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Adrienne Houghton is starting off the new year looking and feeling amazing. The 36-year-old singer and TV personality lost 20 pounds in the latter part of the year, and there are a number of things she’s attributing her success to.
Houghton, who initially told Hola! that wanting to be “in the best shape of my life” to have a child was behind her fitness journey, she said on the last All Things Adrienne vlog of the year that she wanted to more than just lose a few pounds but overhaul her lifestyle.
“I legit at the top of the summer looked at myself in the mirror and I was just like, what are the things that I want to change? One of those things was, I want to be healthy, and I don’t want to go on a diet. I want this to be a lifestyle.
She set goals and made deadlines for herself, including getting down to 105 in three months (she is only 4’11” for context) and going vegan. One thing that helped her was doing something called the First15.
“You take five minutes to pray, five minutes to write, and five minutes to read the word” she said. It helped her to set an intention and get focused. She also cut out bread, pasta and pretty much all things that are white refined carbs.
“I recognize that it makes me feel sluggish,” she said. “It fills me up very quickly but it has no nutrients. And I recognized there were other alternatives that I have found to love just as much.”
Ezekiel bread and rice cakes are an alternative win for her, as well as vegan popcorn, lentil soup and drinking a gallon of water a day. Recently, taking part in The Masked Singer also helped (she trained to be able to move a lot while simultaneously singing in the heavy costume), as well as the encouragement of husband Israel Houghton and people who motivated her to be disciplined and not distracted. In addition, though, positive and negative comments of viewers who watched her every day on The Real or followed her on social media and through her YouTube vlog, surprisingly, gave her that extra boost she needed.
“I’ve read so many amazing compliments from you guys so I just want to tell you thank you,” she said. “You guys have also inspired me in a major way, some in good ways, and some in bad ways. Some of your comments that were like, why does she have seven chins? Or why does she look a certain way, that was something that I turned into fuel to be the best version of myself. And you guys have given me the best compliments that I look great. That just reminds me every day to continue to be good to myself, good to my body.”
Having to deal with not-so-nice comments about her changing body has been something Houghton has experienced for years now. Back in 2018, she opened up about how those remarks made her feel on her vlog.
“If I’m honest, my weight gain in the last few years has been like a struggle for me where I’m like, I never looked at myself as being overweight,” she said. “And it was weird to hear so many comments at one point that I was fat, and ‘Oh my God, she let herself go!’ I was like, ‘Whoa.’ So that was a little bit weird.”
But as she noted, she used the haters as her motivators, and the success she’s had in getting healthy is evident.
“Seeing the difference was crazy,” she said on All Things Adrienne. “There is something so dope about achieving your goal and knowing, for me, it was knowing that I absolutely can do this. It is possible. It just takes discipline. That makes me feel great, knowing that it’s something that I absolutely have control over.”
