The pressure of the public eye makes celebrities better than most of us about keeping in top form. Yet between performing stints they too can find fitness habits slacking off and extra pounds creeping on. What do they do when, faced once again with a public appearance, they have to shape up in short order? Not surprisingly, many celebs are pros at getting their bodies together fast, but in ways that don’t impair their energy or health.

Singer Gloria Estefan, 33, is an extreme example. But going a little easy on herself was hardly the problem. She needed a special nine-month diet-and-exercise program, capped by 30 days of intensive training, just to walk unaided onto the stage last January at the American Music Awards. After a tour-bus accident last year had broken her back, two steel rods were implanted in her spine to save her from paralysis. But the grueling operation left Estefan so debilitated that for the first month afterward, she could hardly move. While her injuries began to heal, however, the rest of her body was going flaccid.

She credits her amazing recovery to an intensive regimen, worked out by her two nutritionist-trainers, Michael and Carmen Klepper. Under their careful direction, Estefan went on a diet of skinned and broiled chicken, fish, some red meat, steamed vegetables, salads, pasta and whole-grain breads. In addition, she drank juices and eight glasses of water daily. To get her muscles moving again, she began aerobics in the pool at her Miami home. Gradually, the workouts moved to her gym, where she did stretches, small-weight lifting, seated pull-downs with a bar and rowing exercises. From there she added back curls, work on stair-climbing, cycling and rowing machines and heavier weight training. Yet a month before her scheduled appearance at the awards, she still needed muscle and endurance. So she stepped up her workouts from three hours, three times a week, to seven hours, six times weekly of aerobics, weight training and dance work. By the night of the music awards, Estefan was "hard as a rock," she says. She not only walked by herself onto the stage, she belted out for the first time what has become the theme song of her recovery, "Coming Out of the Dark."

Her recovery has been so complete that in March Estefan embarked on a high-velocity concert tour of five European countries, Japan, Australia and seven states across the US. For that, she says, she needed to lose even more weight, and quickly, "because the trimmer you are, the easier it is to jump around and sing at the same time." Two weeks before the tour Estefan went on a carbohydrate-depleting/loading program that forces the body to draw on its own fat for energy. The singer ate no carbohydrates until two days before the first concert. Then she added pasta, pita and whole-wheat bread again, "so when it was time for the show, my weight was down and my body was replenished with the carbohydrates it needed for energy." She keeps to that regimen throughout the tour, depleting at the beginning of the week and loading just before her weekend concerts. Thank to this system, she says, "I’m in better shape than I was before the accident."

Longevity May 1991

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