Health Update: Clare McKenna on wellness, job security and finding her forever family home – What Experts Say

Health and wellness broadcaster Clare McKenna chats about her brand new book, the steps she takes to make herself feel better and how good it felt to finally move into her dream family home in Howth

You’ve released your new book Would You Be Well?, where did the idea of it come from?

With the title, I wanted to be a bit tongue in cheek. I want to start the conversation around what wellness is. I think a lot of people, myself included, have started to feel a bit overwhelmed by it all. We already have so much going on, this can feel like just another thing we’re not getting around to. I think we need to stop being so hard on ourselves and remember that wellness is supposed to make us feel good. If it’s a negative thing for you, chances are you might be doing it a little bit wrong, or you need to look at how you’re doing it. It’s something I was forced into doing when I started presenting my health and wellness show, Alive and Kicking, on Newstalk. It caused me to reflect how healthy I was and what my attitude to wellness was. I did a Ted X talk in Tralee two years ago and the publishers saw that and contacted me to say there was a book in what I was saying.

How did you get involved in wellness space, was it something you were always interested in?

I was always really conscious of it, and somebody who was known for that. I was always trying a different exercise class, following a new fad or trend and I never went anywhere without a bottle of water. I was talking about antioxidants from way back when. I would have been in my early 20s when I started getting into it, and focused on my physical health. I’m in my late 40s now, and back then the focus was on “eat less, move more”. We had only begun, if at all, to talk about mental health. I was calorie counting and going to the gym. As social media became more popular, there were so many more messages being put out there that I didn’t know what to follow. I was jumping from eating meat one week to following a paleo diet another, without understanding what any of these things really meant. I did feel that by the time I got to presenting Alive and Kicking, I was exhausted and overwhelmed. I remember saying to myself, “What even is wellness?”. I thought if I was feeling that way, there must be more people like me. So I decided to do a piece on the show over a few months where I worked with a team of experts and really discovered what wellness was. At the start, I was still very much in that eat less, move more mindframe and I partnered up with a national newspaper to write about it for six months. I was still thinking at the end of the six months, I was going to do this photoshoot with all these muscles and tell people how I got so ripped. Over that time, the Covid pandemic kicked in and it became a year rather than six months. I had a complete 180 on how I viewed wellbeing. I stopped focusing on what I looked like, and started focusing on how I felt.

The wellness industry is booming in popularity now, do you think it has become weaponised in any way? As you said, sometimes people feel it’s just another thing they’re not doing properly.

It can be. The wellness industry is a billion dollar, probably trillion dollar at this stage, industry. At the same time, there are a huge amount of well-meaning people working within it. I’m doing it nearly seven years now, and most people I have met working in the industry have their own story of either burnout, or stepping away from the corporate space and retraining to teach people breathwork or yoga. We live in a time where we’re quite lucky that you can take a look at your life. I know it’s a privileged thing to say and not everyone can do it, but many of us can take a moment to ask, am I happy? What changes do I need to make in my life? I think that’s where wellness comes in. That’s where those practices can really help, whether it’s taking a yoga class, going on a retreat, or working with a life coach. It’s about seeing what little tweaks we can do to make life flow better. Thinking we have to tick off all of these boxes, and that you have to get an ice bath and a hyperbolic chamber in your sitting room to help you with longevity, that can all get really overwhelming. What I try to say to people is that there isn’t a one size fits all approach, which I think is missing from the message. What works for one person won’t work for another and we’re all at different chapters in our lives. I give the example of a buffet breakfast. We tend to pile our plates with too many things. Whereas if you just have the nerve to go up loads of times and try different things, you can really figure out what works for you. If getting in the sea or going to the gym isn’t for you, that’s fine. You just have to move your body and find a way to get out in nature that works for you.

How do you practice wellness, what works for you?

My biggest thing is the daily check-in. I check in with myself as to how I am – am I tired? Am I depleted or am I energised? I map it back to what I’m doing that is giving me that answer. After years of saying I wasn’t a morning person, this is the time of day that really works for me. I now get up half an hour before everybody else in my house and take those 20 minutes or so to myself. That’s when I check in. Am I stressed? If so, what’s going on that has me overwhelmed? If I’m feeling good, is it because I slept well the night before? I don’t mean to be evangelical about it – some days I get up and have a flick through Instagram and catch up on my WhatsApps. But it’s still my own time and that’s precious to me. Movement is also huge for me. I do like a gym class, either reformer Pilates or spin. If I’m not up to that, I might just go for a walk. I prioritise rest and good sleep. I don’t have my phone with me when I go to bed. That took some getting used to, but I just invested in an alarm clock. I put the phone away, light a candle and read to wind down. I’m on my phone far too much as is, so I don’t want to seem holier than thou, but I just found it made things a lot better.

Social media is part and parcel of the wellness space, do you think it’s a blessing or a curse?

I think it’s both. It can educate so well. There is a lot of positive messaging out there that is anti weight loss and anti diet culture, which are things I would have never heard when I was growing up. It’s a lot more evolved. But I would be very mindful of curating my feed, so if something doesn’t make me feel good, I just mute it. There is also a lot of stuff out there that is very dangerous. My son is a teenager and the algorithm of social media sites is feeding misogyny to young boys and it’s forming their opinions of the world so I’d have a keen, mindful eye of that. We’re scrolling mindlessly, but not delving in deeply and yet we are making opinions on certain topics so we need to be careful of that too. But there are also some positive sides to it. I think in general people are being more real and authentic on social media now.

You’ve hosted Alive and Kicking on Newstalk since 2019. Did you anticipate it would be such a success?

I was always confident in it. It was a well established show, Dr. Ciara Kelly had set it up and it was going really well and it had just taken a pause when she moved to Lunchtime Live. She had set up a strong foundation for me, so on that front I was lucky. I knew Newstalk was a very established station and I knew there was an interest in health and wellness. A lot of people in the broadcasting industry told me to find my niche and pitch programmes that I was passionate about. I would’ve thought my passion was people – I love helping people to tell their stories – that is still what I love now. I rang Newstalk to see if there was any cover work going on their shows and they said to me they were looking for somebody for Alive and Kicking, and, as I said, wellness was something I was interested in so it worked out well. I’m an eternal optimist, so I think I went into it feeling it was a good move for me.

Newstalk recently announced a brand new schedule. When it comes to shake-ups in the industry, do you worry about job security?

100%. That is the gig. I went freelance after I had my daughter who is now twelve. I suppose having twelve years of being freelance, I have more faith in myself that it will all work out. But you never know, schedules change, listenership figures go up and down, new management can be looking for a fresh approach. As I say, I’m an eternal optimist, so even if it were to come to an end would I find something else? Yes. Would I look at one door closing as another opening? That’s how I’d have to take it. I’ve had loads of times over the years where gigs didn’t go my way, or things didn’t work out how I expected them to, but somehow I’ve gotten to this point. You’re always surprised in this industry, you never know when things are going to switch up, but that can be seen as a good thing too because other opportunities can open up as well.

You recently bought a fabulous family home, congratulations. Are you settled in now?

Yes. It was a long time coming. Me and my husband Jonathan are both from the same village, Howth, and we couldn’t afford to buy there when we originally bought. Then the recession hit, so we had a house in negative equity for a little while, then we were renting elsewhere and then about five years ago I said, “We’re constantly driving back to Howth – Let’s try to buy or build a house there”. So we moved in with my mum and long story short, the planners didn’t share our vision to build. I dealt with architects, planners, planning contractors, banks, solicitors, all sorts over four years. It has been long and arduous and we were in limbo for a long, long time. I’ll never regret the time we spent with my mum and for my kids to be with their granny, it was a really lovely time. But to be at this point now in our home, only two minutes away from our friends and family with the lifestyle we wanted beside the sea, it feels great. Plus, I don’t have to speak to banks or solicitors any more! The headspace I’ll gain back is going to be unreal.

It must have felt great to finally get the keys after such a long process.

Yes and I recognise my privilege. I first moved out of home at 18. I was in college and my parents paid my rent for me, and after that I was paying my own way. I’ve always made my own way in the world. Money has gone up, money has gone down, but I’ve been lucky in many, many ways. I do often think about when I left school in 1997. The economy was booming, the Spice Girls were at their peak, there was talk of girl power and anyone could do anything they wanted and you could really feel that energy, not only in the country but almost globally. I think about that feeling now, as I have a 14-year-old and a 12-year-old and they often talk about things like climate change and they speak about it really matter of factly. So when you hear about the cost of living crisis and the housing situation, that can really get in on people and their ability to remain optimistic and I find that tough. I’ve been so lucky in many ways. We’ve had our ups and downs, we’ve had our job losses, my husband’s business closed during the pandemic. But we’ve come through every one of those obstacles and are feeling incredibly grateful.

Would You Be Well? By Clare McKenna is available to buy now in bookstores nationwide.

This article first appeared in the February 2025 issue of RSVP Magazine.

Want to see more of the stories you love from RSVP ? To add RSVP as a preferred source of news on Google, simply click here