Celebrity-Style Workouts at Healthy Guru NYC

My friend Nellie told me about a really cool event in NYC called Healthy Guru. And wouldn’t you know it, I was able to score a Press pass to attend! The event featured celebrity trainers and fun samples. It’s the kind of thing I would have paid to attend, but I’ll take a free pass. All opinions are still my own.

Press – that’s me!

Healthy Guru took place at the Metropolitan Pavilion. I loved the white floors, walls, and ceilings for the photography background.

The Brands and Samples

So, sort of a funny story…

When I was prepping my backpack before the event, I thought to myself, “I bet there won’t be coconut water, so let me bring a small bottle of my fave, Harmless Harvest Coconut Water. No way they’ll be there.” Fast forward to the event, and I walked by their booth, coconut water carefully tucked into my backpack water bottle holder. I told them my little story, and they gave me an extra bottle of coconut water. By the end of the day, I had received about three or four more! I’m not going to turn down coconut water. No way!

Why do I like Harmless Coconut Water so much?

Have you ever read the ingredient list on the coconut water you’re drinking? Many sneak in extra sugar, among other unnecessary ingredients. Harmless Coconut Water has one ingredient: organic coconut water.

If you’ve sampled many coconut waters, you may also know the taste can vary. I really like the flavor of this one.

There were a couple other naturally hydrating drink brands at Healthy Guru, including Sap on Tap Maple Water. I learned on their web site that one bottle contains only 36 calories and two times the manganese as a cup of kale. Similar to Harmless Harvest, the Original flavor contains one ingredient: organic maple water.

As for the taste, it was a bit like watered down maple syrup (in a good way). If I remember correctly, maple syrup is made from maple water / sap. Maple syrup is the end product, after the maple water/sap is cooked down.

I wish I’d gotten a sample of this guy, but I’ll look for it in stores.

You can read more about maple water in this article by NPR.

I’m not a big jerky eater, but I was curious about the options by Chef’s Cut. I got one sample to try, but I haven’t opened it yet. I’ll keep you posted.

And I learned about another plant-based health drink – Verday chlorophyll water. One of these green bottles contains the amount of chlorophyll in 2 shots of wheatgrass, 4 cups of spinach, or 12 cups of arugula. According to the Verday site, chlorophyll is cleansing and can help promote healthy skin, among other health benefits.

I sampled the watermelon and cucumber flavors, and the cucumber was my favorite. It didn’t really taste sweet at all to me. It had a simple, refreshing taste. My only complaint is the inclusion of natural flavors in the ingredients.

And I caught the Bai team on their way out, so they gave me a bunch of bottles of their classic antioxidant drinks and some samples of their new antiwater. The antiwater is water infused with anti-oxidants.

I frequently purchase the non-bubbles, fruit-flavored Bai drinks, so I was happy to get a couple more bottles for later. Thanks, Bai!

Fashion Show

There was a fashion show presented by West 56 Clothing. I thought the blue mesh leggings were super cute.

Speaker Panel

The speaker panel was led by Jade Scipioni of Fox News. From left to right: Justin Gelband (JustinGelband.com, trainer to top models, including Victoria’s Secret models and Sports Illustrated models), Glen Tobias (NY Jets Nutritionist, glentobiasrd.com), Gary Goldenberg M.D. (GoldenbergDermatology.com) and Lionel Bissoon.

The speaker panel had some good discussions about overall health. I was most interested in the parts that veered into food topics.

Favorite lines from Justin Gelband

I loved how Justin Gelband discussed that there are too many trends and suggestions saying to take certain vitamins or supplements. But he pointed out that everyone is different, and you need to determine what food/exercise/etc. is best for you.

He also said to change your fitness all the time – anything to get your body to change and feel things differently. This is exactly what I’ve been trying to do with ClassPass, so it was good to hear my strategy validated by a pro.

A couple of my favorite lines from Glen Tobias

“Worst thing you can do is not eat”. Yup!

He had good analogies, like that hunger is a monster you lock in your desk drawer that eventually gets out.

He also was able to articulate what I’ve been thinking about GMOs but haven’t been able to get out into a post: that he doesn’t think they’re bad but he also doesn’t think they’re good. There’s not enough scientific info yet. Though Lionel Bissoon did chime in that GMOs are banned in most countries. Given the choice, I opt for non-GMO. What about you?

Fast food isn’t cooked, it’s created. You like that food, and they know it.

Carbs didn’t do anything wrong. Take carb, protein, and fat at every meal. Eat often to curb hunger. As a carb lover, it was great to hear from a nutritionist that carbs aren’t as evil as the media wants you to think.

Avoid the hooks (lose 30 pounds in 30 days!). Do things over time. It’s not sexy, but it works. For me, the hooks have been tempting, but I feel like the approach I’ve taken (clean eating) over the last few years has really been working for me. I’ve been able to maintain my weight loss while still enjoying delicious food and occasional treats. I guess you could call clean eating a hook, but I like to think of it as more of a style of eating than a strict diet. I have food I avoid, but no “you can’t eat that” foods. Got the latter idea from Elie Krieger when I did Small Changes, Big Results.

Performance Time

We got to enjoy a performance by Skylar Katz from America’s Got Talent. She was so fun and really engaged the crowd!

Celebrity-Style Workouts

There were several workouts happening throughout the Healthy Guru event. I was able to do 3 and 1/3 of them.

Erika Bloom Pilates

I jumped right into the first workout – pilates with Erika Bloom.

Even though the session was only 30 minutes, it kicked my butt. I’ve never actually done a full pilates class before. I’ve done pilates-inspired workouts, but those featured much bigger movements. I loved Erika’s attention to detail and personalized adjustments throughout the session. She noticed the smallest differences in body alignment and position. I really felt like I was doing the workouts the right way, which was great because form is really important to me. And I guess this is a pilates thing, but it was really interesting to me how most of the moves were so small and yet so intense. I think I worked out muscles I may never have before.

Tone House NYC

As soon as pilates was wrapping up, the Tone House NYC crew came roaring in and managed to convince me to join their workout too. Little did I know that Tone House is considered by many as the toughest workout in NYC. I probably could have told you that after doing their “warm up”.

The concept of Tone House is that you do an athlete’s workout. You’ll train like a rugby or soccer player. And yes, it’s intense. But the Tone House team was really encouraging. Seriously, their energy really got the whole class pumped up and made me feel like I could push through the workout successfully. They really made you excited to be doing these super kick-butt workout moves.

I don’t normally like these workout-workouts, but there was something special about this one. I may just try to work up the courage to do one full hour.

{Me and Tone House crew}

I was pretty tired already at this point, so I sat out on the next couple workouts to save energy for yoga. The Bikram session was the one I wanted to do most.

Belleon Body

The Belleon Body team did their workout just before the yoga session, so I was in the area when they started getting prepped for class. They convinced me to try their session. I asked if Belleon was high intensity, and they said yes.

Belleon has a really cool concept – a super intense workout packed into only 30 minutes. Unlike the other sessions, their whole class is only 30 minutes. This is pretty appealing for city life in NYC.

I decided to try the first of three rounds. And it really was intense almost straight-away. The team took turns leading different portions of the workout, and they were really supportive and encouraging, moving throughout the class and connecting with each student.

And they debuted their new workout style called “Primal”. It reminded me a bit of the intense-toning moves I sometimes do in yoga. Except instead of throwing these in here and there, the round was made up completely of these challenging moves. I hated to miss trying it myself, but I knew my body needed a bit more rest before yoga.

{Me and the Belleon team, including celebrity trainer Carlos Leon, co-founder of Belleon Body}

Yoga with Tricia Donegan

And for the last workout of the event, I ended on a high note with an intimate yoga class with Tricia Donegan (Lady Gaga’s yoga instructor) of Bikram Yoga Lower East Side.

We started with an almost dance-like warm up to what sounded like Janis Joplin before moving into some pretty technical poses.

Tricia gave each of us highly-detailed corrections. I remember on one of the moves, she pointed out about five things for me to adjust, from my feet to my head, including loosening my jaw. How did she see all of that so quickly? She was amazing!

Tricia has a fun, free-spirited personality that pulls you right in and greets you with a warm hug. She also spent some time talking to us in the very end portion of class and told us to think about our why. Why yoga? She has a very spiritual side to her practice that I really loved. The class had me leaving the event in such good spirits. Thank you, Tricia!

Swag

Unfortunately, I didn’t get my swag bag, but here’s a quick photo of the swag I took home. Guess I won’t be thirsty for awhile.

Such a fun event! I learned about some great new workouts in NYC, tried some fun new plant-based drinks, and had a great time overall. And can I just say whatever I did at Healthy Guru had my abs hurting a week later. Phew!

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