NIKOLAS AND EMILY
TYLER | NATALIA
Trim Stars
Soap Opera Digest
August 17, 2004
Tyler Christopher (Nikolas, GENERAL HOSPITAL)
When did you start go gain weight?
"When I was a teenager, I was really skinny. But as soon as I got to college, I started to fill out and respond to working out."
When did you decide to slim down?
"When I came back [to GH in 2003], I was a bigger guy. It really wasn't by mistake, though. I had been getting a lot of work as the big, tough guy - the bully. But I knew that [physically] Nikolas wasn't the kind of guy that I was at the time."
What did you do?
"I knew if I wanted to be a certain weight, I needed to eat this much and work out this much. The science is a lot less complicated than people make it out to be. If you want to lose weight, then you burn more than you eat. I committed myself to stepping it up a notch and making my diet a lifestyle."
What's your diet like?"
"It's pretty strict. There are things that you should not eat - refined sugar, white flour, hydrogenated oils ... basically, things that have no nutritional value. I pull those things out of my diet, and what's left is protein and good, fibrous carbohydrates. If you take those things out of your diet, you'll be amazed at your body."
Have you tried trend diets?"
"I don't do the low-carb thing - I don't follow any of that stuff. It's good for people who are really overweight, and it seems to work for them. But they, too, will reach a point where it doesn't work any more because our bodies are very good at adjusting to stress. And an extremely low-carb diet is very stressful."
How about exercise?"
"People thingk that if they life weights, they're going to bulk up, but it's not the case. Weight training is the best fat-burning thing you can do for your body. A lot of people skip that part and only do cardiovascular activity. I do a very high-intensity workout of both. On off days from weight training, I box, which is an incredible cardio workout. As soon as I started doing that, it took me over the edge, I broke a plateau."