I Could Have Trained With Vince Gironda

I could have trained with Vince Gironda at Vince’s Gym on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City,CA, but I didn’t. I bought a membership at the Holiday Heath Spa across the street instead.

I wish I had known back in the 1990s when I was pursuing a career as an actor, singer, and dancer that Vince and his wife Peggy did train women at his gym. Peggy was a former showgirl, and she had established the first gyms for women in Los Angeles in order to teach them how to achieve that Hollywood physique.

If only I’d had the courage to ask, who knows what I could have achieved physically with Vince’s help in those early years of my performing career.

Fast forward to 2008.

I’m a stay at home mom trying to figure out to overcome obesity at age 43. I made two changes to my health routine that I’m sure Vince and Peggy would have approved of. I cut carbs, dropped cardio, and I started lifting weights with a focus on excellent form instead of just more weight and more reps.

Within 12 weeks I had transformed my body, and embarked on a new lifestyle, which I have maintained ever since.

Still, something changed four years ago as I finished going through menopause.

I found my hunger, cravings and my waistline creeping up. I also found my strength, optimism, and motivation going down. My Low Carb/Ketogenic diet wasn’t quite maintaining my weight, and my enthusiasm for lifting at the gym was fading away.

In March of 2018, I discovered Dr. Shawn Baker’s Carnivore Diet.

I followed it in order to get ready to sing at Carnegie Hall in March of 2019. After that, my health and happiness started improving, leading up to the Summer of 2019 when my husband and I got to see our son Colin graduate from High School. We were all so happy, and Colin decided to enroll at Columbia College and work in retail while he took his general education courses and considered his future.

I was writing and rehearsing a one-woman show about the Irish Opera Diva Catherine Hayes when Covid 19 hit and upended all of our plans. Still, I am so grateful that my husband is back to work teaching, and my son is working and taking his courses on line. Best of all we are all healthy, but these eight months have left me feeling heavy, sluggish, and sad.

This is where Vince Gironda comes in.

Vince was one of the modern pioneers of carnivore, because decades ago he started putting his clients on the Steak and Egg diet. Here’s how it goes according to guys who trained with Vince in the past:

For five days in a row, his trainees would eat as many eggs and as much steak as they wanted to get satisfied at two meals per day, and then they would have a day off to eat whatever they liked, then back on steak and eggs for five days, and repeat until the desired level of body weight and leanness was achieved.

I know that steak and eggs for five days might sound crazy, but I’ve done carnivore, and Dr. Blake Donaldson’s Strong Medicine Diet, so I’m not scared. Of course I would never recommend this approach to anyone else. I’m just an actor. I’ve never even played a doctor on TV, so be sure to ask a real doctor before you try anything like this. Still, nobody will ever know if this approach is safe long-term if nobody admits that they’ve tried it.

Today, I am starting Vince Gironda’s steak and egg diet, and I will follow it all the way to the end of 2020. On the sixth day of each week I will follow my original Sugar Freedom Diet which is low carb, but which includes above ground vegetables, full fat dairy, and a small amount of low sugar fruit. This will be ideal because it will allow for more conventional holiday meals on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

If you are interested in the plan I used to overcome obesity at age 44 you can ===>Click here for Sugar Freedom<===

Although I am looking forward to getting leaner and taking a couple of inches off of my waistline, those aren’t my main reasons for doing Vince’s diet. The main reason is that the more glucose I eliminate form my eating plan, the more energy, motivation, and enthusiasm I have for everything else in life. Why? My research has taught me that sugar and the foods that break down to sugar can have a negative effect on the hormones that control mood and motivation like dopamine. In my next post, I’ll be writing about the science of dopamine sensitivity, and reporting back on my results on steak and eggs.

Until then be well, and always remember:

Eat for yourself.