Podcast Episode 40: Kym Nonstop on How to Build Your Body at Home
Kym "Nonstop" Perfetto, star of Bodybuilding.com's new program Home Body, talks about her past in reality TV and her present as a fitness star and bike racer. General silliness, off-color humor, and kale-massage jokes abound.
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Episode 40: Kym Nonstop on How to Build Your Body at Home. Kym "Nonstop" Perfetto, star of Bodybuilding.com's new program Home Body, talks about her past in reality TV and her present as a fitness star and bike racer. General silliness, off-color humor, and kale-massage jokes abound.
Publish Date: Monday, April 2, 2018
Behind The Scenes Videos:
Ep. isode 40 Highlights & Transcript ▼
Highlights:
- How living a fit, athletic life prepared her for the rigors of The Amazing Race.
- The lessons she still carries from her time in Reality TV
- How being a (temporary) fitness model compares to bike racing or globe-racing. Spoiler: It's just as hard, but in a different way.
- How she takes her training experiences and blends them together to fit her style
- On making home-based fitness and working from home function: "It's always about scheduling, and sticking to your schedule, the same way you would when someone else is expecting you. You have to be expecting yourself and show up for yourself."
- On the limits of sport-specific training: "When things start to fall apart and you have any kind of back pain or neck pain or shoulder pain or you tear something, that's when you realize you've really been neglecting everything else. Your body will always tell you."
- Her experiences with 8-week and 12-week programs, and what made the difference
- Her love affair with bands
- "I wasn't clean-cut enough for the fitness model side of things, and then I wasn't rough around the edges enough for [bike racers], but I just found my own little niche and I feel like that corner of the fitness world has definitely grown since then."
Transcript:
Nick Collias: 'kay. We're vaguely ... vaguely on here. Welcome to The Bodybuilding.com Podcast, everyone. I'm Nick Collias an editor at Bodybuilding.com, this is Heather Eastman over here. And to the left we have Kim Perfetto A.A.A. ... A.K.A. Let's put a K in there.
Heather Eastman: A.A.A.
Nick: A.A., how 'bout ... Does A.A. work?
Heather: Trying to tell me something?
Nick: A!
Heather: I only took pre-workout one day.
Nick: Triple A. This podcast, brought to you by Triple A. Our friends at Triple A. In the Bodybuilding.com home-
Heather: Apartment.
Nick: Home away from home, Kym Nonstop is our guest here.
Kym Nonstop: That's correct.
Nick: She is a trainer, bike racer, YouTuber, once a contestant on "The Amazing Race."
Kym Nonstop: True that. Should've won.
Nick: Well, I saw that. Yeah. You got jettisoned in what part of the world was that?
Kym Nonstop: I mean, we got ... Yeah, we lost in Singapore to Bethany Hamilton and her husband, who are pro surfers, and the challenge was surfing.
Nick: Oh, what a bunch of bullshit.
Kym Nonstop: So, come on. I mean, to be fair though, they were cycling earlier on in the series, so.
Nick: I saw you cycling through Marrakesh with a goat carcass, a goat hide.
Heather: You always see the craziest stuff on that show.
Kym Nonstop: Goat carcass.
Heather: Goat carcass.
Kym Nonstop: Yeah.
Nick: But right now, more to the point, she's living that easy fitness model life in Boise, Idaho, rocking the spray tan and she's the star of a new program on Bodybuilding.com BodyFit Elite called "Home Body". So yeah, anyway, welcome to the podcast.
Kym Nonstop: Thanks.
Nick: And I did want to ask you about the reality race just a little bit because when I started watching it, it reminded me of an article that I ran about one of our contributors a while ago, who was the strength coach. He was like a SWAT team cop and he did this thing called "Was I prepared for a reality TV show race?" Because he was on a reality TV show-
Kym Nonstop: Okay.
Nick: And the conclusion was no, he wasn't and he asked himself like "What would I have done differently?" He said "I would've just been riding a lot of horses and carrying heavy shit around the park" and that was his one regret, but it made me wonder, like ... You're obviously a very fit person. This is pretty fundamental to who you are. How prepared were you for that? What did you do to prepare for that massive adventure and how did it work out?
Kym Nonstop: My teammate and I were so prepared, actually. We were ready to win it and we were just like spot on. What we did was we'd watch ... Every night, we would watch back episodes of the show so we'd have some idea and then we'd just train different things. We'd go rock climbing. I was probably in the best shape of my life at that point in time because I was cross training everything. It was like cardio, strength. We had to make sure we could pull ourselves up because we didn't know if we'd be repelling or climbing in or out of a boat or all kinds of stuff, which we ended up actually having to do and then just packing and unpacking our packs really fast and having them super light and just having everything down to a science and, really, the pitfall for us was decision making, really, and we had a plan.
So, we're like when we get to this crossroads, we're going to make a decision like this, and so we had everything down and then the reason we lost is because we went against our plan and I think I just got a little ahead of myself. We had been winning and coming in top three so much that I think my ego is what got us kicked off. So, that's always a good lesson to learn at some point in your life. It just sucks that it cost us a million dollars, but what can you do?
Nick: Yeah, but what do you take away from that, though? Like okay, yeah, you were the fittest you'd ever been in your life at that point, totally capable of beating any sort of challenge. What survives in what you do now from that experience?
Kym Nonstop: I mean, the takeaway from that is you can get fit anytime, anywhere, and that's part of what Home Body is about, too. But literally, we were taking 40-pound bags of kitty litter and throwing them on and running relays together and teamwork is really important, too, because it's a team race and just having that confidence in yourself and feeling like ... I think in order to keep nerves at bay in a competition, it's like ... Just knowing that you've done everything you can to prepare and that's what that was about.
Nick: Sure, and you're definitely no stranger to competition.
Kym Nonstop: No.
Nick: I saw you've done-
Kym Nonstop: Everything's a competition.
Nick: You won a big courier bike race about ten years ago and you still race?
Kym Nonstop: Yeah, I've been racing ever since. The North American Cycle Courier Championships and then launched into racing track and then racing road and racing the Red Hook Crits, which is a fixed-gear, brakeless, track bike criterium. World Series, happens all over the world.
Nick: I don't want to be in the audience, though. That sounds like one where somebody can get taken out at the knees.
Kym Nonstop: Yeah, it's kinda wild. Bikes go flying on a regular basis. It's definitely the badass version of bike racing right now. It's the hot one.
Heather: It's like the roller derby of bike racing.
Kym Nonstop: Yes, exactly.
Heather: Yeah, okay.
Nick: I don't know. I just have a negative association with fixed gears because I've been on them exactly twice and I crashed within two blocks, over the handlebars, exactly twice, you know?
Kym Nonstop: Okay, forgot to keep peddling.
Nick: But that's ... No. It kept peddling, of course, and I'm trying to figure out what to do and then the peddles just launch my ass over the handlebars directly into the middle of the intersection, but whatever. That's a me problem.
Kym Nonstop: I would say. Then, when the bike suddenly stops and you don't, that's how I broke my jaw.
Heather: Oh, man.
Nick: You've probably broken everything at this point, right?
Kym Nonstop: Actually.
Nick: Uh oh.
Kym Nonstop: Knock on some fake wood. I have not broken a single bone.
Nick: Not even your collar bone?
Kym Nonstop: No. I know.
Kym Nonstop: You're cursing me, Heather. Thank you. I'm about to start my season and thanks a lot.
Nick: Uh, huh.
Kym Nonstop: No, I mean, I've had injuries but I've torn MCL and I've torn my labrum in my shoulder. So, I've torn things but I haven't broken anything and I am believing that my bones are made of solid rock and they can't break.
Nick: Glutamine and adamantinum.
Kym Nonstop: Yeah.
Heather: Yep. There we go. That's a nice reference.
Nick: So, you're not going to be able ... I mean, you're here filming a bunch of follow along workouts. You're probably not gonna be able to get in the hills and go mountain biking here, right?
Kym Nonstop: I wish.
Nick: Okay, because they're pretty great and there are collar bones just littered along the trail.
Kym Nonstop: That's disgusting.
Heather: No, it's not that terrible.
Nick: But anyway, you're here shooting videos all week. They're all follow along workouts in Home Body. How different is this experience than anything compared to training for a bike race? Training for a global race? What's the fitness model life feel like?
Kym Nonstop: It's pretty hard. I wish it wasn't called fitness model, cause it should be called something more hardcore. It's hard. It is hard. I'm not complaining. Maybe I am complaining. I mean, I do my YouTube channel videos and that's kind of on my own schedule, so I'll shoot three or four in a day, but then I won't get up and do it again the very next day. So here we are shooting five to seven workouts in a day and getting up and doing it again the next day and the next day and I'm mentally broken today. I'm feeling it.
Heather: Yeah, today was a fun morning.
Kym Nonstop: It was hard. So, yeah. It-
Nick: What were you filming this morning?
Kym Nonstop: Yoga, but like ...
Nick: Fluckin' yoga.
Kym Nonstop: That's why I said mentally broken, because it just gets to that point where you're physically tired and then you mess up and then you ... I get hard on myself and then it's hard to bounce back from that, so just keeping the energy up and keeping all of that up. It's tested me for sure.
Nick: Having not experienced, but just watched the tiniest little bit, it's a different sort of challenge.
Heather: Yeah, and that's what's been so cool about watching you, because I've gotten to be here on set with her and watching your energy and we had a moment when we first met when I said something about at-home workouts and you're like uh-uh. "There's at-home workouts and there's what I do" is basically kind of the gist of it. And then watching you, what you do is intense. It's not like your little "I'm just gonna do a few crunches and call it good." I mean, you're jumping up and down. You're all over the floor. You're doing these crazy ninja moves. So, do you feel like ... I guess my question is how did that kind of evolve into KymNonStop, your YouTube channel? Where did that come from? That whole "I'm gonna work out at home, but I'm not gonna do normal boring stuff. I’m gonna do my stuff."
Kym Nonstop: Well, I've always had a passion for training and not always had the money for a gym membership, so that's kind of where I started with home workouts and even in college, just like, dorm room working out and I think fitness should be accessible to everybody. It should always be something that anyone can do and unfortunately, we've gotten into this place of marketing really flashy, exclusive gyms and programs and it gives people yet another excuse, maybe, why they can't be fit and I have always wanted to be able to ... I'm just like fiercely independent to a fault. Like I just want to do it myself, but I love learning new things, so I always go, when I go to a CrossFit gym or I go to a boot camp or if I go to a gym class or do a new sport. Anytime we're doing a warmup or we're doing exercise, I take note. Like, can I do this at home? And that's where most of my warmup moves came from.
Kym Nonstop: Simply doing some CrossFit or taking some yoga classes or whatever or I even will go online to YouTube and watch other trainers and be like "What are they doing?" And it's not about stealing. It's just about taking all of that information and making it your own and definitely, there's certain moves I gravitate towards and that's what I say in my trainer. I tell people, you know, make small adjustments every time you're doing a move because you might find you like it better a certain way. You don't have to like doing the lunge twist the way I do it. You can stay a little bit higher off the ground or whatever. There's always fine tuning in movement so it suits your body better and that's kind of how I just got to the way I train myself and then I share that with everybody else.
Nick: So your home is sort of your laboratory for you to synthesize everything?
Kym Nonstop: Yeah. I think the world is my laboratory and then my home is where I nail it down to a formula.
Nick: Sure. No, I think you hit on something good there, though. It's easy for people to either think you're the sort of person who works out at home or it's just not the sort of thing that you do. Like it took me a long time to be able to click with training at home. I felt like I had to do it someplace else just mentally and then about a year ago, I just figured out it's actually easier to fit it in.
Heather: So much easier.
Nick: In the morning, in particular. You get up. You do it and then it's just ... It's done.
Kym Nonstop: Yeah.
Nick: And man, I love it now. I can't imagine not doing it that way.
Kym Nonstop: Exactly.
Nick: But it takes a long time to wrap your brain around that because we associate home with all of the other shit we need to do.
Kym Nonstop: Other things. Relaxing, checking emails, working, whatever. I mean, I work from home. I work out at home. I do a lot of things at home, other than my cycling training, which is always outdoors, but I was very inspired at one of my roommates many years ago. He's a killer filmmaker now. His film just won some awards in Sundance [inaudible 00:11:14, Kasam Basier] and he was just so dedicated to a schedule. He would wake up every morning, do some writing, and then every day at noon or whatever the time was, he'd stop everything, work out at home, go back, take a shower, phone calls, writing, go to meetings and I just watched that and I was like "You're basically working a structured nine to five and you never leave the house." Like, it's amazing.
Nick: Just alarms going off, like "Time for pushups!"
Kym Nonstop: Yeah and I was really impressed by his dedication and I was like "Well, I can do that." I know I make excuses that I can't do that, but I can do that. So I think when you see someone else, it's always great to have a model and have someone else. You know, it's always about scheduling and sticking to your schedule the same way you would stick to a schedule when someone else is expecting you. You have to be expecting yourself and show up for yourself.
Nick: So how do you do it then? Because, obviously, you don't just cycle, you do strength training, as well. How do you find time for it all and how do you split it up to make it work?
Kym Nonstop: I mean, it's my job now, so I have time because this is my life is show up and train and I have these certain amount of miles I have to put in every week on the bike and then after that, cross training, because I know I feel like crap if I don't. I mean, if my body starts talking to me, I know I haven't been doing enough, like core work and stretching and rolling and all of that stuff. I mean, your body will let you know, whether it be your showing a little extra around the midsection or your back's hurting or whatever it is, your body's gonna tell you if you're not giving it the time it deserves.
Nick: Sure. And I feel like cyclists in particular can be a little single-minded, kind of like runners and other people who ... There are a million competitions out there for you if you want to compete in those things. It'd be easy to think "All I need to do is more of what I'm doing."
Kym Nonstop: Yeah, sport-specific training. I mean, it's legitimate doing more miles, more time in the saddle is going to make me a better cyclist. However, when things start to fall apart and you have any kind of back pain or neck pain or shoulder pain or you tear something, that's when you realize you've really been neglecting everything else. Your body will always tell you.
Nick: So, if somebody is approaching a plan like this, thinking of "Yeah, this is going to be my cross training."
Kym Nonstop: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nick: I don't know. Do you think this plan would work well for somebody who ... They're currently married to an activity, whatever it is. Yoga, golf, cycling. Is this a good base building plan for somebody?
Kym Nonstop: Yeah, I think this plan is great. It's definitely great for all levels and it's gonna give you that really strong foundation to go off and as your jump off point for any of your sports that you're doing, any of your goals for this year and if you're already waist deep in professional snowboarder, whatever, this is not gonna hurt you in any way.
Nick: Non-professional snowboarder.
Kym Nonstop: I'm just saying. I'm just saying, like-
Nick: Drone racer or ...
Kym Nonstop: Yeah. Whoever it is, it's great for people who are just starting to find their fitness, but for those of you who have found your fitness and gone far beyond, don't forget to come back to the basics and when I say basics, I'm not saying it's easy. There's still the basics of Plyo and the basics of Tabata and the basics of cardio. This isn't basics just doing bird dog all day. How fun would that be.
Nick: So, what do you think the key is for somebody to succeed on a program like this? I mean, you talk about scheduling a little bit, but have you ever felt the siren call of one of those like ... Alright, I'm gonna do an eight-week, 12-week, blank program and stuck through it all the way it. What makes the difference?
Kym Nonstop: Sticking to a plan, I mean I think everybody can relate who has done one or done a challenge is that you have that feeling of accomplishment at the end and you can look back on everything that you've done and you've kind of got a record of what you're capable of. So, even if you depart after that, at the end of that eight-week program and you decided "Alright, now I'm gonna go do the month-long yoga plan" and then come back, you can come back to it and see, did you lose fitness? It's like a great place to measure from and I think the number one thing you get from a plan is a schedule, like a consistency and that's what most people who are struggling in fitness and feel like they can't quite get their footing and get fit or get a leg up and they're like "I've tried all of these things and nothing works." I bet you it always boils down to consistency. You've tried all of these things, but have you done them enough?
Heather: Yeah, I was listening to some talk that was like you can't really measure fitness based on your first workout or your first week because there's no change yet, but you can measure fitness over time, so ... Totally what you're saying. That consistency is how you start to measure, like oh, you know, I started here and now I'm way over here, whereas if you're trying to look at it every single day, you're not really gonna see much change, but I really think the difference with this program, like you said, is you're removing all of the excuses and then you're so great at throwing out all of these wonderful innovations. I think, the other day, you said something about putting kitty litter in milk jugs as a way to make your own set of dumbbells.
Kym Nonstop: I said coins in milk jugs or a bag of kitty litter.
Heather: Coins or kitty litter or something.
Kym Nonstop: But yeah, kitty litter in milk jugs, sand in milk jugs. I mean, I've made my own sandbag before. I loved when ... You know, YouTube is a phenomenal resource and bodybuilding is an amazing resource. Anything you need to learn, if you ever feel like "Oh, I don't have the equipment or I don't have the money for the equipment," I promise you can build it. Just make it yourself.
Nick: No, I think so and I think CrossFit was actually really good at recognizing some of that early on, like "Hey, you want a pair of parallettes? We're not gonna sell them to you. We're just gonna give you the PDF to show you how to make them out of PVC." Or yeah, things like sandbags, I think, are so underrated. They cost nothing. You go to Home Depot, they're like 79 cents.
Kym Nonstop: Oh, I love sandbags.
Nick: Yeah, yeah, and there's something ... A certain kind of a hard to define strength that comes along with that stuff. We had another guest on, Cassandra Martin, who's an Instagram fitness model and she was saying she's basically followed the same bodybuilding program for years and she works construction on the side, has to carry concrete bags. She's like that's the difference maker. The workout is great, but you can overworked in a workout just by doing the same damn thing, but carrying bags of concrete around is like the X-factor, and I've told that to so many people since then, like "Pick some heavy shit up, carry it around" or yeah, something like kitty litter's fun because it moves with you while you're playing with it as well. So, in this program, what kind of equipment demands are there?
Kym Nonstop: There's not very … minimal equipment demands in this program. We kept it that way for a reason. I wanted to kind of have this have the lowest entry point for people that literally anyone of any fitness level with any kind of things around their house can just start, because I think for a lot of people, getting started is the hardest part and you just need to jump in and get started and so I try to make it lots of options. I have a kettlebell and I have dumbbells and bands. So that's all I have and for every workout, I give people options as to whether or not they want to use the kettlebell, the dumbbell, or the bands and then I throw in a few extra things. [crosstalk 00:18:34] Like milk jugs full of coins and stuff.
Heather: Yeah.
Nick: No, I think that's a good combo and I think as much as it can be fun to approach this with zero equipment too. Sometimes when you're starting a program, you want to take it seriously. It can be kind of nice to have just one thing you buy, to make it feel a bit more serious. I got my sister to buy a couple of kettlebells and they're there calling to you, it's pretty nice to have.
Heather: Yeah, they're just sitting there on the floor just saying "Come on. Pick me up."
Kym Nonstop: Yeah.
Nick: Then one day, you wake up with 14 of them in the house all of a sudden, like I have all of them.
Heather: That's when we have to do an intervention for Nick.
Kym Nonstop: They're so fun. I mean, definitely, if you have the funds, invest in your fitness. Buy a new workout outfit and buy some equipment and you're gonna feel guilty if you don't use them and not only that, but you're gonna be excited because it's something new. So, always invest in yourself, but sometimes funds are tight or you just wanna get it started or you're traveling. For me, I'm always on the road. I'm not gonna put a kettlebell in my suitcase, are you kidding me? I mean, yeah, it's like work with what I can when I'm traveling.
Nick: So, are you pretty bodyweight oriented on the road? Are you a band person?
Kym Nonstop: I bring bands.
Nick: They're great.
Kym Nonstop: Yeah, cause they're super light, easy to travel with, and in bodyweight and the hollow foam roller? Stuff my clothes in that, because the foam roller's awesome or like the stick. And then a racketball sometimes, but it's all about recovery a lot of times because I'm on the road racing, so.
Nick: Right.
Heather: I have to mention it because we actually found a video and had to share it with everybody, but I love that you don't take yourself so seriously if you don't have fun with your fitness and I think you- [crosstalk 00:20:15]
Nick: Taking yourself seriously was not what I thought when I started watching this video.
Heather: So, you now have, I think, four or five episodes of drunk yoga, which I think is hilarious because you meet yogis and they're very like "My body is a temple" and you're turning that on its head and you do that with a couple of other modalities and so ...
Kym Nonstop: Well, yeah. My body's a temple with tequila.
Nick: It's a bottle. My body's a bottle.
Heather: I just thought it was so great that of all things to choose, you chose yoga, which is already prone to smashing your face on the floor and then you add in the- [crosstalk 00:20:44]
Nick: I'm pretty sure high yoga is a thing right now. Drunk yoga, I don't think is quite a thing except in your video. [crosstalk 00:20:49]
Kym Nonstop: You see, the high yoga's only legal in a few states right now, so we gotta wait until that one can take off. Yeah, definitely. I couldn't become a fitness guru without poking fun at fitness gurus at the same time. I mean, I am fully aware that this is very easy to make fun of, especially when you're just like "I'm so fit" and like "Six packs, fake tan." I was a bike messenger and my friends were bike messengers and they were always just like "Bleh, fitness barbie doll over there." I got made fun of all the time and whatever.
Nick: For being fit as a bike courier?
Kym Nonstop: Yeah, it's kind of funny. It's like you don't ... I wasn't quite clean cut enough, you know? Tattooed and trash talking the sailor mouth and piercings. I wasn't clean cut enough for the fitness model side of things and then I wasn't rough around the edges enough for the other group, but I just found my own little niche and I feel like that corner of the fitness world has definitely grown since then. Like more and more people are there now and able to not be offended when you're like "Yes, I can drink beer and I can do this and I can do that."
So yoga ... I used to trash talk yoga all of the time. I used to make fun of yoga. Now I gotta say I love it and I gotta tell everybody, but I love yoga now, but drunk yoga is just a fun thing to do. I used to say I only do yoga when I'm drunk, but that's not true anymore.
Heather: Yeah, well then you poke fun at the couple's workouts and things like that.
Kym Nonstop: Oh, my God. How can you not?
Heather: We just watched that video and it's just ... Well, thank you, because how can you not make fun of it? Have you seen that one, Nick?
Nick: I don't think so.
Heather: It's you and a girlfriend ... And thank goodness you brought a girlfriend in because I think that made it a little bit more fun but we were scared to click on it, cause like can we watch this at work?
Kym Nonstop: It was called Sexcercise. That's why. We titled it "Sexcercise."
Nick: The star of Sexcercise on Bodybuilding.com here.
Heather: All of a sudden, our hits just went way up.
Nick: So why did we call this one Home Body? ‘Sexcercise’ is obviously something that's gonna sell better. The logo just ...
Heather: Oh dear.
Kym Nonstop: And I got my hands on Prancercise and made a parody of Prancercise with remaking the C+C Music Factory smash hit from the ‘80s. Everybody dance now. And did a whole rap about that and also did a remake of "Oh, my God. Shoes." Do you remember that one? That was like an old YouTube thing and I redid it with kale because I am, despite my best efforts, I am still a basic B who loves kale, so I had to make fun of that.
Nick: I'm with you. People love to talk shit about kale these days, but I think if you don't like kale, you don't have an imagination. Kale is so freakin' easy to work with.
Kym Nonstop: Yeah. Thank you. I've got like 16 kale recipes on my channel and I'm still putting out more.
Nick: And the best thing is, you make a salad out of it, you cook it, you can just leave it there for a couple of days and it's still good.
Heather: Yeah, you can cook the hell out of it and it's still crunchy and I think that's why people hate it but that's why I love it.
Kym Nonstop: Yeah.
Nick: You have to massage it, though. If you know kale, you know that you must massage the kale. That's a whole other workout.
Kym Nonstop: If I get unmassaged kale, if I got to a- [crosstalk 00:24:14]
Nick: Who the hell?
Kym Nonstop: I'm like "Take this back! What is this crap?! You trying to feed me grass?!" And get really mad about it.
Nick: My kale demands a massage.
Kym Nonstop: My kale gets a massage more than my legs do.
Nick: So are you treating yourself to a massage when all of this is over with, Bodybuilding.com?
Kym Nonstop: Oh, God. I need to.
Nick: Or a giant kale salad or are you just diving straight into the deep dish pizza or something?
Kym Nonstop: I don't do cheese, so deep dish pizza ... I mean, I actually mentioned that in one of the videos so far about cheat day. I don't believe in cheat days, really, cause I don't ... I love what I eat, so I don't feel like I'm deprived. Like, I don't go through my day being like "God, I wish I could eat this or that." I love all of the food I choose to eat and when people are like "I just don't like this. I just don't like that." I think the real truth is that somebody needs to give food a chance and if you've decided you don't like Brussels sprouts, then have you tried them 12 different ways? That's like the rule. 12 different ways. There was a dietician once that told the most stubborn kid I was training on MTV's Made, the dietician said you have to try it 12 different ways before you're allowed to say you don't like it, because literally the kid didn't want to eat anything other than chicken nuggets.
Nick: Okay, so with Brussels sprouts in particular, what the one way?
Heather: You can mix bacon.
Nick: Well, of course.
Kym Nonstop: Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's with bacon. You can broil. You can bake. You can sautée. You can braise. You can put-
Heather: I just had like a fried Brussels sprout salad that was amazing.
Kym Nonstop: Yeah, fry it.
Nick: I don't know. I've tried like eight ways with Brussels sprouts and they all involve cooking and there was still something that I couldn't quite do and then one time I just chopped them up in the blender and made a coleslaw ... A raw Brussels sprout coleslaw.
Kym Nonstop: He loved it.
Nick: It's my absolute favorite.
Heather: Well, they're baby cabbages. That's how you get kids to eat them. You just say it's baby cabbages and they're all over it.
Nick: Every other way that I've prepared them, I still just ... They're a little assy. I don't know.
Kym Nonstop: But it's all about finding that one way that you will eat the food and eventually if you do that with all foods, you're gonna have a very varied diet.
Nick: We're not talking about a cheat here. We're talking about a reward for the full fitness model week.
Kym Nonstop: My reward is rest days.
Nick: Yeah. Face down on the ground.
Kym Nonstop: I am not going to do any plyometrics or squats for at least two days and it's gonna be great.
Heather Eastman: No more high knees?
Kym Nonstop: I'm gonna go riding my bike in the mountains. That's gonna be my reward.
Nick: That sounds well-earned. Well, the program is Home Body on Bodybuilding.com. It's a nine …?
Kym Nonstop: Eight-week program.
Nick: 8-week home fitness program.
Kym Nonstop: With nutrition and supplement recommendations.
Nick: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Exactly, and a couple of little equipment things if you want them but can be done without, right?
Kym Nonstop: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nick Collias: Alright, well Kym Nonstop, thank you so much for coming and talking with us and we're glad to have you on the set.
Kym Nonstop: Thank you for having me.
Kym NonStop Follow Along Workout
Follow along as Kym Nonstop takes you through a workout from her upcoming Home Body: 8-Week Home Fitness Plan.
Downloadable PDF Transcript