All My Children’s Alicia Minshew Talks About Getting Fit!

Alicia Minshew (ABC.com)

If you have ever wondered how your favorite soap stars stay fit with their incredibly busy script memorizing, show taping and event appearing schedules, wonder no more! I had the chance to chat with Alicia Minshew (Kendall) a few weeks ago and she gave me the scoop on her exercise routine . . . and now I’m passing that routine along to you!

Late in 2007, Alicia began releasing exercise routines through her website; the routines are downloadable to your iPod, making exercising on the go a breeze. She says the whole thing started with a trip to see her trainer.

“I came to him and said I wanted to gain weight and I wanted to gain strength. I can be too thin at times if I don’t build up muscle, so we started doing these fun workouts together. He tried different exercises and couldn’t believe my results. He also worked with the people at Pump 1 and took the idea [of an exercise video starring Alicia] to them and they were interested. We had a great energy and did a shoot with all the different exercises and put together the programs.”

You can download your first program by clicking here.

With her busy schedule it is a wonder Alicia has time to even eat right, let alone exercising. She says the secret is to go week by week and day by day.

"Saturdays or Sundays are the only days I always work out," she said. "There are weeks where we're taping huge scenes like parties or explosions and those times I don't get to exercise as much as I'd like. Those weeks I do my little iPod workout in my dressing room. [Exercising] really depends on my work schedule, so I'm more diligent about eating right and the vitamins and the exercising I squeeze in when I can."

Eating right means lots of fresh veggies and fish rather than heavy, fatty lunches and drinking water or green tea during the day. Alicia is also conscious of what snack foods are around and prefers nuts and other healthy substitutes rather than salty potato chips.

"And, taking vitamins. That way I feel like I have more energy," she says.

And Alicia needs all the energy she can get! She was recently named daytime's hardest working actress because of the time she puts in on the set at All My Children. The day we spoke, Alicia was home working on two huge scripts for the next day. She says being on-set is a huge energy booster on those days when she just wants to rest.

I'd like to thank Alicia for chatting with me, it is always fun to hear how our favorite actresses stay in shape and I even received a few pointers from Alicia. And fans, we also had time to chat about Kendall and what may happen in the future. We'll cover those topics in a few days!

Kristi Knight
Writer, All My Children
Soaps.com