Empowerment Through Wellness: A Journey with LOKL Ambassador Dr. Marisa Sweeney

At Be Well Integrated Health Services, Dr. Marisa Sweeney, DCN RDN CSSD RYT, prescribes a different kind of medicine. Taking the mind, body, and spirit into account, Marisa has dedicated her life to empowering women to find wellness through a holistic person-centric approach.

Her philosophy is simple: when you feel a sense of belonging, you not only shine from within but also transcend your limitations. In her eyes, this is what true wellness looks like.

She feels this way because she has lived it. 

In 2009, Marisa graduated from Montclair State University’s Food and Nutrition Science program with a concentration in dietetics. She later began working as a dietitian at Holy Name Medical Center.

Private practice was her dream, but fear of failure was her nightmare. “It seemed incredibly daunting. I was just like, there’s no way I could ever,” shares Marisa, who at the time provided nutrition counseling to chronically ill patients in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit.  

Days spent working with severely ill patients turned into nights thinking: "if only I could prevent illness with nutrition!"

Even though she knew it would feed her soul in a way she could only have dreamt of, this was a pipedream—an almost impossible feat if done alone.

Marisa believed this wholeheartedly, so much that when she spoke it aloud to a colleague, she may as well have experienced whiplash. “[My friend] was like, you know, if you're serious about that, I would do it with you.” 

To her friend's surprise, Marisa responded: “Maybe I am.”

Dreams are just dreams until we make them a reality, and that's just what they did. For two years, Marisa and her partner would work a full day at the hospital, then rush to their Morristown office to see their patients. The more time she spent with patients from all walks of life, and at varying levels of illness, the very purpose she had been working toward became clearer than ever.

“The more you see people coming to you looking for a lifestyle change, the more you realize how multifaceted that is. It's not just what you eat. People will come to you thinking, 'if I just stop snacking, all my problems will be solved.'"

By trade, Marisa plans meals catering to her patients' likes and dislikes, cultural preferences, and medical needs; it’s what she’s trained to do. But health isn’t one-size-fits-all. Some individuals may need to pair mental health counseling or other medical care with the proper diet to find their perfect balance.  

With this realization in mind, Marisa opened Be Well Integrated Health Services in 2012. From one determined dietician in a tiny office in Morristown, NJ, to a full staff of dieticians licensed across the nation, today, Be Well’s mission is a living, breathing example of Marisa’s dreams. 

“At Be Well, everyone’s under one roof.” In a world where women’s health is often overlooked, Marisa’s team specializes in collaborative care, empowering women to achieve wellness through an individualized, holistic approach backed by science.

Marisa, who holds a doctoral degree in Clinical Nutrition, is particularly passionate about the intersection of women’s health and nutrition. She describes it like the inner circle of a Venn diagram. “Everything is connected. Sometimes people have to drop off whatever it is that they’ve been carrying around before they can talk about food.”

She continues, “A lot of times, people’s diets are a manifestation of emotions that they don’t know how to sort out. Our dietary habits are very much a reflection of what’s going on in the mind.” 

By trade, she’s a dietitian. But it’s clear to anyone who spends even just a moment with her that she’s in the business of helping others feel a sense of belonging. 

On a basic level, food is sustenance, and nutrition is the science that backs it. On a human level, it’s a glue that binds our sociocultural fabric together in so many ways. It’s love, it’s creativity and expression, it’s community. 

When it comes to community, for Marisa and millions of other vegans around the globe, veganism is a moral choice driven by a shared compassion for the earth and all living things.

“A lot of long-time vegans are just super compassionate and don't want to participate in animals dying…These people are super compassionate, yet their families and friends don't understand them. They feel like, ‘nobody understands me.'” 

This is where VegFest comes in.

As co-founder and owner of the New Jersey VegFest, Marisa provides much more than delicious vegan bites to over 40,000 people annually. She helps cultivate a space for foodies without judgment, where friends and strangers alike can convene, connect, and find joy in the community, vegan or not.

It’s a common thread with Marisa: building community through the creation of shared experiences. The yoga studio at Be Well is a space that Marisa is particularly proud of. “The studio is small, and now everybody in the room kind of knows each other, and it’s not about what new Lululemon sports bra you’re wearing. There’s no ego in the room. It’s people from all different walks of life, ages, and levels.” 

Heartfelt and earnest, she shares that it’s everything she ever wanted it to be: a safe space where people can find balance through a mind-body connection, experience community and belonging, or simply try something that they never believed they could do. 

Whether she’s growing her highly successful health and wellness business, volunteering her time on local nonprofit boards, or bringing together thousands of vegans annually through the New Jersey VegFest, Marisa’s passions breathe life into her, and into her community.

Maybe that's the real power of belonging.

There’s a sappy expression: "if you love what you do, you won’t work a day in your life." We've all heard it. Maybe it’s true, or we convince ourselves it is, in search of a perfect life in which we never grow tired or experience stress because of our day jobs. 

However, perhaps the ultimate hack is to change the way we view our day-to-day grind. Marisa speaks about her life’s work with a glimmer in her eye and heart on her sleeve. She’s incredibly busy, and I ask her how she does it all.

One book, in particular, has played a significant role in shaping her outlook for each day. “It’s called Big Magic, and one of the things it talks about is that there are three types of exhaustion: physical exhaustion, mental exhaustion, and lack of inspiration, which bleeds into both.”

She tells me that a lack of inspiration is the most important. Take, for example, working a desk job where you stare at the computer screen all day, but somehow, 5:00 PM hits, and you’re not only mentally but also physically exhausted. 

Why would you be physically tired when you barely moved all day? “You’re so uninspired that it drains you!” she exclaims. (My post-9-5 sleepy state is making total sense at this point.)

What does this look like for Marisa? Her passion for helping people energizes her. It’s to her like a fish is to water: an intrinsic need, hardwired in her DNA. And though this fact is obvious, I ask her if she always wanted to be a dietitian when she grew up. What we’re drawn to in our youth has a way of sticking with us in some shape or form. 

“If I could go back and start all over, I think I could see myself being a medical doctor. But when I was in high school, I thought I was going to be an architect,” she divulges, as if the zaniest of choices.“It was super left-field compared to what things are now.” 

In her way, Marisa dedicated her life’s work to community building and brought new meaning to the profession she had once dreamed of. She recognized a need and drew the path toward an integrated health solution, and a safe space for women to bring their unapologetic selves and improve their wellbeing without judgment. 

From starting multiple successful businesses to completing a rigorous DCN (Doctor of Clinical Nutrition) program and becoming a subject matter expert on nutrition in women’s fertility, Marisa has found the courage and motivation to make it all a reality. 

But even with passion in tow, burnout is very real.

Helping her clients find balance? That’s what she’s been trained for. Balancing her own life and career? That had a learning curve.

“When I first started Be Well, I was so inspired that I was working around the clock…I was just so happy to have it all, but it really masked the fact that it was too much.” 

So, what changed the game? Curating a well-oiled team. “I wouldn’t be able to do all these things if not for cultivating great people to help me do it and believe in my ridiculous, crazy ideas over the years,” she adds with a humble grin. 

You find those people over time—your village—and things seem to fall into place. Living in Morristown played a big part in that for Marisa, who grew up about an hour and a half down the parkway in Brick, NJ, a seasonal shore town.

“The town I grew up in was just like a highway that’s not walkable because it’s not safe enough, and then it’s all stores and strip malls. If you’re not getting out of your car and walking around, you don’t meet people, you don’t talk to people.”

She shares with me that little things make a big difference. Like, say, how walkable cities are associated with lower chronic disease levels. 

For Marisa, it’s the ability to experience the day-to-day within the few-block radius between her apartment, office, and daily haunts. She reminisces: “I think if people move to Morristown now, it may be a little difficult to get to know everybody because it's like a big city in a square three miles..… It wasn’t like that when I first opened Be Well. I would walk down the street, and I knew everybody.” 

The town may be ever-growing, but at heart it remains the same, especially if you know where to look. Marisa finds joy in seeing friendly faces at her favorite coffee joint, many of whom have become recurring characters on her daily quest for a matcha. 

Over the years, she’s built a community-centric life that she loves (while girl-bossing her way through the creation of multiple businesses, I might add). And because of that, her kind spirit shines through her endeavors.

“I consider myself a community builder before an entrepreneur or an owner. Because I think that's...” She pauses, humbly. “I think that's the basis of what a better world is, you know? If you have a community, no matter what it is…[you] can better [yourself].”

story: Anastasia Arvanites

photos: Panos Stogioglou