We get a lot of flack when we put a “celebrity” on our covers. Elisabeth Hasselbeck of The View and Survivor fame, is on our latest cover and our inbox is overflowing with both praise (“A fresh new face!”) and complaints (“Seriously, a celeb?”). One of those most common laments is this, “Sure she looks like that because she probably has personal trainer, a chef, an assistant, a plastic surgeon on speed dial, an umbrella holder” … etc, etc, etc.

Do you feel this way? If so, I don’t blame you.

I, too, was in the camp of keep-the-celebs-off-our-covers. I want to see real women who train. In the words of one livid reader, “Show me women who wake up at 5 A.M. to train, then take the kids to work, then head to her 9-5 job, then pick the kids up, and head home to make them a healthy dinner. And does it all again the next day.”

Here’s the thing: many celebrities DO live that way.

That’s the lesson I recently learned since returning from a fitness retreat in Beverly Hills, hosted by Muscle Milk, where I got the chance to interview, as well as, get my butt whipped into shape by some of Hollywood’s trainers to the stars.

Mary J. Blige’s trainer, Adam Ernster, teaching me the ropes.

As I was waiting in LAX for a flight back to Toronto, with insanely sore glutes and burning tricep muscles (that I didn’t even know I had), I came to happily accept the fact that celebrities really aren’t that different from the rest of us. Sure they have bigger bank accounts, which can afford them access to a personal trainer, but many work insanely long hours and have family obligations – just like the rest of us. For example, Hasselbeck still makes time to run marathons while juggling an intense work schedule and three kids!

When it comes to fitness and diet, it takes the same level of commitment that regular folk must make to attain a lean figure. The three celebrity trainers that I met all espoused the same basic tenets of an Oxygen lifestyle: a hard work ethic and clean eating approach to food. In other words, they all commit to regular exercise and an unprocessed diet to achieve both a sense of life balance and a banging body to boot. It is that mental fortitude that these trainers promote to their A-list clients. So as much as you may love to hate them, truth is, celebs with million-dollar bodies work hard for their figures.

Just like you do.

Instead of star-hating, why not tap into the fit philosophies of their trainers? Who knows, maybe you can nab a cover someday too, or at the very least, sculpt a cover-worthy body. Here’s what it takes:

“I’m a big believer in two things: consistency and intensity. You need to be able to commit to it for as long as you can and if a workout is going to be for a shorter duration than normal, it’s got to be intense. I recommend at least 30 minutes a day, but if you only have 10 minutes, make sure that those ten are hard enough so that you’re getting your heart rate up. That way, your system is adapting and changing. I get my clients in shape with a frequency of standard protocal of 5 days of week with one day of stretching and light activity, and one full day of just rest.”

- Andrea Orbeck (trainer to Heidi Klum and Usher)

“Workout no less than 3 times per week. You want exercise to be a part of your lifestyle so you want to integrate it into your life as easily as you can. Start by incorporating a basic pushup in your day, as it engages your entire upper body and core. You can do it anywhere so there’s no excuses.”


- Jennifer Cohen (Trainer to the contestants on the reality show “Shedding for the Wedding”)

“I have people who train 5-6 days a week, but the bare minimum is 2, anything less than that and you’ll be in perpetual state of jet lag, you’ll always be sore. A lot of times, people start working out in January and large gyms will count on this. So they think “I’m going to work out almost everyday” and maybe that would work for a few weeks. But then life happens and you miss a couple days, which makes you feel like you failed. People tend to quit at this point. It’s a weird thing – all or nothing. If you only have three days and you have just half an hour, then do that and commit and show up for that workout. Number one thing is to show up. That’s really the biggest thing I tell people: don’t set yourself up to fail.”

- Adam Ernest (Trainer to Mary J. Blige and Nicole Scherzinger).

 

- Helen Vong