Social Workout

My Body

Elna Baker on Dancing in Your Underwear

Elna Baker is the author of The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance, which chronicles her experiences in life and love as a practicing Mormon in New York City, including the changes in her life when she went from being a size 18 to being a size 6....

It's easy not to be grateful for the body you have. I remember when i was losing weight, girls who were very thin would come up to me and ask me what my secret was. I just wanted to scream at them, and shake their shoulders, and say "You're thin! Look in the mirror and enjoy it!" I thought once I was a size six it would be a party every day. But you adjust. There are some days where I'm just down on myself. I don't know if it's just before my period or what. But for some reason, I can look in the mirror and feel like I'm not my friend. But if I really think about everything I've been through with my body, everything since I was kid, losing weight, skin-removal surgeries — but even other things, like climbing mountains, walking all the places I've walked — those memories can really empower you. For me, health is really about energy. It's easy to get caught up in smaller size clothing, or more attention from guys, but the fact that I probably prolonged my life for ten years, and that I'm able to do so much more each day, that's why it's worth it for me to be healthy. 

I'm a total dork about exercise. I have an exercise chart in my kitchen. I try to work out three to five days a week. I get a sticker for each day that I work out, and it looks better when it's five days, so the sticker aesthetics motivate me. I like to exercise intuitively. If I feel like swinging my arms, I swing my arms. It's about feeling exhilaration, and enjoying the whole experience and getting to be alive. I go to Yoga to the People, and I'm also a member of Crunch. I do cardio, the elliptical or the treadmill, but Crunch also has good classes. They have a Pole Dancing class I love. I live on Avenue A, and there's a new running path by Avenue D. It shoots right through you, to be running on the water with all the buildings.

My Body

Starlee Kine On Fruit And The Landmark Forum

Starlee Kine is an American public radio producer and writer. Her work has been featured on "This American Life" and "Marketplace." Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine. She is currently working on a book about self-help titled, "It IS Your Fault".

Health stresses me out. I don’t feel very healthy, and I don’t have health insurance. It seems like it’s hard to get healthy. My sister is obsessed with health and nutrition. She endlessly works out. She wakes up at five in the morning and goes to Starbucks. Then she goes to the gym and does boot camp. She’s gluten free, dairy free and soy free. She really obsesses. But I don’t regularly do anything healthy. I mean, I don’t eat unhealthily. I don’t eat fast food. But I don’t eat anything nutritious. I don’t eat greens every day. I’m afraid of fruit. I don’t like pulpy, sticky kinds of fruit. I don’t like to have them on my plate. If I’m sitting at a table and someone’s eating fruit, I have to position my glass so I don’t see it.

New York

My Body

A.J. Jacobs On Steel Cut Oats and David and Goliath

A.J. Jacobs is an editor-at-large at Esquire magazine, the author of two New York Timesbestsellers, and currently working on a book called "The Healthiest Human Being In The World."

Health means freedom from disease, longevity and a positive sense of well-being. I’m writing a book on the quest to be the healthiest person alive. I changed my diet and my exercise and my attitude. I’m seeing a trainer. I’m seeing gurus. I was never interested in the body. I basically saw the body as a way to carry around my brain for most of my life. I think it’s a Jewish way to look at the world. The stereotype is that Jews are about the mind, and not the body; and we’re all scrawny Woody Allen types. Look at David versus Goliath. David is a skinny guy who uses his intelligence and wit to kill the big body builder. I was always happy to be the scrawny guy.

I wasn’t the worst eater because I have high cholesterol. I would eat healthy food, like fat free cookies and anything that said fat-free, even though it had tons of sugar. Now I've got my steel cut oatmeal for breakfast. It’s just disgusting to eat. I put it in the microwave with water, and I eat it. It’s completely tasteless. Its gag-inducing. But I’m learning if you eat something twenty times you start to think it’s okay. I pretty much eat whole foods for the rest of the day. Nothing processed or packaged. Nothing with any Latin chemical names in the ingredient list. Just simple words that any eight-year-old would know. I eat quinoa. I’m going to buy tumeric today. I just read two pro-tumeric articles. It’s good for your brain. I drink coffee which I probably shouldn’t, but I found enough pro-coffee studies so that it’s probably okay. It’s good for your brain and for inflammation. You can find a study to rationalize any behavior. I’ve been able to rationalize a couple of bad habits. Drinking two coffees a day. A glass of red wine. I also eat one chunk of dark chocolate a day.

My Body

Celebrity Trainer Mark Jenkins On Brandy, Beyonce and Meditation

Mark Jenkins has trained Mary J. Blige, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Beyonce, Benny Medina, Johnny Cochran, Tyler Perry, Busta Rhymes, L.L. Cool J, Eve, Q-Tip, A Missy Elliott, Brandy and D’Angelo. 

My dad died when I was two, so my mom raised my sister and I. Not knowing what to do with a male child, she sent me to dance school. I was going to tap, jazz, ballet, modern, and gymnastics. I was young, performing at Lincoln Center and auditioning for musicals, but in high school it wasn’t cool to ballet dance in Brooklyn. I stopped dancing, and that was the only thing keeping my weight off.  In two-three years, I went from having a dancer’s body to a 45-inch waist. I used to be in shape, but I was getting bullied and not getting any girls. So I said, I’m going to join the military to get in shape. I joined the Navy. I barely made it through boot camp. When I got to my station, I started lifting weights with the Navy Seals, and at the end of two years I was 250 pounds. 22 inch arms, 29-inch waist.  My legs were 32 inches around. I was able to get girls. It was empowering. It was a life-changing experience. My friend Daryl Hill was overweight, and I said I would train him. Daryl got in such good shape I started training all the overweight guys in the military. The thing is— they’ll kick you out in the military if you’re overweight. But, at the time, I thought [the training] was a useless skill.

After the Navy, I got a job at the post office and they kept giving me extra mail because I was so muscular. Soon I quit and took a job training at the gym. And the gym was across the street from MoTown records. So I started training executives. I was transforming them in 100 days. I trained them for free—publishers and photographers, everyone. But I wasn’t making any money. I lived in the projects, and I bounced, and was a waiter. But I figured when I got my opportunity I would blow up. So I started training D’Angelo’s publicist, and he put on thirty pounds of muscle. And D’Angelo noticed, and he wanted to start. I asked for thirty grand, and, if they weren’t satisfied, I’d give them their money back. I followed him everywhere he went. From the studio to the hotel and back. It took three months for him to get in shape for that video, How Does It Feel. He had a big stomach before.

My Body

Liesl Schillinger On Running and A Tale Of Two Cities

Liesl Schillinger is a book critic for the New York Times and writes on the arts for a variety of other publications.

Health to me means that I wake up feeling good and that I have energy throughout the day as to not be impaired.

I’m on a health kick right now. I just want to be in racing form. I’m not drinking very much; I’m not eating as a form of entertainment. I eat lots of vegetables. I won’t make a frozen fake meal from a box.

I run every day for at least three miles. I usually run to the East River Park, to the gigantic soccer field surrounded by the spongy asphalt track. I love to watch the tugboats pass. It gives me an added jolt of energy. I run all the way through the Loisaida to the overpass on FDR drive. Sometimes I just run around Tompkins—five times around is about three miles. I don’t do a warm up or anything. I don’t go to the gym. It’s grim. It’s smells like socks.

My Body

Trapeze Artist Lorelei Macdonald on Muscle Ups And Balance

Recently retired aerialist Lorelei Macdonald is the founder of Gravity Defying Fitness.

 I started as a dancer, but then I got injured and went into the circus. I performed up until I was 42. When I was 42 I moved to New York and opened my own studio. Now I live in New Orleans. I’m using the skills I used as an aerialist to get people fit. A lot of people are intimidated by trapeze. A lot of my clients are women in the forties who are challenging a lot of their fears. Maybe they have a fear of heights. Maybe they don’t like going to the gym, and they want to be fit, but they don’t want to take a boot camp. They want to try something different. There’s a huge range. And people in New Orleans are thinking about Katrina, and about being strong enough to pull their own body weight in the face of adversity. Being able to pull your body weight in the air gives you amazing confidence.

There’s a lot of core work in trapeze. Hanging from your knees, doing crunches. It’s an incredible amount of core, and back work, and shoulder work. Static trapeze is very dance-y, and there’s a lot of work we do for lengthening the legs. Creating a long and beautiful line like in dance. It’s so much fun. You’re working really hard but you feel pretty and light.

My Body

Porochista Khakpour on Punk Rock and Ramen

Porochista Khakpour, author of Sons and Other Flammable Objects, writes for the New York Times, The Daily Beast, and teaches fiction at Bucknell University.

My Body

Larry Smith on Workplace Martyrs and Yoga in Park Slope

Larry Smith is a writer, editor, and publisher of Smith Magazine. He's also the creator of the six-word memoir. 

Health means to me feeling comfortable in my body and my mind. I feel unhealthy when I can’t calm my mind, when I’m agitated and sleepless and restless, when I feel like shit because I didn’t need that last beer and those fries. I have a delicate ecosystem. But I adjust quickly. If I get to yoga, I can go from terrible to great in a couple days. If I just eat vegetables and turkey sandwiches, I feel great. I can do a couple things and right my course. I don’t need a trainer or Canyon Ranch.

I wake up thinking about coffee. Only when I got to be in my mid-thirties did I figure out how to do breakfast correctly. It used to be a mediocre bagel with bad cream cheese. Now I eat cereal and fruit or yogurt and fruit and the occasional egg sandwich. In New York, by the time you get to work, and you’ve spent six dollars on a bagel and coffee, you’re doing something wrong. I pay too much at lunch for a turkey sandwich and soup. If I’m eating out I pay too much. There’s usually almonds or a shortbread cookie later in the day. Dinner is cooking at home or drinks in a bar or a takeout Thai.

I’m the first person to walk three blocks to get a better sandwich and better coffee. That whole garbage about “I have no time to eat" is garbage. You can be a better worker if you walk outside for ten minutes and eat with your magazine. I have no patience for people who say they can’t leave the keyboard, and they just sit there and drip dressing on it. The martyrdom of eating at your desk — unless your Anna Wintour’s assistant — is ridiculous. At lunch I try to sit somewhere that’s not my desk and eat it like a human being.

My Body

Piper Perabo On Krav Maga, Tracy Anderson And Genetically Modified Soy

Now that I just turned 30, I’m interested in preventative health. I’m actively participating in trying to be healthy. I exercise every day. I try to eat organic and local. I try to get at least eight hours of rest. I do a mix of things for exercise.  I’ve done Pilates and yoga for ten years. I was doing a pilot for a television show, so I was doing a lot of martial arts. Krav Maga and boxing. It’s the hand-to-hand combat they use in the Israeli army. But, before that, I did the Tracy Anderson gym. I really like the Tracy gym. I found it challenging and fun. I like to change how I work out. They have a room that looks like a ballet studio with a sprung wooden floor and mirrors and the ceiling is lined with different colored tension bands. They have boxes that look like Pilates boxes, and you stand on them and take bands of equal tension. A lot of it has to do with being off balance, and using the muscles in your core to hold yourself in balance. All the tiny muscles that control your balance are working during the workout.

Right now I’m into the Thrive Diet by Brendan Brazier. I do a shake which is a pear, two cups of cold water, dates, a tablespoon of ground flaxseed, two tablespoons of hempseed and a banana. It’s really good. Or I do a muesli — mixed grains with blueberries and bananas and hemp milk. I actually just started drinking hemp milk. I was doing soy milk, but then I read the Jane Goodall book, and I started learning about GMO’s.  A lot of American food is genetically modified. I’m not into the soy.

I eat lunch at work. So there’s catering. I usually have, like, a big salad. You can't eat a big steak in the middle of the day. It makes you too dull. I’m sort of in transition trying to decide if I want to be a vegetarian. Sometimes l’ll just have kale and beans for my protein. Right now, all the beautiful squash are in season, so I’ve been cooking acorn squash. I was doing spicy tomato sauce with arrabiatta and butter beans. I love butter beans. They’re a big manilla covered bean. If you overcook them they get too mushy. But they’re a rich flavor. I pray before I eat. I bring myself to center.

My Body

Bryan Mealer on Running, the Congo, and Wild Turkey Bourbon

Texas-born, Brooklyn-based writer Bryan Mealer is the author of two books, including All Things Must Fight to Live: Stories of War and Deliverance in Congo. Formerly an Associated Press staff writer based in Kinshasa, Congo, Mealer's work has appeared in Esquire and Harper’s, among other publications.

When I was in the Congo doing my Africa work for the A.P. covering the war, I lived terribly. I drank too much, and I smoked a pack a day, and I didn’t get any exercise. I was under so much stress. I got grey hair. I could have been more sharp if I had slept better and didn’t drink as much. We were also smoking a lot of weed. It was the only thing that could mellow me out. I made the decision to change my health and life when we were going up the Congo River, and we got stuck, and we had to ride bikes three hundred miles through the jungle. I realized how out of shape I was. We were riding through sand and the sun. It was the hardest thing I’ve done. That’s when I made the decision to get healthy.