1. Your name, title, and age? What do you do (or did you do) for a living?

Valerie Orsoni, Celebrity Coach, Healthy Living Expert, and CEO & Founder of the online weight loss sensation, LeBootCamp.com.

2. Who was the person that inspired you as a child to eat healthy and stay fit? What was their relationship to you?

My inspiration to get healthy and fit was twofold: the frustration of being an overweight teenager (when all my friends seemed to be able to indulge and still look great), coupled with having an overweight dad who was just as unhappy with his own excess weight – and so we banded together to battle the pounds!

3. What did they do to inspire you?

Because my dad was also overweight, I got lucky in having a partner in the journey to lose weight. The probability of completing a goal shoots up to 65% when you commit to someone else about doing it, so the odds were already in my favor at the get-go. We tried every fad diet possible (40+), always losing a few pounds (and sometimes a lot) in the process, and always regaining it all afterward. Of course, this yo-yo-ing became very frustrating, leaving us feeling doomed to be overweight.

It was then that we decided that all of these fad diets were actually harming us, and we started going to the library to educate ourselves. (This was before the internet era, so the library was the logical place to go.) At that time the Glycemic Index studies were being conducted in Australia and this concept was the springboard to helping me lose a lot of weight with a healthy approach: easy fitness (nothing crazy and dangerous), no forbidden foods, and learning how to love my body no matter what. In the end it was a combination of self love + yummy food in controlled portions + regular exercise that did it for me. I have NEVER regained the weight I lost then, and nor has dad!

4. How did their lesson change your life?

Besides being an amazing support in my teenage journey to a healthier lifestyle, Dad was also a fantastic chef, and I was lucky enough to have been introduced to a truly diverse cuisine that helped shape my taste-buds. All of this inspiration propelled me to bring the dream of healthy living to the masses – and I created an online weight loss coaching program called “LeBootCamp”. And yes, dad is the mind behind the recipes that come through our LeBootCamp kitchen!

5. Do you convey their message to kids in your life presently?

Absolutely. It’s the reason my son is now a fan of wholesome, healthy food, like homemade almond milk and my signature “Eggplant Tarte Tatin” – he knows that staying healthy can be synonymous with pleasure! And the message goes out to kids and adults alike: more than 1 million of my “bootcampers” worldwide are learning how to enjoy good food and stay healthy with LeBootCamp.com. Lots of them are also living my easy approach to daily fitness thanks to my bestseller published by Reader’s Digest: Le Personal Coach, A French Trainer’s Simple Secrets for Getting Fit and Slim without the Gym.

6. What would be your main message to children today to lead healthy lifestyles?

Though I know how tempting and easy it is to grab all those sugary and fatty snacks that our environment throws at us, always stay truly mindful of what goes into your body. If you don’t care about the faraway future because you feel immortal (as we tend to in our youth) and eating poorly does not seem like a bad thing to you, then focus on immediate problems for inspiration: pimples (yes, eating poorly will lead to this terrible condition called acne), lack of sleep, hence poor memory and poor grades at school, plus less energy to have fun with your friends! And exercising to get a toned body should be quite a motivation in itself, because don’t you want to feel great at all your big and little events? Beach day with your friends? Birthday parties? Prom? Your small daily efforts towards healthier food and fitness will pay off very quickly, and before you know it, you’ll be living the change you’ve dreamed of!

7. Do you have a web site you would like to promote….web address only?

www.LeBootCamp.com for personalized healthy living coaching!