My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life

by Gabrielle Reece

  One time I wasn’t feeling well and was thinking about calling off the training session and Laird laughed and said, “Oh no, the Rock’s going to cancel? The Rock always shows up.” The other day I had a volleyball game on the same day we were scheduled to train. I wound up arranging for the game to be played later. The Rock never cancels.

  And there’s one other thing. One of the moves I’ve incorporated into my workout sessions? Handstands! You couldn’t pay me to do them back at Florida State, but at age thirty-seven I swallowed my fear and did one with my heels against the wall; now I do them every time I train. Well, most of the time. Say fifty-fifty.

  NOW IS THE TIME

  Working out and getting and staying fit doesn’t have to be beastly or daunting. When I was a kid growing up in St. Thomas, people got exercise by swimming and walking and riding around on their bikes. Most people could probably have been more fit, but I’m sure their general level of fitness overall was much higher than that of many contemporary folks who vow to themselves that tomorrow they’re going to start working out two hours a day while, at the same time, nourishing themselves with water and lettuce leaves, until they have quads of steel and glutes like Mario Lopez.

  Of course, tomorrow never comes.

  If you haven’t worked out for a while, it’s as easy as this: start walking. Can you walk at a good pace for twenty minutes? Add ten more. Maybe you work out two days a week for thirty minutes. Could you add a day? Could you go for forty minutes? The point is to do more, and to continue doing more, but not in a way that intimidates you.

  The key is finding a way to introduce these new habits into your life with a sense of reality. It can’t be torture. It can’t be something that makes you utterly miserable. You can’t feel deprived and pissed off because of it. You can’t feel like “Oh my god, this is one more thing.” Aim for mild, aim for gradual. Aim for an activity that you might come close to enjoying.

  It doesn’t matter if you’re doing eight reps with two-pound weights or if you danced around your living room while your kid is in the bouncy chair. All that matters is that you had a great time and challenged yourself a little.

  THE EVERYDAY 100 PERCENT

  Exercise physiologists have recently discovered that the person who exercises for thirty minutes with intent and focus gains more from her session than the one who dials it in while texting or reading a magazine, or simply not paying attention.

  When you work out, whether it’s two or three or four times a week, for fifteen minutes or for an hour, do it with purpose. Be there, just for that time, one hundred percent. I’ve probably spent years, all told, in the gym, and I see it all the time: people show up with their trainer and they’re jibber-jabbering, catching up on gossip and just not paying attention to what they’re doing. You can’t multitask when you’re training. You can’t be somewhere else in your head while your body is here working.

  It was bad enough when gyms stuck TVs on the ceiling in front of the treadmills (a lot of gyms now have Cardio Cinemas, basically movie theaters where the seats have been replaced by Stairmasters and other machines) and made sure there was a fat collection of recent magazines by the ellipticals. Now we’ve got our phones, which can and do provide an endless opportunity for distraction.

  They’ve not only become our electronic security blankets, they also allow our bodies to be in one place, while our heads are somewhere else. I’m here with you, but I’m also texting. We tend to work less hard when we’re watching a movie; we also tend to be less aware of our posture and body alignment, which can lead to injury.

  Oh, I know. Some days it’s murder to get yourself to exercise, and if you didn’t have the promise of a movie or a mystery to occupy yourself while on the treadmill, you’d skip it altogether. And pretty much all trainers agree that anything that will get you to commit to a regular exercise program is better than nothing.

  They’re one hundred percent correct.

  Whatever gets you through your workout is all right.

  But I’m an optimist. I believe that if you pay attention to your body during exercise, you’ll wind up enjoying yourself. When you exercise, for that relatively short amount of time, put the phone in your gym bag. Unless you’re expecting a significant communication regarding a loved one or a big work-related thing, you don’t need it. And never hire a trainer who allows you to keep your phone nearby or to chitchat.

  When I work out, I work hard, and I work the people I’m training hard. I consider this to be part of my work life, even though I’m not getting paid for it. I show up and I’m on time and I do my job. I’m a little tough on them. I yell at them for talking. We’re not here to gossip. We’re here to work, and maybe to have a laugh or two. We do intense intervals of squats with weights in each hand, stationary lunges, jumping jacks, pushups. But we also take breaks. Twenty seconds of brute hard work, five seconds of uninterrupted rest. Anyone can commit one hundred percent to an exercise for twenty seconds, knowing that the rest break is coming, literally, in a matter of seconds.

  Bottom line: your workout regime shouldn’t be overwhelming, but you must also accept the fact that it’s not like getting a massage. It is a form of work. When you go to the DMV you don’t think “this is going to be awesome!” But you go because the outcome—tooling around in your car (legally)—is important, and even necessary.

  TO COMMIT, CONNECT

  Let’s consider, for a moment, a hamburger. In order to be hot and in shape and all of that, you don’t have to give up the things you love. But if you’re having a burger for lunch, can you eat half and wrap up the rest to take home?

  Here’s a trick: once you’ve ordered it, ask the server to take the other half away and put it in a to-go bag. (Seriously. Get rid of the half you’re saving immediately. Don’t let the mofo sit there tormenting you.) Savor what you’re eating for lunch. Take a bite and actually taste it. Eat it slowly and eat it without a smidge of guilt.

  And when you go for your walk, feel your feet, your legs, and hips. Feel your butt. I don’t care if you’re a hundred pounds overweight. Start getting connected to your body. Fitness isn’t about being in perfect shape and a size six.

  When I train, it’s not with the goal of showing the world I have killer abs after having had two babies, or to look good in some dress I’m going to have to wear to the next social event. I train to feel connected to my body, to feel my muscles work, my joints move in their sockets, my breath travel through my lungs.

  At least once a week after a training session a woman will come up to me and tell me that after the workout she feels more stable, more balanced, and more confident. This is why exercise is the secret to everything; it’s the secret to making you feel connected to the way your body moves in space throughout the day.

  One fortyish woman I work out with is in good shape and comes to class regularly. Still she’s beginning to develop that curvature of the upper spine you see in older women—dowager’s hump, as it’s charmingly called. One day after class I pulled her aside and told her that her exercise routine was all well and good, but her homework every day was be aware of her body outside of class. That she needs to consciously remember to use the muscles in her upper back to pull her shoulders back, and to make sure her head was balanced over her neck, and not jutting forward. I could see that she felt a little frustrated by my suggestion. I told her about my lousy knees and how pretty much every day I’m managing knee pain. As we get older, we’ve all got our crosses to bear. My goal is not to be a muscle meathead, but to experience vitality, enjoyment, and longevity.

  I’ve been holding my classes now for several years, and every last one of my workout buddies has gotten stronger and gained stamina. But our bodies are smart. They adapt. Once the work starts to feel easy, you’re not going to get the same results. Only minutes into the circuit I can tell when my women are complacent.

  My solution: step it up. Rather than doing each move for twenty seconds, I increase it to a minute. I up their weights. I add
another round to the circuit; instead of doing two sets, we do three. This way, we also get psychologically stronger. At the end of one minute of push-ups you think, halfway done! I’m only going to see those fuckers one more time. But to know they’re coming around twice more, and each time you’ll be a little more fatigued, that’s tough.

  But my gang knows enough not to complain. They know my philosophy by now, that it’s good to feel a bit uncomfortable. As the saying goes, life is lived just outside our comfort zone. In my own training, I like having to come face-to-face with my own character. When I play volleyball, even though it’s just on the weekends with a bunch of the local boys, I enjoy the pressure. These are the moments when we get acquainted with ourselves.

  HURRAY FOR THE GOOD OL’ GIRLS CLUB

  One Wednesday, at the end of the group workout, one of my women approached me with a bag full of avocados. If you haven’t had Hawaiian avocados, you’re missing out. They’re big and buttery and can be chopped up and tossed into salads and smoothies. I’d run into her once at the market and we’d chatted briefly about how the Reece-Hamiltons love their avocados, and clearly she’d remembered. I was touched.

  And I realized then that my circuit group was about more than just working out, that it was also about providing an environment where women were able to connect, that our commitment to come and sweat in unison was a kind of relationship, even though none of us were friends (either in the real world or the Facebook sense). But we’re all working together, we’re working hard, and we’re helping each other. What could be better?

  When I meet women who don’t like other women, I can sense it right away. The stereotype of mean girls is rooted in a sad reality, and women need to be conscientious about supporting one another. But part of supportiveness is being straight. Say I have a friend who’s having trouble with her partner. It might seem like the friend thing to do is to jump with her on the he’s-such-an-asshole bandwagon, to agree in all ways that he Done Her Wrong, but really, my job, as her friend, would be to help her see what’s going on with him. Real women will love you enough to tell you straight.

  We’re more likely to develop that side of our personalities if we do something constructive together. Sure, hitting a shoe sale can be fun, but taking a walk is better. It’s good to have a collective goal, which is why sports for girls is so crucial. Men gather around a task, women just gather.

  Then, after we become mothers, the first thing to fall by the wayside, besides caring whether we have spit-up stains on the shoulders of our T-shirts, is our friendships. If we do have time to hang out with other women, they are usually moms who have kids the same age as our own. And what do we do with these new friends? Bitch and moan, usually. Trade war stories about ear infections, sleepless nights, our husbands. The same old, same old, and nothing that’s very uplifting.

  But start training with a group of women, and suddenly you find yourself with a dozen or more new pals. Maybe you’re not “friends,” strictly speaking, but most likely you don’t have time to devote to real friendships anyway. And better yet, the contact you have with your training posse is all positive, all the time.

  The community on the north shore is small, and I’m always running into my ladies at the market or the beach, and we have nothing but fond feelings for one another. We have a quick chat, promise we’ll see each other at the next session, and the good feeling of having interacted with another chick in a positive way lasts the rest of the day. We don’t have to spend hours small-talking or gossiping. It’s completely sufficient for me to ask, “How’s it going?” I’ve genuinely contributed to her health and well-being, and she’s inspired me by her willingness and energy. I don’t have to strive to find a different way to connect, nor do I have to fake a connection that isn’t there.

  It sounds corny, but playing volleyball all those years really did teach me a few nonsport-related life lessons. Among them: a female is actually capable of having another female’s back, even during times of strife. I had conflicts with my teammates all the time, but during a match we were still able to put our differences away and support one another. Women don’t have a reputation for being able to do this. It’s all personal, all the time with us. Our emotions run the show and dictate how we act with one another. But once you play on a team for any length of time you learn to put aside the disagreements when it matters, and one girl’s success becomes another’s.

  Likewise, I learned early on never to measure myself against another teammate. There were always going to be girls who were bigger, stronger, and faster than I was, and girls whom I was bigger, stronger, and faster than. I realized I had to just do my thing, and work hard at what I knew I was good at. When I saw a chick that was a badass, my goal was to acknowledge it without being threatened by her talent or her power.

  One year I played on Team Nike with Natalie Williams, an NCAA player of the year who went to UCLA and lettered in both volleyball and basketball, and went on to play in the WNBA. She was six one, one ninety, and biomechanically perfect. We would close the block and she’d bump me with her massive shoulders and boom, I’d be on the ground. Once, I played volleyball with a girl from the Virgin Islands who had a thirty-two-inch vertical leap. It goes on and on.

  I think it’s important for women to get that attitude going, where we can celebrate one another for what we excel in, without comparing or competing. It’s ugly when we pull one another down, and it does nothing to improve the quality of our lives. And in the same way it’s self-sabotage to envy people; you should strive not to feel smug when you’re obviously better than the person next to you—that’s poisonous in its own way.

  I always remember the old saying, “comparison is the death of happiness.”

  Over time, my circuit-training group has learned to root one another on. On any given day we all know the ladies who are enjoying a good patch. Their training is going well, they’re full of energy, they’re smiling, and they look great. Their success is contagious and for those of us who are dragging our sorry asses around and trying not to clock watch (just because I write the circuit doesn’t mean I’m immune to sucking at it from time to time), they are a joy. This kind of interaction is part of my personal code. I always want the group to be about the greater good.

  • • •

  I train women from seventeen to seventy. I give them all the same circuit, with a few suggestions on how they can modify. I want the seventeen-year-olds to grab a bigger weight, and the seventy-year-olds to be mindful of their backs. I want one of the fifty-eight-year-olds, who is more ripped than I am, to keep pushing, and keep enjoying herself, for years to come.

  It’s important for me to train people of all different ages. I’m not suggesting that an exercise group can take the place of your family, but it’s rare to see three generations under the same roof these days, and as a result we have a low tolerance for anyone who’s not exactly our age, who doesn’t have a child the exact same age (preferably in the same grade), and who doesn’t like the same clothes, food, bands, and home décor.

  Training together gives younger chicks the chance to work alongside older women who are serious about their fitness and see that life (and lifting) doesn’t end at age thirty-five. The rest of us thrive in the presence of the young ones, especially when they’re confident and working hard. It’s a reciprocal relationship that creates respect.

  Of course, you shouldn’t exercise at the expense of spending time with loved ones; however, if you’re taking care of your physical needs, the quality of that time will improve. And in the end, isn’t it about the quality of our relationships and experiences, and not making sure all our emails are answered and the laundry is perfectly folded?

  My friend Katie Hester, a onetime federal judge with a southern drawl, is always full of wise, down-home advice, and she says, “Don’t invest in ‘things,’ but rather in relationships and experiences.”

  My experience has always been that if you invest in your own physical health, your relationships an
d experiences become even more healthy, happy, and sweet.

  5

  THE KEY TO LIFE IN THE KINGDOM OF FOOD

  My standing weight is between 170 and 172. In college I weighed between 140 and 150. When I competed professionally I weighed 163. When I was pregnant with my daughters, I weighed, yes, 200.

  My point? Like every other person living in the first world, I’m aware of my weight. I also love food.

  I have asked my friends who have become vegans, “Don’t you miss meat?” They say, “Nope, tofu is so much better.” I have asked my friends who have sworn off sugar, “Don’t you miss chocolate?” “Nope,” they say. “Never even think about it, and I feel so much better!”

  That’s not me. Even though I live in Malibu, I’m not one of those people for whom kale chips are a genuine substitute for barbecue potato chips. I love red meat and chocolate bars and ice cream and French fries. I love the Sweet Factory. All those bins of sour green apple belts and gummy worms that give you contact diabetes just being in the store? I love all that shit.

  Still, I like feeling better in my body more. We all have self-sabotaging mechanisms, but my desire to survive and excel is greater than my desire to shoot myself in the foot.

  This has lead me to employ (most of the time) a set of attitudes that allow me to eat well without feeling like I’m depriving myself, while still maintaining a healthy weight. And, by the way, it’s not all blueberries and smoothies around the Reece-Hamilton house. Not five minutes ago I came home from working out and ate a handful of chocolate almonds.

  Still, I feel I have the true key to eating well.

  I’m going to tell you now, in case the mere mention of food and nutrition is so stressful it sends you mad-dashing to the nearest Dairy Queen and you think it would be better for all concerned if you just skipped ahead to the next chapter.