There was a long era when she was everywhere: Katherine Heigl’s six seasons on Grey’s Anatomy endeared her to the masses. After a rigorous span in the spotlight, including several hit movies, it can be natural for a professional to turn their focus to other goals, like family, new business challenges, and advocacy to make the world better.
Back in 2008, Emmy winner Heigl created a foundation alongside her mother in memory of Heigl’s late brother Jason, whose life was cut short at age 15 due to a 1986 car accident. Heigl and her mom, Nancy, honored Jason’s legacy with the goal to “celebrate the compassion, kindness and memory of a beloved son and brother,” the Jason Debus Heigl Foundation’s website explains. “Throughout his brief lifetime, Jason loved all animals, especially dogs, cats and monkeys, and he lived his life extending compassion and kindness to all creatures great and small.”
Since its inception, the nonprofit has saved more than 8,000 dogs from high-kill shelters. In 2022, Heigl expanded her mission with the launch of her premium dog food brand, Badlands Ranch, named after the Utah ranch she shares with her husband, singer Josh Kelley, their three children, and six dogs.
Heigl, 46, recently connected with The Healthy by Reader’s Digest to talk about how caring for the greater good feeds the soul.
This interview has been edited for length.
The Healthy by Reader’s Digest: Katherine, it’s the time of year we’re all trying to be extra intentional. Can you share how you keep yourself and your family healthy?
Katherine Heigl: Well, we typically just try to maintain our regular routine, which for me is trying to get in at least, or no less than, three days of activity per week, or workouts per week. For the kids I do the same: Now that I have teenage girls and they’re not in sports, I have to be like, “OK, go for a walk or go for a hike today—you guys have been sitting on your phone for 12 hours straight!” So, I encourage physical movement regularly anyway.
The Healthy: We love that. We know you are a major animal lover. Tell us why you were so passionate about your pets’ diets.
Katherine Heigl: I feed them exclusively Badlands Ranch, which I’ve been doing for two years since we developed it, and just the consistency of that has shown such an incredible improvement in even simple things like their skin and coat. I live up in Utah—it’s super dry here—we have really scratchy, itchy dogs, so everybody has really calmed down with that and it’s like the subtle things that you’ll notice like, “Hey, they’re not scratching, itching, or biting at themselves nearly as much. This is working!”
Gut health is better for my dogs. Their poops are better, easier to pick up, which has been huge when you have as many as I do. Energy levels have really improved, like even in my older dog—she’s just getting around the yard better and seems to want to run and play a little bit and roll around … It’s just fun to see she’s got more vitality and energy. It’s been such a blessing. It could be something so simple as the quality of their food. The idea for us in developing the food was more of a preventative healthcare option, like keep them out of the doctor’s office by making sure what they’re eating is lending itself toward overall wellness.
The Healthy: It’s been 17 years since you launched the Jason Debus Heigl Foundation. We’re pet lovers, too, and passionate about rescue. Talk to us about this cause.
Katherine Heigl: We started the Foundation in 2008 with a mission of addressing the pet overpopulation issue in this country, and what that means is there are just too many animals [and] not enough homes. They’re ending up in shelters. The shelters are overwhelmed and don’t have space for them, and [are] having to kill them because there’s nowhere for them. My mother and I just couldn’t stomach it. It’s just so awful, needless death.
We started the foundation to address it and to fund programs that could really address it. We have a nationwide event that we do called the Namaste Spay and Neuter Event where our foundation funds a spay and neuter day wherever it’s set up. We’ve done, I think, like 50 of them across the country, and all you have to do as the dog owner, or a cat owner, is show up and we pay for all of it. We believe that’s a huge step in reducing how many unwanted litters are coming into this world. We all think of puppies “Oh, they’re so cute and they’re so wonderful”—and they are—but the problem is that there’s too many. So those cute, wonderful, healthy, adoptable puppies are ending up in shelters. They get about a week of life before they’re put down if nobody will come and adopt them. That, to me, is just horrifying.
Another big program we have is “Save a Life,” which is addressing the animals that are here now, and in need, and abandoned in shelters. So, we pull [dogs] typically no one else will pull—either they have a medical condition, or they need training, or they’re older, or they’re a breed people don’t like, or they’re a breed people like too much of, then decide they don’t want a dog and get rid of them. We transport them to an incredible training facility in Las Vegas called Working Dogs of Nevada. They do an unbelievable job of making these dogs adoptable and we’ve had 100% success rate with every one of those dogs ending up in a forever home. Some of them end up as service animals for somebody [who is] wheelchair-bound or somebody who needs help in that way, or military/ex-military who are suffering from PTSD. And then a lot of them who aren’t at that level of training are still so well-trained and end up in a family home. That’s been such a rewarding program because it really works.
I don’t know that I’ll ever see [pet overpopulation] resolved in my lifetime, but I think it will ultimately be resolved if we can continue to push forward with these programs and get our government to get on board with enforcing mandatory spay/neuter laws.
The Healthy: Can you tell us how the Badlands Ranch brand has helped fund the efforts of the foundation, and what it means to you to have your dog food involved in this amazing mission?
Katherine Heigl: Yeah, it’s huge. It’s been so impactful for us because up until this partnership, [my mother] and I were funding the foundation entirely ourselves. The partnership with Badlands and their commitment of $250,000 per year has been huge in helping us continue to push these programs forward, and then the sale of the food has been huge in helping me to continue to financially fund the foundation. I put a significant portion of the proceeds into the foundation to go back to the animals. It just allows me to continue doing the work and know that I can … and know that we don’t get shuttered because we can’t get donations.
The Healthy: What’s one self-care habit that you refuse to skip?
Katherine Heigl: Sleep would be the one that I absolutely never miss. I have so many but sometimes I kind of ebb and flow with them, like for a while I was doing morning journaling for giving myself a quiet hour in the morning with my cup of coffee—that really helped me start my day out great. I made a commitment to at least three days of working out a week. I don’t go crazy. I hate working out, so I’m not like at the gym every day for an hour, but I made a commitment for at least three days a week, at least 20 minutes. And my smoothies—I’ve made a commitment, too, that really helps with getting in all those adaptogens, getting in all that supportive plant medicine, getting in gut health.
But one thing I never stray from is making sure I have at least eight hours of sleep per tonight. I prefer 10. And I’m a big sleeper. I have always been a big sleeper. If I get less than eight, I just can’t even think straight. So, whatever I am doing, wherever I am… If I know that I have a 6 a.m. call time, I’m in bed by 9. I make sure that bedtime correlates with at least eight hours of sleep.
The only thing—don’t scroll at night before bed. That is the worst thing you can do. I’ve done it and for a while I couldn’t figure out why my sleep was so disruptive, and like tossy turny, and my brain was so busy. I read something [and] I was like “OK, I’ll try not doing that” and I stopped, and I’ll just read before bed. It’s also hard to go straight to bed for me after watching TV, like I need at least 20 minutes to de-sensitize my brain. So, once I stopped the scrolling I had much better sleep.
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