If you're looking to feel your best, Kelly Ripa's longtime trainer Anna Kaiser wants you to give her methods a shot. She told E! News why protein and strength training are the keys to getting fit.

Anna Kaiser didn't want to dance around the issue.

Asked about her balanced approach to both fitness and diet, the founder of Anna Kaiser Studios told E! News, "I feel like in this moment where people are focused on losing weight with drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic, we need to get back to a place where we think of food as fuel and nourishment, and less about how much we're eating and more about what we're eating and when we're eating it."

Generally speaking, when people give Ozempic a shot, said Kaiser, "Their body isn't craving foods, so they're eating a lot less and then what happens is they're going to burn muscle." With less muscle, "their metabolism slows down," continued the New York City-based pro, "so when they go off of the drug they're going to gain that weight back much more quickly."

So, go ahead, blend up that protein shake. We'll wait.

"We have to eat to allow our bodies to perform," noted Kaiser, who knows a bit about getting bodies to peak levels, having trained longtime clients Shakira and Kelly Ripa for a combined three decades. "If we don't eat enough, our bodies won't be healthy."

And there's a reason you'll hear most every health expert shill hard for protein.

"I still think there's this myth that if you eat a lot of protein, you will get bulky," explained Kaiser. "It is so impossible for women, you just won't. You have to lift extremely heavy weight, and eat protein and creatine and have all of these additional supplements in order to bulk."

What often happens when someone commits themself to a new fitness routine, she noted, is that "their body is developing muscle and they're not giving themselves enough time to burn off the fat, so they feel, like, puffy." For every pound of lean muscle you build, she continued, your body will burn an additional 50 calories at rest, "So if you gain 11 pounds of muscle, you will burn an additional 550 calories a day without doing anything."

However, you have to give it a beat to truly see the fruits of all that labor.

"People think, 'It's two weeks in, I feel really puffy, my jeans aren't fitting,'" said Kaiser, "and they don't give themselves two months to get to the other side. That's when the magic really starts to happen."

For Ripa, all that lean muscle comes courtesy of dutifully committing to six days a week of Kaiser's unique brand of high intensity dance interval training, which has devotees shift from dance choreography to strength training.

"I find it very rewarding to see someone grow," Kaiser said of her years-long journey with the LIVE with Kelly and Mark cohost. "I think we started with 20 minutes. And we have such a good time together because I know exactly where I can push her every day. Sometimes she has had to shoot three shows and a podcast and this is her one hour before she goes into another interview. And so I work with the energy that she has that day to help boost her for the rest of her day.'"

But for those not within walking distance of Kaiser's NYC studio, well, she's got an app for that.

With her Anna Kaiser Studios Virtual program, users get all the dance-based workout fun without any of the guesswork. With 10 workouts on offer—five are pre-recorded, five they can join live and actually Zoom into her space—devotees simply pick four each week: a high-intensity interval training workout, dance intervals, power up and sculpt. 

"Every workout, you're doing something that complements the other workouts, but they build on each other," Kaiser explained. "So the strength stays the same for two-to-four weeks so they can make sure they're getting stronger and their form is getting better. And then they start with beginner dance and then they add on, add on, add on. So they also learn to move in space as a dancer does and not just cardio for cardio's sake."

Source:
courtesy of E!ONLINE

by SARAH GROSSBART

If you have any stories or news that you would like to share with the global online community, please feel free to share it with us by contacting us directly at [email protected]