise, fitness, body image, and getting in shape. I specifically sought her out because I’ve heard a lot of people – clients and friends alike – talk about struggling with these issues and I thought she might have some helpful insights. She did not disappoint.

Kit has an impressive resume. She has been a celebrity personal trainer for about ten years, and has worked with a lot of high-profile people, most famously, Ke$ha. She is also a prolific and talented writer who keeps her own blog and also contributes to other publications. On top of that, she has recently partnered with a friend of hers to open a new kind of gym called Shift that has been garnering a great deal of media attention. But none of these things really capture how down-to-earth and refreshingly honest she is. Yes, she’s had a great deal of career success, and yes, she has been featured on television shows and in magazine articles for over a decade… but she’s also incredibly easy to talk to.

One of the first things she said to me was that she doesn’t view fitness and exercise through the lens of losing weight and getting skinny, or gaining rippling muscles, or buying into what other people tell you you’re “supposed” to be. I nodded and said “that’s great! Yeah, of course!” because her message resonated… but then I paused because I didn’t have a different way to conceptualize fitness.

“Okay… so that’s what it’s not about. What is it about?”

So first she talked about the science – the research that talks about how when you exercise, you get a surge of dopamine and endorphins, and how that creates a pleasant emotional experience. “But that’s temporary,” she explained to me.

What isn’t temporary, she said, is that when you do that every day, or several times a week, you start to see and feel changes in your body. You find muscles where you didn’t have them previously, or you find that you can climb the stairs up to the third floor without getting out of breath, and this teaches you that if you dedicate yourself and take small steps every day, you can make significant life changes.

And once you know that you have that power – once you really, truly believe it – you can apply it to other areas of your life. You can write a few pages a day and find that that adds up to a book. You can consistently set boundaries with a difficult family member, and then find that you’ve infused that relationship with a new normal. And I believe, if I may be so idealistic, you can do small acts of kindness that accumulate to create a better world.

This resonated a lot with the way I do therapy because as a strength-based therapist, I’m all about finding what works and generalizing it to heal other areas. If you’re struggling with depression but feel okay when you’re indulging in one (non-self-harming) hobby, that means there might be other times when you can feel okay too. If you have trouble feeling safe, but find that you feel safe in your therapist’s office, or your best friend’s house, or wherever, maybe you can find a way to feel safe in other places too. If you hate everything about yourself except your singing voice, that shows that you’re capable of finding things you like about yourself and that’s where we build from.

I wanted to share the conversation Kit and I had with you because it can be hard to think about fitness without perpetuating and reinforcing the “never good enough” messages we get from society, from each other, and eventually, from ourselves. So, in a nutshell, here it is:

  • Find something you enjoy doing.
  • Do it regularly.
  • Notice how it makes you feel.
  • Let that grow into a sense of competence.
  • Feel empowered to keep going, and to use this method in other areas of your life.
  • See what you can achieve.