Is there anything new on your healthy-eating list these days?
"I’ve really been obsessed with bone broth. I was in New York a couple of months ago, and this gentleman who was doing my hair had this gorgeous skin, and he’s like, "I gotta tell you, I’m really obsessed with bone broth," and I’m like, "Shut up." I just drank some before I came here, with turmeric, ginger, and carrots in it—it’s like a beverage you’re drinking with your meal."
What is your relationship with your body today, compared with when you were younger?
"I feel better. It’s crazy—back in the day, I would crush Chicken McNuggets and french fries, and that would be my meal. But I handled weight a little differently then: I didn’t have the muscle tone. Now I’m addicted to working out; it just makes me feel better. And my man can always tell when I’ve done a workout, because I’m like, "Good mooorning!" I try to say to people who hate working out, "It sucks going. I’m always in a crappy mood when I go. But when I walk out, I’m like Céline Dion: My heart will go on!""
What’s always in your daily health routine?
"Sunscreen. I grew up in Florida, and I absolutely fried my skin—I was the chick who was lying out on the driveway. Now I know I’m pale, but I don’t wanna look like I’m 75 years old next year! So I always make sure that I’m putting on SPF 45 every day. And by the way, melanoma is a big deal in my family—my grandfather died from it."
And cancer prevention has been a priority for you since your cervical cancer diagnosis. Did you make any lifestyle changes as a result?
"If anything, it’s made me hypersensitive to other things to get checked for. And I remember one of the oncologists said to me when I was going back to work, "It’s really important for you to get some sleep and not stress out.” And I’m like, "Uhh...I’m in Green Bay on Sunday and on the ballroom floor Monday—stress and not sleeping is kind of the way of life." But I’m really trying to be better about taking deep breaths. I’m trying meditation."
You were diagnosed not long after you wrapped up your trial. What is up with life’s timing?
"My dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2009, when [the stalker videos] first came out—and then I got diagnosed right after my trial, so there’s a little part of me that does agree that stress does a lot to your body. I’m not saying it wasn’t in my body before, but that does kind of weigh on me. There’s no research saying stress brings this on, but come on, you’ve heard enough about how much your body reacts. [And there I was] trying to act like nothing was wrong with me at work."
Did anything else beneficial come from that experience?
"If anything, it was a huge step for my relationship with my boyfriend at the time. Because you don’t know if a guy is going to want to sit in with an oncologist and see, "OK, so this is your cervix, and this is your uterus, and we are cutting out this part…" We hadn’t even been discussing marriage. We hadn’t discussed babies! It really puts things on the fast track for you—because you have an oncologist saying to you, "We highly recommend that you guys do your embryos right now, freeze them." I’m like, "Hi, hon. I love you. I hope we’re spending our lives together." And he was amazing."
So what did you do? Did you end up freezing your embryos?
"I had actually frozen my eggs before all this a couple of years back, just because it was all the rage. But it definitely took a serious turn for us. I’m not young, we don’t know when we’re gonna have a baby, we don’t know if this is going to come back. One thing I love my future husband for is that our oncologist said the smart thing to do would be to have some insurance waiting—so we have frozen embryos because we’ve taken the steps. If we need ’em, we need ’em; and if we don’t, we don’t. We just wanna be smart. But it’s crazy, because these waiting rooms are packed!"
Read the full interview at Health Magazine.
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