Aubrey O’Day’s Diet Influences Workout Plan
Feb. 21 2011, Published 12:00 p.m. ET
Aubrey O’Day has seen her share of weight fluctuations. But the former Danity Kane singer, who gets the reality treatment in Oxygen’s All About Aubrey, is able to keep off excess pounds simply by saying “no” to soda and fast food.
One motivator? Feeling nauseous after a run, and being told she just worked off her burger.
“When you run and you realize how hard it is and how much it takes to get through long runs, you don’t want to eat badly,” she tells me. “I ran one time and almost threw up at the end of it, and my trainer was like ‘you just worked off the hamburger that you had last night.’ laughs That made me realize if he told me ‘let’s run off that hamburger,’ and he made me run for as many calories … he did a calorie-counter, so he made me run for as many miles as it would take to burn that calories that were in whatever I ate.”
She adds, “It was so taxing. I was ready to throw up at the end of it, and I realized then that I don’t want to do this to my body anymore, because I’ve been there and I realize how much it takes to get out of it. I don’t even know how long we were technically running, but in the end I wanted to throw up. It was a while. I could get through an entire Rated R spin class, and not work off a bad meal. Spin’s pretty rough.”
For Aubrey, who typically runs between 3-10 miles per day, working out is her coping mechanism.
“I enjoy it because I spend an hour before thinking what I’ve gone through, what I’m thinking about, what is stressing me out, and then I program a playlist with music that fits into whatever I’m going through, and I’ll run until the playlist is done,” she says. “Throughout all of the running, I’m more having a therapy session inside my head than worrying about the running, so I actually get through it.”
Because she’s serious about her workouts, Aubrey is cautious about what she puts in her mouth. Still, she won’t succumb to fad diets.
“When you eat a lot, you need to workout a little more. When you’re not eating as much, you can workout a little less. I’m observant about how much I’m putting in my body versus how much I’ve worked out in that day. I believe that’s the only serious consistent way of slimming your figure down because the fad diets, the pills, the drinks, the only eating certain things ... that stuff is all complete BS – it’s not really helping your body. I’m so against that.”
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“Sometimes the food diets work – where you’re only eating vegetables or fruits or whatever, but who can consistently eat like that forever? You can’t. Whenever you do those diets for a week or two weeks or whatever, right when you get off them, you gain all the weight right back, and I’ve done every diet under the sun from that cayenne pepper lemonade to the cheese to the fruits. I have lost weight on all of it, but you gain it right back the second you’re done because no one can consistently eat like that. Even the ones where you eat baked chicken and broccoli – you can’t eat baked chicken and broccoli every day for the rest of your life. Nobody’s consistently going to stay on that unless they want to be miserable. For me, I say everything in moderation. Eat what you like – enjoy what you like. I used to have a trainer that told me you can go home and have ice cream and popsicles, but that means we have to work extra hard right now.”
Thankfully, soda will not creep back into her life. Now the only carbonated beverages she allows herself are Just Squeeze and energy drinks.
“I cut soda out because it’s unhealthy,” she says. “It consistently will leave you in a bad place with your weight. Soda is so hard to kick. I could drink soda night and day, but it’s so incredibly bad for you. And diet soda is not so great. I first went down to diet sodas, and then I cut it out altogether.”
Here’s my pic with Aubrey:
Pick up the OK! on newsstands now for Aubrey’s "What I Ate Today" feature. The cover line is “Kourtney and Scott/Engaged To Be Married!”