How One In Demand Fitness Instructor Eats All Day Long
Photo: Tom Schierlitz/Trunk Archive
When your week involves as many as 25 sweat sessions, eating clean is necessary—not just to keep your feet moving, but to maintain healthy skin, says New York-based fitness instructor Lindi Duesenberg.
Duesenberg is one of the most popular teachers at cult barre studio Physique 57, and the founder of DMF, a cardio dance program that includes both classes for boutique-fitness lovers and a non-profit arm working to bring the body-moving sessions to New York City public schools struggling to meet physical education requirements.
Though she operates under a nearly-everything-in-moderation mentality (she doesn’t eat meat), balancing all of those classes and making sure she feels energized and looks great requires knowing how what she eats will impact her body inside and out. “Food directly affects my skin, especially since I’m working out and sweating all the time,” she says.
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Duesenberg’s diet is filled with her personal beauty foods from breakfast on; she tries to pack each meal with antioxidants, proteins, and good fats. “I love my breakfast,” she says, adding she likes to get all her vitamins naturally rather than take supplements. “I get my Greek yogurt, which has Vitamin A for my skin, I pack it with mixed berries—blueberries, strawberries, or blackberries—and add crushed walnuts for the Omega-3.” She alternates that breakfast with one of oatmeal with flax and chia seeds. Since she’s nearly always moving between her different studios and working with private clients, she packs snacks to eat throughout the day, including tons of almonds, apples with peanut butter, and carrots and hummus.
For both lunch and dinner she tries to incorporate monounsaturated fats like avocados and salmon. “When I do that I feel way more satisfied,” she says. Most meals are also finished with a piece of fruit or, more preferred, a piece of dark chocolate to satisfy her “super sweet tooth.” And dark means dark—at least seventy percent cocoa.
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Of course, Duesenberg says, her beauty foods are nothing without her beauty liquid: water, water, and more water. She recently began adding coconut water into the mix, drinking it after teaching the cardio dance classes. She was regularly feeling particularly drained after them, and says the coconut water has helped prevent dehydration and its related headaches.
While her “food is fuel” lifestyle is one we can all take inspiration from, there is one topical product Duesenberg obsesses over: sunscreen. To protect her porcelain skin (or in her words, “very pale”), Duesenberg applies a 50 SPF Neutrogena sensitive skin moisturizer every morning, then uses a make-up brush to apply Colorscience mineral sunscreen throughout the day.
It’s great because it doesn’t clog her pores, she says. Plus, “mineral makeup has all the nice antioxidants.” The one thing everyone needs more of—from the inside out.
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