"What are you eating??"
I was standing over the counter with two grilled chicken breasts and a sugar-free energy drink, รก la Red Bull.
"I'm trying to lose weight. I have to fit into the costume the previous actor wore before my final callback, or I don't get the part as the replacement."
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"Want to grab dinner before the show tonight?"
"I can't, I'm doing this fast where you drink cranberry juice for 10 days. They say you can lose up to 20 lbs!"
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"I thought you didn't like celery."
"I don't, but I heard you actually burn calories while you eat it."
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I've tried them all: no carbs, no protein, all raw food, all cooked food, drink only juice for 10 days, drink no juice for ten days, the Zone diet, the South Beach diet, the blood type diet, eat only one meal a day, eat five meals a day, Weight Watchers, and on and on and on. You name it, I have eaten it. All in the name of the perfect body.
It's no secret that most actors obsess about their bodies: Am I thin enough, buff enough, sexy enough? In an industry where your body and type can often determine whether or not you get the part, who can blame us?
"Your body is the package that sells your talent. It is your job to make sure the package looks good," one of my acting teachers told our class. I was not in terrible shape, but her comment filled me with visions of parts I was desperate to play going to a thinner, more toned actress.
So, I joined my fellow actors on the mission to have the perfect 'package.' Spending hours sweating at the gym, trying every diet known to man — and spending an incalculable amount of time talking about what to eat, thinking about what to eat, and watching what other people were eating.
After two years of this, I looked pretty much the same. Not overweight, but definitely not in possession of the toned abs I'd imagined each time I began a new diet or exercise plan. What's more, I was tired, frustrated, and basically hungry most of the time. I realized that I spent more time thinking, worrying about food and my body than I did about my acting.
It was about this time that a good friend of mine confided in me about her struggles with food.
While studying at a conservatory college, she had been taken aside by one of her college professors and told that she would have to lose weight in order to play the roles that were her 'type.' The professor gave her a deadline: Lose the weight by the end of the semester. Having very little knowledge about dieting — and no support from the school — she lost weight the only way she knew how. Years later, she was still struggling with bulimia, resigned that this was just life as a professional actor.
Or is it?
Okay, this business is image-focused, and part of the way an actor is considered is based on looks. This is a fact. Does it mean that we are all doomed to a life of dieting and eating disorders, or Olympic training regimes, in order to work as actors? Does it mean that we have to starve ourselves every time we book a part that requires us to lose 10 pounds? Or eat pizza three times a day if we need to gain weight for a role?
No thanks, not for me. I spent too much money on acting classes to waste my creativity thinking of new weight-loss schemes.
I began to search for resources available to actors addressing this aspect of the business. I was looking for a program that would take into account the fact that actors have crazy schedules, little or random income, need to be focused, creative, stay at a steady weight most of the time, and would need to learn enough about their body to understand how to lose and gain weight quickly and safely for roles.
What I found was discouraging. Sure there are the typical diet places — Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig — but none of them address the specific concerns of actors. There were support groups for eating disorders, but none that addressed what to do before you have an eating disorder. Even the colleges and conservatory programs that specialize in acting didn't have much in the way of resources or advice.
My search eventually led me to an integrative nutrition program in New York City.
It was there that I realized why all those diets had failed: They weren't designed to work. Or better yet, they weren't designed to work for me. Every person's body is different.
Sure it sounds cheesy, but suspend cynicism for a moment and just think about it: No two bodies on earth are exactly alike. So, if that is true, then how can there be one 'right' diet for everyone?
There can't be, it's not possible. Each person has to figure out what works for their individual body. I realized that the diets in all the books I had read, or programs I had attended, should have been jumping-off points — a way to begin experimentation about what worked for me.
So I started to go back over the diets I had been on. Some had worked for a little while and then ultimately failed, and others just never really worked at all. Why? This is where I was stuck. I didn't know enough about how the body worked or the diets themselves to know why they had failed for me. So what I needed was to talk to someone who had studied all this and would help me figure out what was right for me.
Enter my health counselor.
Working with her, I learned about food, how it works in the body and, more specifically, to decipher how my body reacted to it. For the first time, I began to understand why a certain food would make me gain weight, while a friend of mine could gorge herself on it and never gain an ounce. I could then make food choices based on what my body needed and what results I wanted to see.
Then we took it one step further and began to look at how my life was affecting my nutrition. She would say, "I could tell you to eat broccoli three meals a day, but if you don't have time to cook, that won't do you much good." We spent time talking about schedule, stress, exercise — all those non-food things that actually affect food choices too.
By the time I had finished working with her, I had figured out a way of eating that worked for me, helped me achieve all my goals, and fit into my crazy lifestyle. And the best part is that I wasn't frustrated or hungry all the time. I had the energy to focus on what was really important — my acting career.