Strong Looks Better Naked

by Khloé Kardashian

  By the time I began working with Gunnar, I already truly loved exercise, which was becoming a healthy addiction. I would exercise a few times a week. I started out with two sessions a week at Gunnar’s. I would get there early and start out with some stretching exercises, and then I’d do thirty minutes on the elliptical. Sometimes I would jump rope, because I enjoy dancing around like a lunatic, and picking the right music is part of the fun. I’d listen to hip-hop and pop. I’m a big Beyoncé and Rihanna fan, and all of that top forty upbeat, happy stuff. The better the music, the harder I work out. If it’s bad music, I fall completely off track.

  The other thing I discovered at Gunnar’s is that if I have a stressful day, my workouts are actually better. If I’ve had a good day, I’ll still have a good workout, but it’s missing that added component—frustration or anger or pressure—that adds fuel to the session. When I’ve had a bad day, I am more focused on working out, and by the time my workout is over, I’ve pretty much taken care of all of my aggression or frustration.

  The other nice thing about working out consistently with a trainer is that you develop a relationship with him or her. Gunnar is almost like a therapist; I feel comfortable enough to share parts of my private life with him. So between the exercise and the talk therapy, I always leave the gym feeling great and ready to seize the day.

  Of course it doesn’t have to be a trainer. You can work out with a friend or a sister. It sometimes helps to have a workout buddy because you know she’s waiting for you, and you can’t skip out. And when you see someone regularly, there’s an added benefit: You have someone to talk to, and talk can be therapeutic.

  Some people do fine alone, of course, and I was perfectly fine with working out on my own during my Equinox days, but since then I’ve learned that I get more out of my workouts when I’m in good company. And if I’m truly alone, I bring my BlackBerry so I can type on those little upraised keys and communicate with my friends and feel connected to the larger world. I’ve even been known to journal on the elliptical, typing away on my BlackBerry, crazy as that sounds. I generally leave those sessions feeling as if I’ve totally cleared my head. It’s like that great scene in The First Wives Club. Goldie Hawn plays a lush who drinks every night, but she has a great body because she trains in the morning to get the booze out of her system. After she’s been on the treadmill for a while, her brain clears and she comes up with all sorts of kooky schemes for getting revenge on the ex-husbands. I know exactly how that works: not the revenge part, of course—that’s never been me—but that post-workout clarity. You feel super sharp. You feel you can handle anything!

  It’s the best feeling ever. I will have days when I think, I don’t want to fucking drive to Beverly Hills today. I have too much to do. I’m tired. I’m cranky. But I get there—you have to learn to push yourself—and I’ve never once said, “Oh, I really regret that workout!” I bet no one’s ever said that. What human being is going to say, “I regretted working out today”? You regret not going, but you never regret getting through with it, even if you had to scream at yourself to get there.

  If you think about it, a workout is not even 4 percent of your day. That’s nothing! You can make time for that! If a cute boy calls you and says, “I want to see you tonight,” you will somehow find the time to do it—even if you’re shooting a movie or studying for your bar exam. So surely you can find time for the gym. It’s all about wanting something badly enough and making that goal your priority. Many of us must learn to prioritize ourselves. We can get stuck in autopilot on an unhealthy schedule: get up, go to work, make dinner, go to sleep. But, it is up to us to make our health and our well-being part of our daily routines. If you truly want to grow stronger—in your body, but also in your mind and soul—nothing can stop you.

  The other good thing about working out with Gunnar is that it gave me somewhere to go, an actual schedule, and I really needed that because by this time it was just me at home.

  How Do You Fix a Broken Heart?

  This might sound like a cliché, but when I fell for Lamar, I remember feeling truly complete. And with Lamar gone, I felt I was losing a part of myself. Fortunately, by that point, I already knew that ice cream and hibernation were not the answer, so I filled many of those extra hours by continuing to work on my physical and mental self.

  Still, I’d be lying to you if I said it was a total cure. You don’t just fix a broken heart. You need time. And it hurt, because I loved being married. I loved having a family. I loved waking up in the morning and having purpose. I loved Lamar’s kids, too, and I tried to be a good stepmother to them. (I took some of my cues from my stepdad, Bruce, who had been an outstanding stepfather to me.) I reminded myself that I was a stepmother, not a mother, and that I wasn’t there to take anyone’s place in the children’s hearts. As I’d learned from Bruce, my role was to be there for those beautiful children, to give them extra love, my own love, and not to compete with their mother for their affection. Bruce really had it down. He understood that his role was to be as present in our lives as we needed him to be, and he always was.

  There were of course parenting lessons I’d learned from my own father, Robert Kardashian, and from some of the women he dated after he and my mother divorced. I’m not going to get catty here, but a few of those ladies had a tendency to be overbearing, and it wasn’t very convincing, and others went in the opposite direction, shamelessly bad-mouthing my mother. I knew I never wanted to be that kind of stepmother. No child wants to hear negative stories about his or her parents. It was a valuable lesson, and it taught me that you can learn as much from bad examples as from good ones. When you marry someone, especially if they’ve had children with someone else, you need to be aware of what you’re taking on. You’ve signed on for the whole package.

  And the fact is, the more I bit my tongue, the easier it got. It reminded me of my workouts: I got stronger every day, and not reacting got easier and easier, especially on the days when I found time for the gym. In fact, learning to be a good stepmother was a form of exercise in and of itself. I started slow and got steadily better.

  It reminded me of a friend who decided to lose weight. She began slowly, walking around the block every morning, and then one morning a month later, she called me. She had just run her first mile. She said she hadn’t set any world records, but she didn’t care: She felt an immense sense of accomplishment.

  And the thing is, she had it right. You need to crawl before you can walk. When I first started working out, I took baby steps. I started with two workouts a week, maybe thirty-five or forty minutes each, and over time went more frequently and worked out for longer periods.

  I used to be the queen of yo-yo dieting. My weight would fluctuate like crazy. It was really hard on me physically and psychologically. Lamar would tell me, “You can’t get it back in a day.” And he was so right. I used to beat myself up if I didn’t stick to my routine, and when I got back to the gym, I’d do a two-hour workout to punish myself. This was really counterproductive because the next day I’d be so tired and sore that I would dread returning to the gym. When I finally understood that working out was for life, I was kinder to myself. I realized that I didn’t have to rush or punish myself or overdo it, and that in fact slow and steady wins the race. Now I have no problem getting to the gym, and if I don’t get there, I certainly don’t beat myself up over it the next day.

  Previous generations had a different approach to exercise—remember “No pain, no gain,” “Feel the burn,” and so forth?—and that is certainly a big part of my exercise routine. But if I had felt too much burning and too much pain when I was starting out, I wouldn’t have persevered. Now I actually embrace those tired muscles. When my muscles hurt, my heart sings.

  “What Do You Hope to Accomplish?”

  By the time I started working out with Gunnar, I was doing a lot more than a mile, but my workouts lacked direction. So he sat me down and asked me what I hoped to accomplish.

  Until then I didn�
�t really have a goal. I just liked the way exercise made me feel. And it certainly wasn’t about weight. I never thought I was fat. In fact, I always felt beautiful in my own skin. Of course, when my sisters and I started getting attention, people tended to refer to me as the fat Kardashian, or the ugly sister, and I good-humoredly bought into it. “Okay, if you say I’m the fat one, I’m the fat one. I’m the fat funny one.”

  The fact is that I was kind of skinny at sixteen and didn’t fill out till much later. But I was never one of those girls at the beach with the perfect bodies, lying around in a bikini with all the self-confidence in the world. I had self-confidence, too, but not in a bathing suit—not in a one-piece and certainly not in a bikini. And while I genuinely liked myself and felt pretty darn cute, I was self-aware enough to know that no one wanted to see me showing skin on the beach.

  Being big or a few pounds over my “ideal” weight was not then and is not now an issue. In fact, because I believed I looked good—notwithstanding what everyone else thought—I always carried myself with confidence, and I learned long ago that people find confidence attractive. If you walk around thinking you’re pretty cute, people are going to believe it. And I believed I was cute.

  And sure, when people began to call me the fat one, I was curious about their perception. Sometimes I would look at myself in the mirror, trying to figure out what they saw and questioning my sanity, because I couldn’t see myself the same way. Did I think I was fat? No, not really. I had always been a big girl, and I was still a big girl, but the weight didn’t bother me. On the other hand, when I looked at old pictures of myself, trying to get a clue, I did notice that I looked unhealthy. My color and skin tone was off. That’s when I realized that exercising was actually making me look healthier, undoubtedly because I was healthier. It actually gave me a bit of a glow.

  I never thought about losing weight. I know it sounds strange, but to me, it wasn’t about the scale. I really began paying attention to the pounds only after I started working out, when they began to melt away. Losing weight was a pleasant side effect, not the goal. To me, exercise was about how I felt in both body and mind, not about my weight.

  But many people do struggle with weight issues, and for them it is about losing pounds. Let me make a suggestion: Don’t weigh yourself. I don’t. I don’t even have a scale in my house. If you weigh yourself every morning and you don’t like the number on that scale, it’s going to affect your mood. It might even ruin your day. That’s why I’m against it. For me, it’s all about how you feel. For example, the other day I was going through my closet and found a pair of jeans that I hadn’t worn in more than a year. They had never been all that comfortable, but suddenly they fit. And I felt fabulous in them. I didn’t need the scale to tell me how to feel; my jeans did. They felt great, and I couldn’t ask for more than that.

  Women also torture themselves over sizes. They go shopping and they can’t fit into a size 4 and it makes them crazy. Well, I don’t care. I could be a size 10, but if I look and feel good, that number is just as meaningless to me as the number on the scale.

  I learned not to make myself crazy with numbers. It’s counterproductive. I was exercising to stay sane, to keep going when I felt sad and helpless, and I wasn’t about to ruin it by relying on meaningless numbers to measure the results.

  And think about it—what a waste of endorphins! You do all that hard work in the gym, and your body rewards you by pouring yummy chemicals into your brain. Then you go home and weigh yourself and crash. It’s not about the weight, ladies, and it’s not about the calories, either. I’ll be flipping through a magazine and it’ll give you these crazy examples: If you ride a bike for an hour, you’ll burn 500 calories! If you walk for 45 minutes, you’ll burn 300 calories! That is so not accurate. The number of calories you burn depends on many factors: your weight, your height, the amount of energy you’re putting into that particular exercise. You don’t have to count those calories. They mean nothing. The only thing that matters is how you feel or how you look in that little red skirt you haven’t worn in three years.

  Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

  —Albert Schweitzer

  Love What You Do, Do What You Love

  If you want to know what really, truly matters when it comes to exercise, it’s this: You have to find an exercise you can grow to love. If you don’t, you won’t stick with it, and nothing will change.

  If bikes and treadmills aren’t your thing, there are plenty of other options. If you don’t enjoy what you are doing, you won’t stick with it. I could never imagine running, for example. I hate it with a passion! But I love to box and jump rope. I like weight machines, too, but not everyone does. If you’re not a fan, your body can be its own machine. You can do push-ups or planks. You can do jumping jacks. You can do stretches and squats. You can work your way toward your very first pull-up.

  And you don’t need a gym. Is there a pool nearby? Go swimming. Tennis courts? Take lessons. A mountain? Go for a hike.

  When I was helping Kourt and Kim with their mothering duties, I would do squats while holding the babies! LOL! And that was hard, so I don’t want to hear any excuses.

  Plus look on Instagram. They have a number of very useful “no gym” workouts that can be tremendously motivating.

  It really boils down to baby steps: one little step at a time. You walk a mile and add a second mile when you’re ready. You do three push-ups and work your way up to ten. You swim an extra lap every day until you’re churning through the water like an Olympic champion. Remember, the only person you need to be better than is the you of yesterday.

  So yes, you need to push yourself a little. Getting started is usually a challenge, and the temptation is to give up or not do it at all. But once you see results—and you’ll see them quickly—you’ll keep going.

  Your body needs and wants exercise. But you have to talk your mind into getting with the program.

  And different bodies have different requirements. I have a friend who started with short walks around the block, determined to lose weight, and actually lost three pounds that first week! Now she doesn’t have to think about weight because she’s become a committed runner and it’s a nonissue; she is in the best shape of her life, as lithe as a gazelle. Other friends work out twice a week and watch what they eat and are just fine. My friend Malika doesn’t ever do any physical exercise and she has a perfect body, the bitch! But me, no. I need my five days. Exercise makes me happy. And I have scientific evidence to back this up: Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain connected to feelings of pleasure and happiness, and exercise gets it flowing.

  Set Realistic Goals

  The other thing that really, truly matters when it comes to exercise is this: Set realistic goals. And even more important, be realistic about how you intend to get there. As Confucius put it, “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.”

  I recently learned that 25 percent of New Year’s resolutions are broken in the first week, and that 80 percent of new gym members drop out within eight weeks. I think this is largely due to not having realistic goals. If you don’t have something to shoot for, something doable, you are going to become easily discouraged. It’s fine to aim for the moon, but remember that making change in your life is hard and you’ll need to take baby steps on your way there. If you expect too much from yourself, you’ll never get past the early disappointment.

  I have a few suggestions on this point.

  1. Write down your goals. If they’re unreachable as stated, rewrite your goals.

  2. Start small. For example, I will go to the gym Tuesdays and Thursdays after work.

  3. Devise a working plan. For example, If I miss Thursday, I’ll make it up on Saturday (but I won’t overdo it).

  4. Reward yourself from time to time. Getting strong is not about self-torture.

  5
. Ask for help. If you don’t know where to start, find someone who does. It often takes more courage to seek help than to act alone.

  6. Praise yourself. Every time you go to the gym, pat yourself on the back. It’s important to remind yourself that you are on the right path and doing great.

  7. Be specific. A goal should have a time frame, but it needs to be realistic. If you want to fit into those jeans by summer, don’t wait till late May to start working out.

  Losing thirty pounds in thirty days, as is promised in many magazine articles, can be done, but only by some people. And if you happen to be one of those people, and you get there in thirty days, have you ever wondered what happens afterward? Well, I’ll tell you: The pounds tend to come right back, and often in less than thirty days. You had a goal, you reached it, but now you want to take a little break from all the torture. And it was torture because your approach was all wrong.

  For me, when I see books or read magazine articles that promise to transform your body in thirty or sixty days, I might flip through them, out of curiosity, but I already know that short-term formulas don’t work. I have tried them all. I have tried every fad, followed every diet, believed every lose-weight-fast article. The one thing I can tell you for sure is that there are no quick fixes. The only lasting solution is a lifestyle change.

  If you want to be healthy, if you want to get in shape, there is no easy fix. It’s a lifetime commitment. But the irony is that this commitment can be the most pleasurable part of the rest of your life. There will be lapses, of course. None of us is perfect. But that’s part of the journey. Every time I mess up, I get back on track with more drive and determination than ever. And it’s because I don’t expect perfection from myself. If I have an occasional slice of cake, well, I wanted it and I deserved it. And it’s not a crime. But if I have a slice of cake every day, that’s a problem, and it’s my job to find the solution.