All Things Fitness Series: Part 1

In a perfect world, we would all be born with hot, sexy, hard bodies, but as we all know, getting a perfect body requires a lot of discipline and hard work. I’ve been a “fitness buff” for almost three decades, and I’ve been formally trained in health and fitness for over 10 years now. I’m very dedicated to my overall health, and, at the age of 49, I feel like I’m just starting to get more fit than I have ever been in my life. My fitness journey started when I gave birth to my first child in 1989. I gained 75 pounds of fat during my pregnancy, and I was depressed. I had always been an active child. I was always busy roller-skating and swimming when I was young. As a teen, I was on the swim team, and I played varsity water polo on an all boys team. As I became an adult, I started dancing at 18 years old. It’s a great workout. As an athletic youth, I had a very healthy appetite. I would consume a lot of junk food too. The calories that I would consume were empty calories, so, consequently, I was hungry all the time. The signal of hunger to the brain is sent when not enough nutrients are being supplied to the body. So, at the age of 20 years old, when I became pregnant, I continued to eat the foods that I had eaten in my active youth. I topped the scales at 200 pounds when I was ready to deliver my first child. After I gave birth, I wore a size 15. I remember feeling depressed and discouraged at the work that lied ahead of me. It was a very bleak feeling.

I resolved myself to making and meeting goals. I had never thought to make fitness goals because I was always fit with an active lifestyle. I started reading a book titled, “Diet For A New America”. It was life changing. The author of the book is John Robbins, the heir to the Baskin Robbins fortune. He wrote the book to educate people about the cruelties to animals, but he also wrote the book to educate people about the health risks associated with the consumption of “factory foods”. “Factory foods” are basically all the meat the average consumer buys and eats that has been modified with hormones and steroids. The animal is given hormones to make it fatter and meatier to make a higher profit per animal, and the antibiotics are given prophylacatically to prevent the animals from getting sick and harboring diseases. The entire meat industry is very profitable, so it continues regardless of the health risks to the consumer. I’ve been lacto-ovo vegetarian for 29 years, since my first child was born. I gave up consuming meat products at the age of 20 years old. At first, it was difficult. I remember craving pot roast and tacos. I also started to become a fitness buff, and worked out a lot. The pendulum had swung too far the other way, and I became obsessive about everything I ate. I was big on counting calories. I became obsessive about working out also; I was going to the gym for 3 hours a day, everyday. I lost all my baby weight, and, after 1-½ years after my daughter was born, I was 95 pounds.

I was skinny. I did not have a lot of muscle on me, like in my youth. So consequently, every time I would have a cheat day and eat a lot of food, my body would store it as fat. After my daughter got older, I went back to dancing, and I was back to having an amazing body. Dancing is the best workout, and it is fun. I started to analyze my dietary habits and workout regimen. It was then that I realized that I had a lot of food sensitivities to starches. The Atkins Diet was very popular at that time. I tried identifying which starches I had sensitivities to. The one’s that would make me gain 5 pounds of water weight overnight, and I decided that I was going to do things the right way. I started building muscle and eating healthy. I was already vegetarian, the thought of limiting my diet more would serve challenging, but once I figured it out, it was easy. The body seems to crave things that are yummy but not nutritionally sound. The key was ignoring my old self, and I started to build newer healthier habits. Instead of chips to appease my salt cravings, I would choose nuts with high protein and fat content. The high fat sends a signal to the brain, “I’m getting enough fat in my diet, I don’t need to store fat”, and away the fat goes. It’s really that easy. Another shift in guilty indulgences is dessert. I choose less starchy treats. Instead of cookies, I go for ice cream or cheesecake (that has little or no starch). The high fat content in ice cream and cheesecake also signals the brain that fat is being taken in, so no fat needs to be stored (of course, all things in moderation). I also started eating more raw foods in my diet. Raw nuts, seeds and salads are part of my daily diet now. I eat half raw and half cooked foods now. I try to walk 2 miles a day and do toning 3x a day in 15-minute increments. When I was in nursing school, I taught Pilates at LA Fitness in California. It was a great way to relieve stress from school, and it helped keep me in shape during my sedentary years while studying. I workout at home, and I have invented a new style of exercise that will be released in videos by next year. Three pregnancies later, I maintain a fit physique. I am currently in the process of writing my second book titled, “Decoding Your Hot Body”. I hope to inspire many to a healthier way of living that is balanced and happy.