My Hollywood Fitness Secrets ... Revealed!

Kathy Kaehler's Celebrity Workouts: How to Get a Hollywood Body in Just 30 Minutes a Day
by Kathy Kaehler

A-list personal trainer Kathy Kaehler reveals the body-sculpting secrets of the stars in a breakthrough fitness regimen guaranteed to deliver your best body yet.

Ever wonder how Hollywood's hottest names manage to achieve their knock-out bodies? It's not money, and it's not just great genes-it's having access to truly stellar fitness expertise. Top personal trainer Kathy Kaehler has trained dozens of today's most glamorous, shapely celebrities, including Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston, Cindy Crawford, and Sarah Jessica Parker. Now, for the first time, she reveals her workout secrets-the same body-sculpting and fat-busting strategies she uses to prepare Hollywood's leading ladies for photo shoots, action movies, red carpet moments, and more.

Kathy knows that to keep her clients happy, she needs to provide a workout with enough variety to help them stick with it day after day-and most importantly, one that gets maximum results. Celebrity Workouts presents seven action-packed routines that draw on cutting-edge fitness practices and target different parts of the body, each based on Kathy's work with a different client, and geared toward giving you the physique of your favorite stars. You'll find:

The Early Morning Start-up Workout with Michelle Pfeiffer: a simple, energizing workout, perfect for new exercisers or for those looking to jump-start their day.

The Supermodel Lower-Body Conditioner with Claudia Schiffer: sculpts from head to toe using Pilates and other hot fitness techniques.

Rachel's Super-Sexy Upper Body-Workout with Jennifer Aniston: delivers great shoulders and arms, perfect for tank tops and strapless dresses.

The Pretty Woman Leg Workout with Julia Roberts: focuses on thighs and calves for sexy, slender legs.

The Charlie's Angels Boot Camp Workout with Drew Barrymore: a full-body workout using kick-boxing moves that emphasizes strength and stamina.

The Amazing Abs Workout with Cindy Crawford: builds core strength and an amazing waistline-even after pregnancy.

Plus: The Hidden Hills Workout, inspired by Kathy's weekly class at Hollywood's most exclusive country club.

Inside you'll also find slimming, delicious recipes from chefs that cater to the Hollywood elite-including Wolfgang Puck, Jamie Oliver, and personal chefs who specialize in keeping their high-profile clients fit and trim-along with realistic nutrition advice to help jumpstart your metabolism and melt away extra pounds. With entertaining behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and in-the-gym photographs of her biggest clients, Kathy Kaehler's Celebrity Workouts is the ultimate guide to having fun while getting fit-and achieving superstar results.

Chapter 1

Psssst ... Want me to let you in on a little Hollywood secret? The beautiful, sexy bodies that you see on television and the silver screen aren't simply the product of good genes. Not all of your favorite celebrities were born with impeccable figures, or have been slim and sculpted their entire lives. In fact, most of them have to work hard to stay so trim, toned, and youthful looking-just like you and me.

Though we tend to put them on pedestals, celebrities aren't superhuman. Some, particularly supermodels like Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer, may have genetic advantages. But they still have to exercise and watch what they eat. And it isn't always easy! Like you and me, they have lazy days. They sometimes feel uncoordinated when trying a new workout. They get bored when they do the same exercises over and over. They have cravings for pizza, ice cream, and other fattening foods. They often want to do nothing more than collapse on the couch after a long, exhausting day on the set.

My celebrity clients may not have traditional nine-to-five jobs, but they certainly don't have all day to spend at the gym. Truth be told, none of the actresses or models that I train typically exercises for more than an hour at a time. These women are unbelievably busy! Whether they're working on a movie, a TV sitcom, a fashion show, or a photo shoot, their schedules tend to be very demanding. I'm talking ten- to twelve-hour days! On top of their chaotic careers, they have families, bills, grocery shopping, errands, and countless other responsibilities, just like everyone else. And most of them don't have a team of personal assistants to help them, either. Take Julia Roberts, for example. She doesn't even hire someone to clean her house. She washes her own dishes, scrubs her own bathroom, and mops her own kitchen floor.

Celebrities are constantly subjected to the scrutiny of the camera, whether they're on a film set, walking the red carpet, or running from the paparazzi. If you can imagine having your body magnified on screen, or photos of yourself plastered all over the tabloids, then you may understand the kind of motivation that they have to look good. Sadly, for some, the pressure can be overwhelming. In recent years a number of them, such as Paula Abdul and Carré Otis, have started coming forward and sharing their struggles to remain so unnaturally thin. To keep the pounds off, some have resorted to unhealthy, even potentially life-threatening tactics, such as excessive exercise, vomiting, drug and alcohol abuse, cigarette smoking, and harsh diuretics. Others have gone under the plastic surgeon's knife for procedures like liposuction and tummy tucks.

Fortunately, Hollywood has finally woken up to the realization that super-thin is super-unattractive and super-unhealthy. A decade or so ago in the entertainment industry, "skinny Minnie" wasn't skinny enough. Size Zero was the norm in Los Angeles. But in just the last few years, the "ideal" body shape has started to change. The waif look is out. Fit and toned is in! What's sexy is looking strong, lean, and healthy. Many of our favorite stars-including Catherine Zeta-Jones and Jennifer Lopez-are now embracing their curves. And we all know that's what men really love!

I know all about the dangers of trying to be skinny. Although I'd never worried about my weight as a kid, I became unhappy with my appearance in high school. I wasn't overweight; I had a sturdy, athletic frame. But I didn't think I was thin enough. During my senior year, I started taking over-the-counter diet pills to lose weight. This insane habit continued into my college years, when I also battled bulimia. On a typical morning I would swallow a diet pill, then go without food until I was absolutely starving. After bingeing to satisfy my hunger, I'd run to the ladies' room to vomit. At one point I was taking up to five diet pills a day.

One afternoon during my sophomore year, it all started to unravel. As I was walking out of my dorm room, I suffered a grand-mal seizure. I woke up on the sidewalk with a paramedic kneeling beside me. Later, in the hospital, I lied to my doctors, telling them the seizure must have been caused by stress and lack of sleep. They believed me, and I was released from the hospital. But even this scary experience wasn't enough to make me quit. I continued in the vicious binge-purge-pill cycle for another year, until I finally had another seizure. Realizing that I would die if I didn't change my behavior, I vowed to stop taking diet pills and stop throwing up.

With every bit of self-discipline I had, I took control of my life. I educated myself about healthy eating and started giving my body the nutrients that it so badly needed. I have never taken diet pills or vomited since. My all-around good habits lasted about six years, up until the time that I moved to Los Angeles. At that point, my career was going full throttle, and I had a full schedule training clients and teaching aerobics classes. But I was overexercising and not eating enough. At the same time, I was dating a famous actor who liked to stay up all night and sleep all day. I was partying too much and only getting a few hours of shut-eye each night. During the day, I was drinking tons of coffee just to keep myself going.

Throughout all of this, my body was suffering. I felt tired and worn out. I realized that I wasn't living healthfully, and as someone whose career was based on promoting health and fitness, I felt like a total hypocrite. Then, in 1990, it caught up with me. I suffered a third seizure while hiking with a client. At the hospital, my doctor threatened to put me on antiseizure medication, which meant my driver's license would be taken away. Since my livelihood depended on driving to see my clients, I promised him that I would change my habits the moment that I walked out the door. And I did. After that day, I completely overhauled my lifestyle. I started eating right and sleeping eight hours a night. I also pledged to give up caffeine for good. Thankfully, I've been in excellent health ever since.

Over the years, I've learned a tremendous amount, both personally and professionally, about how to stay fit, healthy, and looking good. Most of my career has been spent sharing this know-how with a Who's Who of the entertainment industry. Now, it's time for me to teach you. In this chapter, you'll find out all about my personal approach to fitness. I'll outline easy ways for you to squeeze more activity into your hectic days, and provide easy-to-follow eating guidelines. I'll also discuss the basic principles of weight loss, and tell you why a change in your attitude could be the secret to your success.

But the most important thing to remember is: No matter how much you want to look a certain way, no matter how badly you want to get into those slim-fitting jeans, and no matter how many daydreams you may have about looking like the fabulous women who populate our favorite films and television shows, your health is so much more important. Trust me, I say this to all my clients. In this book, we're going to work hard to get your body into amazing shape. But we're also going to respect it and embrace it-it's the only one you've got.

Excerpted from Kathy Kaehler's Celebrity Workouts by Kathy Kaehler Copyright © 2004 by Kathy Kaehler. Excerpted by permission of Broadway, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Kathy Kaehler is the fitness expert on NBC's Today show and the personal trainer to many top-tier celebrities. The author of the monthly "Fitness Insider" column for Self magazine, she lives with her husband and three children in Los Angeles.