Reading that title I sincerely hope that you didn’t think you could cut out a giant chunk of your cardio workout and magically become ripped. Even though 38-year-old Belinda Norton-Smith trimmed her cardio workouts down by 1/3rd that doesn’t mean she didn’t fill that time with something else – weights.
A full-time PE teacher, Belinda has a degree in Health and Physical education, however after having her two children she felt like she had “lost her way” and that her body was not representative of the kind of lifestyle she wanted to live:
‘I started to look more into what was going to benefit me as a mum and after a great deal of research realised that as a woman, overdoing cardio training wasn’t going to create a great body shape for me,’ Ms Norton-Smith, a full-time PE teacher, told Daily Mail Australia.
How much cardio was Belinda doing? Two hours a day…at least. Imagine taking two hours out of your day to run on a treadmill, staring straight ahead and nothing else. Some people love cardio, some people hate it, but neither groups can deny that the exercise gets rather redundant fairly quickly.
Realizing that she needed to make a change in order to achieve her goals, Belinda began to research and found that “it was all about light cardio training, repetitive weight training in targeted areas and speed training…as well as a balanced diet.” She now does 1.5 hours of cardio a day instead of two, however her diet was the thing that changed the most:
‘I am dairy-free due to my health choices…I am asthmatic and I’ve noticed that since I cut it out I am not nasally, I have no eczema or skin problems and my skin is vibrant,’ Ms Norton-Smith said, who hasn’t been sick in two and a half years.
‘I also eat six decent sized meals a day – as do my kids – and each of them should be the size of your two fists clenched together.’
Ms Norton-Smith also eats no sugar or red meat.
‘As a society people tell us we need it but I haven’t had it in at least three years and I have never felt better,’ she said.
‘I eat fish and chicken and replace it with more legumes.’(via)
Belinda now believes that her current state of fitness has left her with “the best body I’ve ever had and I’m nearly 40,” and we can’t lie – she DOES look astonishingly fit:
[H/T Daily Mail]