FYI- “Fitness and Diet” culture is poisoning your brain.

Almost everyday I receive the same DM on Instagram; “What is your workout routine?” and “How do you eat like you do and not gain weight?” With the exception of posting about PlateFit I never really get detailed about it. Why? Because we are a culture OBSESSED with body image and comparing and I know, for a fact, that what works for me is not guaranteed to work for anyone else. With that being said, I am going to share with you about it here so I can address it long form.

Kate Moss famously said, “Nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels.” As much as I love Kate, and I do love her, she is iconic and special, but this is one of the stupidest fucking things I have ever heard. I could make a detailed list of thousands of things that taste better than being thin but I don’t have that kind of time on my hands. Not eating is NOT an option. Not for me, not for anyone. We need to eat to live and we need to enjoy food as part of being happy and celebrating the fact that we live in a world where there are so many options for wonderfully delicious carbs.

Before I delve in I want to give you a little background on me. I have always been athletic. Growing up I was always on every sports team and playing group sports at recess. As an adult I didn’t start working out until my mid 20s when a friend dragged me to the gym kicking and screaming. At this point I started to exercise casually, hiking every once in a while or going to a class with a friend. It wasn’t until I started to model full time that I began to work out seriously. I have tried it all; I have done spin (hate it), boxing, pilates, crossfit, running sprints, you name it I have done it. Needless to say I got burnt out; Crossfit was tough on my body, I was tired of constantly being battered and bruised and running was killing my knees and just made me feel like my whole body was constantly being slammed against itself. I had to reassess and figure out what was next for me on my fitness journey, which is how I came to what I consider my routine for the time being –

If you know me you know my goto work out is something called PlateFit https://platefit.co.

What is PlateFit? It’s a 27 minute workout preformed on top of a vibrating power plate. I know, I was skeptical before I tried it too, but it’s effective and more importantly I LOVE GOING.

First order of business- This is a power plate…

99.9% of your workout takes place on top of this machine while it vibrates, activating your muscle reflexes and causing them to contract 30-40 times per second depending on the setting you have your machine on. Other benefits include:

• Increase in serotonin production – AKA happy brain juice
• Helps bone density – Buh bye osteoporosis, see ya never.
• Lymphatic drainage – All that gross waste we store in our bodies is getting flushed out.
• Helps decrease cortisol levels – Cortisol is a stress hormone, it is known to cause us to store fat around our belly, so thank you NEXT.

I could go on but it’s getting hard to keep coming up with witty explanations for each benefit so you’d be better off reading all about them here – https://platefit.co/about/

They feature a variety of classes ranging from their signature “PlateFit” class (my personal favorite) to bootcamp, barre, and more specialized classes for arms, abs and booties. They also have an incredible recovery class where you literally lay on the plate and stretch… Heaven. All the classes feature moves you’re more than likely already familiar with like squats, lunges, bicep curls etc, the difference being its being preformed while standing atop of the power plate.

If you’re wondering if a workout can be effective in only 27 min the answer is YES. High Intensity Interval training is extremely effective for burning calories and providing an after burn effect, meaning your body will continue to burn more calories than it normally would for a period of time AFTER you finish your workout. It’s the same theory behind the short WODs at a crossfit class or circuit training. It works.

The most important thing to me about PlateFit, and why I keep going back (I average about 3 classes a week) is that it’s FUN. The instructors are angels, the music is loud/fun and did I mention its 27 minutes?! Extremely doable.

On days that I don’t go to PlateFit, I walk. I often joke that I’m like an 80 year old because I love to just stroll. I mentioned in the beginning of this post that I had previously been very into running sprints. I would run for about 30 minutes, switching between 1 minute of sprinting as fast as I possibly could to 1 minute of slow walking. This is commonly known as interval training and is theoretically a very similar concept to HITT; getting your heart rate up sky high to bring it down and back up again. While this is an extremely effective workout it’s not realistic long term for me, the main reason being that I hate running. I would dread every day that I had to run so I stopped – honestly life it too damn short to spend time doing something you hate.

I replaced sprints with walking. I walk an average of 3 times a week on the treadmill. I have little arm weights (I highly recommend Bala Bangles https://balabangles.com), I set the treadmill to a fast paced walk- I use 4.2 at an incline of 3 but its important you do whatever feels best for YOUR body – and I walk for 30-45 min while I watch something on Netflix. It’s heavenly to me and I very much consider this my “me” time. I want to note that I have noticed no difference whatsoever in my body composition after switching from running intervals to walking, if anything at all I would say I am a little leaner (running insane intervals is taxing for your body. Sometimes creating a cortisol response, which as we know from earlier is that pesky stress hormone that can cause fat storage). But once again, every BODY is different and will respond differently.

Since we are here and we’re on the topic of exercise I want to take a moment to address another question I am asked a LOT on social media, “How do you eat like you do and not gain weight?” – Two things about this:

• When you see me posting food related content on Instagram it is a very small piece of a very big picture. I am curating the content, this is not the Truman Show (for the millennials out there google the synopsis on The Truman Show for a break down) you’re not seeing everything I am eating or getting an accurate portrayal of my lifestyle. I naturally eat very healthy with some very “unhealthy” foods sprinkled in.
• I’m going to level with you and you’re probably going to hate it but someone needs to just be fucking honest about this – I AM NATURALLY THIN. So many (TOO many) fitness and lifestyle social media influencers are fooling you with their tummy teas and detoxes and diet advice. Some people are born with a body composition that is naturally very small and while you can of course tone up or gain a few pounds here and there, the structure of their body might just be different from yours. This is why I hate to give thoughtless advice regarding diet and exercise.

I hope that this post was helpful to someone. I know I used to scroll Instagram and see people who’s bodies I idealized and I would wonder how to look like them and what they did to workout, what their diet was like etc etc. This is going to sound super cheesy but the only person you should want to look like is YOU. Self love and acceptance is so much more important than anything on the exterior and once you really accept that you won’t give two shits about listening to whatever random Australian Instagrammer that’s popular at the moment and who claims to be vegan and appears to only eat fruit and live in bikinis thinks about diet & exercise.

Do what makes you happy. Eat good food, celebrate your healthy body that preforms miracles everyday without you having to tell it to. Eat cake, drink the wine and don’t give a fuck whatever anyone dumb enough to talk about a thigh-gap on social media thinks about your body or life.

Namaste.

XO, Hellowhitney.