Being Kendra (10 page)

I want all of us to live long, healthy lives and have the best life possible. I want to feel great and look great just by eating great. It’s an added bonus. I believe eating healthy is just like wearing your seat belt—you are gambling with your life if you don’t do it. I don’t want to limit our lives because of food. Life is life, food is just there. I want to get the most out of life, not food.

When baby Hank was eight to nine months old, he couldn’t chew but was able to eat solid foods, so I would make him homemade baby food. Any meal we ate (meat, chicken, spaghetti, turkey dinner, fresh veggies), we would add a jar of Gerber baby green beans to help liquefy the food, pour into the blender, and blend till it becomes baby food. That’s it! Baby meals done easy!

O
bviously, eating healthy and staying fit has been important to me for a long time. I’ve struggled with it, and when faced with temptations, it really becomes a test of willpower. Maybe it’s so important to me because I remember what it was like to live as unhealthy a life as possible—drugs and alcohol replaced fruits and vegetables for a while, and I was too close to wasting away. So that’s why abandoning healthy eating when I was pregnant set me up for disaster! All those Dunkaroos and Ho Hos screwed with my biology and I got on a cycle of craving more and more. My brain was totally overpowered.

Getting my healthy practices back was a struggle, but I know it’s good for my son to see, and—duh!—it keeps me looking good. I recognize that looking good is half the battle toward success in Hollywood. And maybe even life! The other half? Mental. When I’m looking good, feeling good, eating good, and working out—I’m HAPPYYY! Happy and healthy: two things I strive to always be, despite the many obstacles I’ve faced that try to keep me down.

Health isn’t just about working out at the gym. Health is head to toe, breakfast to dinner, Monday through Sunday. So I try to be more in charge than ever. And I mean taking charge of the
whole
family. Not just the kids. Hank Jr. is my number one priority, but I always make sure my husband is taken care of too. I’ve got to do everything I can to make sure my man stays on the right path. From sex and drugs, to gambling, to diet and God knows whatever else men can get themselves into these days, I’ve got my eye on it all.

Right now my biggest pet peeve is texting and driving! It’s like having unprotected sex with a stranger or drinking and driving. It’s that dangerous and I won’t have it! That’s the one thing I’ve made Hank promise to me (other than the usual marriage vows like no cheating): no texting and driving. He’d be talking to me, driving, and checking sports scores on his phone all at the same time. It’s not something to take lightly. The first time I saw Hank doing it I screamed at him. I’m not going to put little Hank in a dangerous situation like that. The text can wait. How dare you put our child at risk? He’d be driving sixty miles an hour and thinking he can take his eyes off the road for a split second to see who the latest text is from. But sometimes I’d catch him and one second would turn into two. If a car in front of him stops short and he’s going sixty miles per hour that split second is barely enough time to react, let alone if he’s not fully focused.

Hank saw how worked up I was getting about it and he began to understand. I’m so against it that any time I see anyone else texting and driving, I’ll yell at them too. I’ll roll down my window, I’ll honk, and I’ll scream out. I don’t care who’s watching me. We should
all
do this, because one day that person is going to be behind you and not looking. As moms, that’s our job!

Besides looking sexy, keeping things hot in bed, and making sure my man is satisfied, I’ve got a lot of other things that I need to do as a wife and a mom to make sure my family is running properly. I’ve also taken full control of the diet situation in our house. I do the shopping and most of the cooking, especially when it comes to what baby Hank eats. If Mom’s not doing her part from the grocery store to the dinner plate, then you end up with a household that’s unhealthy with poor eating habits. And if I hadn’t come into Hank’s life that’s exactly what would have happened.

Poor baby Hank would be eating chili cheese dogs for breakfast if Hank had his way. But luckily for the both of them, I stepped in and transformed Hank from a meat- and fried-foods-eating giant into a healthy, smart eater of all food groups. It
can
be done!

Hank is from New Mexico and he grew up eating unhealthily. A healthy choice to him would be a hamburger instead of a cheeseburger, although I’ve never even actually seen him make that choice. He’s not part of the Hollywood fraternity that obsesses over health. I don’t know if he even knew what vegan was before he moved here. He’s an athlete, so he knows the difference between a protein and a carbohydrate, but that’s about it. He was pretty big when I first met him, on the heavier side of 220 pounds. A really bulky, unhealthy, big-time eater.

His family loves to eat. They are naturally bigger people. Hank’s brother, his mom, and his dad all love their ribs, steaks, sausages, bacon, hot dogs, and French fries, and they just pour tons of sauces and gravy all over ribs, hamburgers, mashed potatoes. Basically they love anything with a sauce or cheese on it. And Hank was no different. During the first few months we were together, I watched him as he ate one hot dog, two hot dogs, then he was about to eat a third one, and I was like, “Are you serious? That’s not good.” I didn’t want to be around someone who eats like this, and while I consider Hank the perfect guy, if I could point out one flaw from back then it was his eating habits. It’s not healthy and it’s not attractive to me when someone gorges on things that just clog your arteries and fill your body with excess fat. Anyone who eats just to eat and gets so much satisfaction—and believe me, you should see how lost and in a daze Hank gets when he’s digging into a huge, dripping cheeseburger—is not doing the right thing for their body. It nauseated me to watch him eat, but I also felt like he treated food like an activity. He needed to learn about the pros and cons of food. It can be a beautiful thing, but it can also be a dangerous thing.

As he was eating that third hot dog, I took it out of his mouth, threw it down on the ground, and I screamed at him, “You don’t need that third hot dog! You don’t need it!” He got so mad at me, but as I was looking at him salivating at it, I swear he was going to pick it off the ground, scarf it, then go for numbers four and five. I firmly believe men would do that if we weren’t around to stop them. “What is the point of eating three hot dogs? You don’t need three hot dogs! You had two, two is a lot,” I said to him. I should have slapped that second one out of his hand too. If he didn’t know that three hot dogs were too many to eat in one sitting and that he ought to be eating fruit or some salad or veggies instead, then I was going to have to show him. I cared about him too much to turn a blind eye to his eating habits. It’s something that as a woman who loves her man very much I was going to have to take a stand on. I know no man wants his woman to tell him what to eat, but it was impossible for him to stop on his own; he needed me.

I had to break it down for him that he was headed for a physical collapse. Maybe not now, but a decade or two down the road, those hot dogs were going to build up inside him like a wall. So I said, “Look, babe, you’re getting to an age where your metabolism isn’t what it used to be. You used to be able to eat anything you wanted, but maybe you can’t and shouldn’t now.” Of course his typical guy reaction was, “Don’t you tell me what to eat!”

I may sound controlling, but I pick my battles. I’m not going to tell him what to wear, but I’ll be damned if I stand by and let him eat five heart attacks in a bun. So we had a big talk about health and diet and lifestyle. It wasn’t a debate; it was me clueing him in that right is right and wrong is wrong: Broccoli is healthy, chili dogs are not.

I wanted Hank to know the difference between apples and apple pie. I wanted him to have a healthier heart, a better diet, and more knowledge about what he was putting into his body. And it would help his performance on the field too! It was a beautiful thing. We hadn’t known each other that long but for us to both get on the same page about something so important—our health—was a major milestone in our relationship. From that hot dog on we changed our lives for the better and started going to the gym together every day. I said, “I care about you, babe. If we are going to get married, I need you to be around for as long as I’m around. I want you to be able to go on hikes and run around with our baby and I don’t want you having heart problems. You are my partner through life.” We knew then we were a team.

Now Hank and I pay a lot of attention to health news, following stories about disease, nutrition, and exercise. Some people are living so miserably because of food and how they eat. That is surrounding us so much, so we figured we should try to learn from it. I almost think of food as medicine. If I overdose I’m fat. If I don’t get enough I starve to death. My body will tell me what I need and if I have the knowledge, then I know I never really need Twinkies. I know broccoli is good for me because broccoli makes us poop!

Hank’s mom and dad still don’t eat like we do. So when they come to visit Hank wants to get cheese curls, potato chips, and all this junk food. We know we need to put food in the house that they like to eat; it’s the right thing to do. But when they go, that stuff is still in our house—they don’t take it with them—so the second they leave I dump it all out. The saying in our household is “What you don’t see doesn’t exist.” If it’s there we eat it, so we do everything we can not to have junk in our house.

The moment I slapped that hot dog out of his mouth was the moment we had major clarity about our future together. At this point we were in my town house that I lived in right after I moved out of the Playboy Mansion, and Hank had just come out there to live with me. We had been living together for a few months—everything was new to us. But I knew that if I was willing to really care about a man’s eating habits so much, and that man was willing to return the care by actually listening and following through with my suggestions, then we were in it to win it. We were in love and planning our future—a healthy one—together.

We threw away everything bad. We just went through the kitchen cabinets and drawers and the fridge and freezer and started chucking all the junk food—and it was a lot. We cleaned house. It was liberating. And it brought us together. You don’t realize until you start paying attention to all of the crap that you put into your body—chips, processed foods, high-sodium preserved meats, cookies, sodas—that this stuff is slowly killing you. It was the best feeling when my future husband and I went to the grocery store for the first time on our new diet. We were ready to take the first step toward the rest of our life.

The grocery store is an amazing place when you view it as a positive place that can change you—not just somewhere to load up on Ho Hos and Twinkies. And instead of grabbing a bunch of white bread and fried foods and sugars, we took the time to look around. The grocery store has every food you could ever dream of buying. Yes, these days so much of it is prepackaged and frozen, but all grocery stores have fruits, vegetables, and options. Options are the key. What are you going to buy, what are you going to make? It’s a lot easier to buy a microwaveable frozen meal with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, and apple cobbler. But if you actually take the time to look around the store, there are a million other options (in slightly less colorful and snazzy packages) to consider. We were young, childless, and had a lot more time on our hands, so I wanted to make the most of it. It was an epiphany, a brand-new life that took us over, and we bought veggies and fruits, all these bright, vibrant colors and tastes.

We spent hours exploring food and read the labels and the boxes—we were in team mode. We started thinking about percentage of daily intake and fat, sugars, and carbs. If one bag of chips had 10 percent of our daily intake of fat per serving, and another had 5 percent, the choice was simple now. And that’s what we looked for. We felt so good about ourselves. We even explored spices, and that’s when we found our secret ingredient—garlic. We put it on everything from chicken to meat to fish to vegetables. Garlic is a magic potion and makes everything taste so much better. It was the key to our diet. We threw out the butter and salt and replaced it with simple old garlic.

G
ARLIC
C
HICKEN
R
ECIPE

1 package of skinless, boneless chicken breasts, sliced thin

Herbs to taste, fresh preferred (but let’s be realistic, dried are okay too)

1 clove garlic to taste (we use a lot!)

Olive oil

Marinate the chicken in a mixture of herbs and garlic for at least two hours. Add 1–2 tablespoons of olive oil to a nonstick pan and cook chicken on medium-low heat for five minutes on each side. Sprinkle chopped garlic on each side of the chicken breasts. Continue cooking till it’s done.

Side
: Add broccolini, carrots, and cauliflower to a steamer and steam till soft, and make some quick-cooking brown rice in the microwave.

Every morning we woke up and had freshly made smoothies and low-cal oatmeal, and we actually ate more because we were working out and hiking. These were the last few moments of freedom before baby Hank came along, and we worked out and hiked every day. When we teamed up and got on our official diet plan—it was more of a life plan—the sex was awesome. Because of diet and exercise—it’s all linked together—our sex drives just skyrocketed. I just wish everyone would realize how much better sex is when your blood is flowing better. It’s like putting premium gasoline into your engine; you are just working at 100 percent capacity, your breathing is smoother, and everything works better—and of course I don’t find it a coincidence that this is when I got pregnant. We stopped using condoms because the sex was so good we just wanted to make it even better. I never was on birth control because it makes me sick. We were both already talking about a baby, but waaaay down the road. We knew not using a condom was a risk, but in the moment we just couldn’t help ourselves. We were also both looking better, so attracted to each other, and we were having sex everywhere, in the back of cars, in public, pretty much anywhere we could steal a private moment (or five). I liked being naked with Hank—we were hot! We were having so much more sex and it was great!—and then
bam:
pregnant! I like to think of Hank Jr. as a result of not just our love but also our health.

M
Y
U
LTIMATE
H
EALTH
F
IX
R
ECIPE
: F
RUIT AND
V
EGGIES
O
N THE
G
O