JLO's Blog: Listen to your body

New Video Included

At SELF, deprivation is a four-letter word. We believe that if you let yourself indulge occasionally in special foods or treats, it keeps you from overindulging later. Jennifer Lopez subscribes to that philosophy, too; she doesn't deny or starve herself, and she doesn't have to now that she's torching tons of extra calories training for a triathlon. (She's doing it for charity! If you want to help, click the "donate" photo below.) But she has learned some lessons about her diet.

"The one thing I'm getting in order is my eating. I've been thinking about that a lot now that I've started going longer distances. I'm not eating terrible foods, but I need more energy. The other day I ate Chinese food, then did a mini, mock tri: a swim, then a bike and a run. I could feel the heavy, greasy food slooowwwing me down. By the end of the workout, I was thinking to myself, If I ate better, I'd feel better about now and I'd have more energy. So now I'm working on getting on a good, healthy diet. Today I had a banana before my workout."

Just as she and her husband are raising their twins sans nanny, Jennifer doesn't have a personal chef or nutritionist whipping up low-cal power meals for her. She's learning on her own, just like the rest of us, that easily digestible proteins and carbs like chicken and pasta and fruit and veggies give the fuel you need to feel good throughout an entire workout.

She's got another incentive to eat well, too. "I want to teach [twins Max and Emme] that there are healthy things that taste good. Growing up, I didn't eat vegetables. I didn't know there was brown bread. I'd eat a sugar doughnut, then go to school totally sugar-buzzed. We'd eat hamburgers for lunch, then rice and beans and meat for dinner. Rice and beans aren't bad, but the meat was always fried. Culturally, that's just what my mom was fed and so she fed it to us. I want to give my kids the healthy stuff early so they can build on it—then have little treats."

Keep checking back to read more about Jennifer's triathlon training progress and charity initiatives.

August 26, 2008

Hey guys, please don't forget to donate anything you can below.

Please help Jen, and the women and children she is trying to help by donating money for Jen's triathlon run. All proceeds go to the CHLA mentioned above.
Please click image blow to donate, any amount helps.