I Can Make You Hot!

To my beautiful girls, who inspire me to be the best
woman and most energetic mom I can be. I don’t
want to miss out on anything. I love you.

Contents

Foreword

Introduction: What’s HOT and What’s Not

Monday: Make a List—Plan and Prepare!

Tuesday: A Little
Ohm
and a Little Oh Yeah!—It’s All about Balance

Wednesday: Diet = “DIE with a T”

Thursday: Tricks of My Trade

Friday: Hot Couture

Saturday: Heat Up Your
HOT
Image with Healthy Options Today

Sunday: Funday

Hot Recipes for a Hotter You

Acknowledgments

Index

Foreword

I’ve known Kelly a long time. My kids and I call her “KellyBensimon,” one happy word all run together. Whenever she comes over with her kids in the Hamptons, everyone runs around saying “KellyBensimon is here!” Yes, her name is one word in our house. Even my brother, RevRun and his wife, Justine, love KellyBensimon. Every time I see her with her kids, she reminds me what deep personal satisfaction is. Kelly is a great mother and is constantly instilling strong principals in her daughters. In my opinion, that’s the essence of being HOT. Kelly is
smokin’
.

I met her when she was nineteen years old with director Brett Ratner. No one forgets meeting Kelly for the first time. Her genuine energy is something most people wish to have. Her beauty truly comes from within, and her clear internal compass and well-balanced lifestyle is what makes her an arbiter for what’s hot. She has always had her own individual road map and is one of those people who beats to their own drum. Many are amazed by her leaps of faith and courage, which are products of her sustainable soul. And back to that energy! I used to think: If we could only package it. And now Kelly has!

Right after she was married in 1997, Kelly asked me to help her with a charity for Hale House, a center in Harlem that sheltered children of drug addicts who were born with HIV. Kelly had a clever idea and went for it, despite a lot of criticism. She asked celebs to autograph jeans, which she then sold as art to raise money. I had no idea before that moment that she was so creative in her drive for helping others. It was impressive to say the least.

To me, she’s always been the same clever, crazy KellyBensimon. She was a model, of course—she still looks like a model, acts like a model, walks like a model, and dresses like a model, but her style sense doesn’t come from her line of work. Instead, it’s an outward manifestation of knowing and staying true to herself, sans stylists and photographers. KellyBensimon dresses like KellyBensimon.

There’s no secret to Kelly’s body. She’s always been on the path to pursue constant well-being: 25 percent exercise, 25 percent eating well, and 100 percent loving life. Kelly always made it her life choice to be healthy, regardless of any circumstances. She learned good habits from modeling, but come on—those legs are genetic! No yoga pose on the planet is going to make legs look like that, even if you can tap her spirit and her energy by using the advice in this book. I know she is also very active and ran the New York City marathon, all over the Hamptons, and loves riding horses. She has more energy than any person her age I’ve ever met—she
is
twenty-four, isn’t she?

That’s a testament not only to what Kelly puts in her body but also to her spirit. You can’t be happy and healthy without paying attention to your spirit as well as your body. Kelly has always been very comfortable and happy with who she is, and no one will deny that.

That’s the one thing about Kelly that people want—part of her happiness. How do I get her real, inherent happiness? Happiness isn’t something you are handed, but it’s something you have to be aware of on a daily basis and work at constantly. Gold, shiny objects do not act as incentives in the pursuit of happiness. Kelly knows that her happiness is justified by the life she wants for herself and her kids, and is reflected by that genuine smile you can’t wipe off her face. When you see it firsthand, you just know it comes from an inherently grounded place. You can’t take her happiness, but she’ll give you the shirt off her back—just don’t expect her to be on time for the exchange.

She can’t transform anyone into a rock star, but she can show you how to rock—what you do with it is
your
choice. That’s KellyBensimon. Her journey is just starting. If the past is a prologue, we are in for a good ride.

—R
USSELL
S
IMMONS
, 2012

Introduction: What’s HOT and What’s Not

How do you get HOT? Hot to me is not predicated on a diet but on the way you choose to live your life—by choosing Healthy Options Today, and tomorrow, and every day. My HOT philosophy is based on a high-energy way of eating and living. Its foundation is a back-to-basics style of eating all food groups with an emphasis on eating smart proteins and smart carbs that provide all the energy I need to be an active participant in life. Just as I want you to challenge your mind with smart information, I want you to challenge your body. I want you to see it all, do it all, and enjoy it all. I’m not a doctor or an expert of any kind. I’m just a mom who was a teenage competitive swimmer and a model, who has lost fifty pounds twice, has run the New York City Marathon, graced the covers of
Playboy
at forty-one and
Shape
at forty-three years old, and who has struggled with size issues for much of her adult life. Was I overweight as a child? No. Let’s just say that I was never one of those tiny, cute blonde girls who guys named their hamsters after, and I was aware of the difference between those girls and me.

My daily routine requires endurance and stamina. When I’m not working and raising my tween girls on my own, I’ve done everything—appear on a television show with a group of women who seem to fight all day, edit a fashion magazine, work on my various businesses, and write…. So I need to be well fed and on my game every day.

Chase a healthy lifestyle with a vengeance—the way you’d chase a hot guy (or girl).

In this book I’m going to clue you in on all the tricks I’ve learned from a variety of experts that I use myself. I want you to be the best you—happy, attractive, shapely, interested, interesting, and, most of all, feeling smokin’ HOT. Truthfully, you are already hot. You know it and I know it. But everyone has good days and bad days. My job with this book is to help you maximize the good days and ultimately make them a way of life.

When I was trying to come up with a title for this book, I kept asking myself how I would define what I love. “HOT” is the word that best describes what I love, and it’s not a word I throw around lightly. “HOT” is attractive, unique, and first-rate—never mediocre. Avril Lavigne made a video called “HOT.” There are “HOT” issues of all my favorite magazines.
Hotmail.com
was given that name to indicate that it was the best e-mail service, and
www.urbandictionary.com
, whose definitions are created by their readers, defines “hot” as (among other things)
attractive
,
the best
, and
someone who makes you wish you had a pause button when they walk by because you don’t want that moment to end
. (I want you to feel like that “someone.”) Health, wellness, and fitness are always hot topics. “HOT” may be a buzzword but it’s also how I describe the best there is and the best you can be. I’ve used the words “smokin’ hot” for everything from a killer chicken wing red sauce to a coveted couture gown.

The term started to take on meaning for me while I was writing
American Style
. In 1978 Hubert de Givenchy recognized our innovative talents by telling the American designers who came to Paris with jeans, camp-style shirts, and a fresh new take on fashion that Americans were “cool.” HOT is cool! And after researching all the people with different body shapes who have worn the bikini since the ’50s for
The Bikini Book
, I finally started to define what was smokin’ HOT to me. I love the pioneer, the person who’s proud, has a lot of integrity, who works hard and loves harder. The one who makes the most fabulous handbag or who has vital information to share—these are the people I find HOT.

So how do you get HOT? By eating well, sleeping well, and exercising daily. By following this lifestyle, you will be an active participant in your own life and ultimately make good decisions. I didn’t always make good decisions for myself. You’re not going to believe me, but I’ve considered myself fat. And I could have stayed fat. Instead I decided to make different decisions every single day, because for me there really isn’t any alternative.

Is skinny hot? Naturally skinny is hot. Starving yourself in order to change your natural body type in order to get skinny is
not
hot. I’m not advocating that everyone weigh 104 pounds. If you are starving or missing meals, you are focusing on food, not on life. But, at the other end of the spectrum, being overweight or obese is certainly not hot; it’s just plain unhealthy. According to the most recent statistics more than 30 percent of Americans are obese. In France it’s 9.4 percent; in Italy it’s 8.5. There’s no reason for that. Americans have all the same food choices available to us; we just need to make the right ones so that we can be as healthy as possible for our own body types.

For me, the ultimate HOT girl is the nineteenth-century Gibson girl. As created by Charles Dana Gibson, she was the original pinup, a shapely personification of the new all-American girl. She swam in the ocean wearing culottes and loved every minute of it. She was (is!) cool, curvy, and the guys want to be around her because she’s happy, healthy, athletic, and having a lot of fun. She’s free to go anywhere and do anything she wants without worrying about having every hair in place or ruining her clothes. An example of a modern Gibson girl is Bethany Hamilton, the young surfer who lost an arm in a shark attack and didn’t let it stop her from pursuing a sport she loves. She’s smokin’ HOT.

So, how did I arrive at this definition? It’s actually taken a long time, with ups and downs (emotionally and physically) along the way. I was always a very active child, and even more so when I became a competitive swimmer in my early teens. I was always tall, but I was also athletic, and being tall was never a problem for me. In fact, the boys I grew up with were mostly athletic—that’s just how we grow them in the Midwest.

At fifteen, I entered a national model search contest in
Seventeen
magazine. People had been telling me that I should model, so when I found the contest I decided I might as well enter and see if they were right. I didn’t win, but I was one of the runners-up. I then entered another contest sponsored by
Teen
magazine, and this time I was runner-up to one of those teeny blonde girls. The next contest I entered was sponsored by Elite Model Management. By that time I was sixteen and was again runner-up—this time to Cindy Crawford. The agency invited us both to come to New York, where they measured, weighed, and put us through a routine that was like taking a physical to join the army. In the end, what the people at the agency who hired me found beautiful about me—my smile, my inner happiness, and healthful attitude—they subsequently tried to take away by telling me, all day every day, that I had to lose ten pounds. I was 5 foot 10 and weighed a healthy, muscular 140 pounds. They wanted me to be a skinny 130. Those ten pounds became my nemesis. For the first time in my life I hated the way I looked. I suddenly felt “big” and ungainly.