Lucy Hale, best known as Aria Montgomery from Pretty Little Liars and now also a singer, has shared her fitness secrets. Hale revealed in August 2012 that she had suffered from an eating disorder when she was younger.
Now she is in full health and seeing her career take off. She is a short lady, standing at only 5 foot 2 inches.
Running
Lucy gets most of her exercise by running. She enjoys long distance runs of up to 10 miles each to help burn excess calories and maintain a fit body. However, she does admit that her knees hurt afterwards, so maybe running is not the best exercise for Hale.
Toning exercises
To tone her body she performs a series of bodyweight exercises.
One of her favorite is the boat pose (pictured), which is a yoga asana which works the core and abdominal muscles.
The longer you can hold the position the more you work your body. Lucy says that she can hold the boat pose for two minutes.
She also performs wall sits, another static exercise. Simple “sit” with your back against a wall and thighs parallel to the floor – but with no chair.
Another yoga exercise she enjoys is the chaturanga pose. This is a static push up. Simply perform a push up and then hold in the lower position.
She also performs hip bridges (exercise no. 4 in our 20 minute home workout). These work the core too as well as the legs and butt.
One of her favorite moving exercises is the dance move taught to her by Desiree Nathanson which involves a partial squat down while leaning forward, and then rising and twisting to one side, and then reversing the movement.
Lucy’s diet
It is hard for Lucy to talk openly about her diet because she suffered from an eating disorder. She used to starve herself, often going several days without eating anything.
She opened up in an interview with Cosmopolitan, telling them that, “I’ve never really talked about this, but I would go days without eating. Or maybe I’d have some fruit and then go to the gym for three hours. I knew I had a problem…It was a gradual process but I changed myself”.
Today Lucy eats sensibly, and even indulges in some of her favorite treats too. She enjoys eating peanut butter, hummus and frozen yogurt, and loves coffee too. She sometimes drinks soda (she even Tweeted a photo of herself drinking Dr Pepper once).
Overall, Lucy’s key to fitness today is regular workouts, running and a sensible diet that does include treats.