Thalia Heffernan is soaring at the moment as she announced her decision to move to Birmingham with longtime love Ryan McShane and now revealed that she has conquered body dysmorphia.
The disease causes people to obsessively focus in on perceived defects or flaws in their physical appearance, something she attributes to beginning modelling at the young age of fifteen.
Speaking openly to the Sunday Independent’s LIFE Magazine the model reveals how she’s finally found her flow as her mind, body, lifestyle, love and Leonard balance her now happy life.
In the article she credits adopting plant-based lifestyle, which she blogs about on Instagram under the name Grassroots: A Plant Based Movement, as a piece of the puzzle that helped her resolve issues with body confidence.
“As a model, be it from a third party or from yourself, you’re always being told you’re not good enough.”
“That’s the industry in a nutshell. Not so much here. Here you get it more from within. Being in shows with girls who are younger than you, or I’ve been on shows with girls who definitely aren’t well.”
Having overcome her issues now she is thriving but it wasn’t always that way as she had serious insecurities, because she is human after all, and moments of crippling self doubt.
She acknowledged the universality of insecurities and discussed how they’re magnified in the modelling world saying concluding that it’s unhealthy to be so focused on your appearance but now finds solace spending time with animals, like her leggy lurcher Leonard.
“I’ve had moments in my life where I’ve been overwhelmed by ‘Am I enough, am I not?’ Ryan’s had to literally sit me down and be, like ‘You wouldn’t be where you are if you weren’t able.'”
“Modelling and body dysmorphia can, if you allow them to, go hand in hand.”
“For a long time I struggled massively with body dysmorphia. I’ve looked at photos and seen them physically change. Physically, the actual image has changed.
“As I’ve gotten older I’m able to say, ‘Stop picking yourself apart. It’s not the most important thing.'”
Speaking about her recent stunning Cocoa Brown shoot in Malta she remarks on how she’d never been more comfortable heading into a bikini shoot.
“For me, that shoot was great. It shows me at my healthiest. For once, I’m not trying to restrict myself.”
“I’m not trying to overwork myself so I look a certain way. I used to yo-yo. Maybe not phsycially, but mentally I was was yo-yoing. I would have thought, ‘I’m up or I’m down.’ And that’s what body dysmorphia is like — you think, I’m bigger, I’m smaller, but there’s no physical change.”
“So now I’ve found this happy medium where I don’t feel like I’m all over the shop anymore. After adopting this kind of lifestyle, and finding a bit of flow, having he dog, having a good partner, my body seems to have relaxed into itself.”
The LIFE Magazine interview delves in to other interesting aspects of the model’s life like finding her voice, her relationship with Ryan and her plant-based TV projects.
She’ll be skipping across the Irish sea soon to start a new chapter with Ryan and the future has never looked brighter for her now that she’s at one with herself.
