Diagnosed with diabetes at 22, Halle Berry re-spins her life for the better
Halle Berry has been included by all major magazines in their lists of the sexiest and most beautiful people in the world. She bagged an Emmy, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award, the first woman-of-color honoree.
Berry is also one of the fittest female celebrities, the perfect fit for Storm in the X-Men series, Catwoman, Bond girl Jinx in Die Another Day, and a stint in the latest John Wick flick.
At 42 and right after giving birth in 2008, Esquire named her the “Sexiest Woman Alive.” Still rocking it at 54, she inspires her 6.8 million Instagram followers with her intense workouts. Her focus and dedication to health and fitness show in her lean, toned, and curvaceous form.
My health journey started when I was 22 years old and it was a moment I’ll never forget. I found myself in a coma due to my diabetes.
Who would have guessed that a health scare at 22 changed her life completely? Berry was diagnosed as diabetic at 19 and got hospitalized because of it three years later.
“My health journey started when I was 22 years old and it was a moment I’ll never forget. I found myself in a coma due to my diabetes. Diet and fitness changed my life.”
Berry started a website called Rē•spin. “I had to re-spin how I lived my life in order to live the life I wanted. At this moment in time, the need to re-spin the way we think about everything we thought we knew is now more important than ever. So today, I am sharing Rē•spin with you and invite you to join our community,” Berry said in the Rē•spin website.
Fitness and nutrition saved her and made her the woman she has become. Through the years she evolved into total wellness, health, and spirituality. And she is very eager to share her best practices and learnings.
Berry recently announced that she is giving the opportunity for people to train with her for free. Her digital platform Rē•spin has teamed up with FitOn, a free digital fitness app that offers users a library of on-demand workouts one can do anytime, anywhere.
She made the announcement through a video post on Instagram beside her personal trainer Peter Lee Thomas. She invited her followers to join her and Thomas in their workouts, which vary from weight training, cardio, martial art-inspired exercises, and even plyometric moves.
On Instagram, she regularly shares her training through her Fitness Friday posts. She felt the need to expand that during the pandemic. She saw the need to inspire people to work out at home.
“I don’t know if we’ve always been provided ways that we can stay fit and be well within a means that’s affordable. I think for so long people thought, ‘You have to have a trainer. You have to have a gym membership. You have to have all this equipment. You have to eat certain meals. That costs a certain amount. I think we’ve talked ourselves out of being fit, sometimes, because we think it’s something that’s unobtainable or not affordable. I do like FitOn for that reason, because we are learning that it is affordable, it is manageable, and anybody can do it. You just have to have the will and the desire. And you have to make up your mind that it’s important. That’s the hard work that people have to do,” Berry shared in an interview.
On Instagram, Halle regularly shares her training through her Fitness Friday posts. During the pandemic, she saw the need to inspire people to work out at home.
While Berry has always been fit, she tries different workout regimens. Like everyone, she started with weights, then got into Pilates, then yoga, and now martial arts and boxing partially due to roles she chose to portray as well.
“I thought I worked hard training for the John Wick movie, but this took it to a whole other level, because I had to learn five martial arts disciplines, two of which I had some knowledge of, but three of them were just totally foreign to me,” Berry explained in relation to her preparation for Netflix’s Bruised. “I spent about two years before I shot the movie just learning the martial art forms, and it was grueling.”
She confessed that the intensive training took a toll on her body. “I’ve never worked in such a concentrated way with something, ever, and I’m not 25 anymore, so it required a kind of dedication and focus and an attention to my diet like I never had before,” she said. “I trained, some days, five hours a day. It took a toll, but I was determined to do it. It’s probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”