NEWSCarnie Wilson Teaching Kids to Eat Cautiously
March 4 2010, Published 1:00 p.m. ET
Although Carnie Wilson has struggled with her weight, she is trying to model positive diet and exercise habits for daughters Lola, 4, and Luciana, 8 months.
“I’m already starting to talk to Lola about taking care of herself and regular exercise,” the former Wilson Phillips singer, 41, tells me. “Whether that’s playing outside, running around, swimming — she swims a lot during the summer. We took a nice walk together, me, my daughter Lola and my daughter Lucy. I tell her, 'Hey, when you have too much fat on your body, it’s bad for your heart,' or, 'If you’re too skinny, that’s bad for you, too.’ It’s important for us to get lots of exercise and don’t eat too many treats and try to eat a lot of vegetables, which she still won’t do laughs. Just try to talk to her very straight-up about it, without instilling fear in her, but more ‘life is precious, we want to be around for a long time, and people go to heaven early if they don’t take care of themselves.’”
With the season finale of her reality show Unstapled airing on GSN on March 11, Carnie returned to The Dr. Oz Show yesterday to document her weight loss struggle.
“I was disappointed initially, but Carnie’s gotten on the boat,” Dr. Oz tells me during Cosmopolitan’s Fun Fearless Males event held this week in NYC. “I wanted to talk to her honestly about why about why she was doing the things she was doing. She’s lost a couple pounds, and we talked about going our separate ways over the fact that she did not have a diet buddy with her. Many folks like her have a diet buddy, and if you rely on your family, these people love you, but unwittingly they’re also enabling you to do the wrong thing. She is someone that a 12-step program would help. They’re going to hold her accountable and not let her escape. I pledged to her that I would not treat her like a celebrity, I’d treat her like a human being. We’re talking about some deep stuff, but it’s tough love.”
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While filming a reality show can be challenging at times, Carnie’s husband, Rob Bonfiglio, whom she wed in 2000, has her back.
“My husband has been very supportive, and he’s a great guy,” she says. “What you see is what you get on this. You will see me struggling, you’ll see me laughing, you’ll see me crying. Rob and I have been willing to open up about some of our marital issues, which I think is really brave. It’s a vulnerable place to be, which I’ve never been publicly, but that’s OK because I know there’s going to be other people who are in the same boat.”
She continues, “There’s a lot of people in my shoes, and I’m bringing motherhood into this, which I think is great because now there’s a whole slew of other challenges that I’m facing by doing this.”
For Carnie, being a mom hasn’t been kind to her waistline.
“The truth is I haven’t slept in eight months, since I’ve had my baby,” she says. “I get maybe five hours of sleep a night, and they’re not put together. I am absolutely exhausted. There is research and physical evidence that a person will hold on to their fat, and it’s like their body goes in freeze mode as a result of fight or flight.”
Catch Carnie in the season finale of Unstapled, which airs tonight at 8/7c.
