On Tuesday (March 3) Carrie Underwood will drop her first book, Find Your Path: Honor Your Body, Fuel You Soul and Get Strong. The collection includes tips, recipes, exercises and stories about her personal health and fitness journey.
The American Idol season 4 winner tells Woman’s Health that she created the manual she wishes she had years ago. Her journey to get healthy wasn’t easy.:
Carrie didn’t pay much attention to nutrition or fitness until she encountered online message boards during her winning stint on American Idol in 2005. “Carrie’s getting fat,” read one note.
“I shouldn’t care what other people think about me,” Carrie says. But she also knew that the quesadillas and pasta she’d been living on weren’t making her feel her best. “I was tired, and I kept buying bigger clothes,” she recalls. “I knew I could be better for myself, and I let my haters be my motivators.”
During the American Idol Live tour, Carrie started reading labels, counting calories, and exercising more. At first, she felt good. “I was sleeping better, and I had more energy for our grueling schedule,” she says. So she decided to take it further. She began exercising more and cut her calories back to 800 a day.
By the time she attended her first CMA Awards in November 2005, her plan was starting to backfire. Sure, she’d lost weight, but she was also finding it nearly impossible to stick to her strict diet. Her periods of restriction were almost always followed by overindulging. “I would ‘fall off the wagon,’ then feel terrible and repeat the cycle.” Her newfound energy levels were also starting to dip. “Your body is screaming out, I need more calories, I need more carbs!” she says.
However, Carrie doesn’t necessarily believe that she was suffering from disordered eating, “I really would not call it that,” she told Woman’s Health. She just feels like she lacked the knowledge to “create parameters that worked for her.”
In addition to the book, Carrie has launched a new fitness app, fit52, which is now available for download on iOS. Created in partnership with Creative Labs and leading entertainment and sports agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA), the fit52 app is part of a holistic wellness platform. By collaborating with her longtime personal trainer, Eve Overland, users of fit52 can expect a wide variety of workout routines that can be done in as little as 30 minutes.
Carrie’s book Find Your Path: Honor Your Body, Fuel You Soul and Get Strong is available at Amazon.com. Click to order a copy.
