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Celebrity Health: Amy Grant An inside look at how this pop star stays fit and healthy by listening to mom 
It’s hard to believe that singer Amy Grant is 50 years old. After earning her first recording contract when she was only 15 years old, this award-winning contemporary Christian superstar is now a veteran of the business. One look however, reveals a woman who knows the importance of good health for happy aging. It’s easy to think that as a celebrity, she would credit her healthy, young looks to some miracle fountain of youth concoction or perhaps a little nick and tuck. Nope. Grant is so down to earth that she just grabs what’s in the shower to wash her hair, doesn’t limit any foods in her home and doesn’t even have a trainer on speed dial. So how does she do it? She starts by crediting her mother. Grant, the youngest of four girls, grew up in Nashville, Tennessee and she calls her childhood average. Her dad was a doctor and her stay-at-home mom did most of the cooking, but her mom required sit down family meals for breakfast and dinner. “Fast food wasn’t really around and breakfast and dinner were honored meal times,” Grant says. “Every dinner included a meat, two vegetables and a green salad.” She fondly remembers watching her mom perform her daily exercises on her bedroom floor. “She would do Jane Fonda workouts too,” she says. “She had arthritis so she tried to be as healthy as she could. We were always told to go outside and play and it’s the same thing I say to my kids now.” Grant has four children – three with her first marriage to Christian musician, Gary Chapman, and one with husband and country music artist, Vince Gill (she and Gill have been married for 11 years). After the birth of her third child, Grant worked with a trainer for five years. “It was the only time I really worked with a trainer because I had three kids in five years and lost the handle on physical fitness,” she says. “I got into the best shape.” 
In the mid 1990s, Grant says that all bets were off when it came to working out at a gym. “Instead, I started walking and biking and enjoyed just being active,” she says. “Today, when we have time as a family, we’re not at the mall. If the sun is shining, we’re walking or kayaking or doing something fun outside. When one of my kids became more sedentary, we went out to buy her new tennis shoes and started playing.” Grant says that no food is off limits in her house. “We don’t eat out of boredom, but we have had cycles where we made better health choices and those that were not so good, but I don’t monitor it,” she says. “One of my daughters had a fabulous dessert at a restaurant in town once but ate too much of it and felt sick. I told her to remember that feeling the next time she wanted to eat too much.” When she’s on the road performing in concert, she’ll order pizza or other dishes to have on the tour bus after the show is over. “We all do it,” she says. “We try to make healthy choices, but at that time of night after a show, it feels nice to have that reward.” Grant’s flawless hair and skin isn’t the result of some secret skincare routine either. “I just grab what’s in the shower,” she says. She suffered from acne as a teen, but today her only consistent skin care is the use of a special olive oil that she purchased while visiting an olive oil tasting room. “Make sure you moisturize your neck,” she advises. “And if you’re not going to put on makeup make sure you moisturize.” She does admit to completing an annual body cleanse made of cayenne, maple syrup and lemon juice. “If I feel like my body is out of whack, I’ll do a cleanse,” she says. “If I’m getting a little thick around the middle, I try to make decisions to be more active.” For Grant, that doesn’t mean hitting the gym, walking on the treadmill or calling up her trainer. “I create a diversion and do things that sound like fun, like paint furniture or redo the flower bed,” she says. “If diet and all those things are the focus of your energy and are a looming monstrosity in your consciousness and that’s all you think about, it’s not a good quality of life.” And with her children, marriage and a successful recording career that includes more than 30 million albums sold and six Grammys in multiple categories, it looks like award winning songstress, author, wife and mom, definitely knows the meaning of a good quality of life. She is currently on tour with Christian recording artist Michael W. Smith. |
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