For those envious of Carrie Underwood's svelte shape, the country singer — who got engaged to hockey player Mike Fisher Dec. 20 — says that it's anything but effortless to maintain.
"Genetics are not exactly on my side," Underwood, 26, said in a Jan. 2 radio interview for Ottawa, Ontario show Grecosize on the station Team 1200. "Once I got out of high school I packed on about 10 pounds, and once I was on American Idol I packed on another 10 pounds. I'm a little person, I'm 5-3, and I was about 130," she estimates.
The star's problem area: her tummy. "I carry all my stress weight, all my potato chip weight," she told radio host Steve Warne, "Around my mid section. You've got to fight genetics sometimes."
To fight that good fight while on tour, the Idol says, "I do not eat catering. I have a refrigerator on the bus and when we're in a decent town that has a decent grocery store, I just go and stock up. My off days on the road are spent doing laundry and buying groceries."
She even brings her own groceries when she goes home to Checotah, Okla. ("I have to…or I'll starve," she says. "Fitness is not a lifestyle [there]."
Her new personal trainer, Tony Greco, is "kicking my butt," she says. "I need it. Especially with a tour coming up and a wedding to look good for."
And about that wedding…Underwood says that she and Fisher have "no date" so far. "Our schedules don't provide us too much time to get married and have time to really enjoy being married," she explains. "We're trying to really work it out and move some stuff around.
The Sunday night of their engagement was "a busy evening," of phone calls to beat the news reports, she admits. She told Fisher, "'Keep calling baby, keep calling!' Because I didn't want anyone to get offended or anything that we didn't tell them first."
Her hockey hubby-to-be, she says, has been a hands-on wedding planner, "He jumps in, and he always says he doesn't. he's like, 'Oh, I don't care. Just whatever you want!'…But then I go and ask him, 'What do you think about this? and he'll go 'Oh, no,' and he'll weigh in. I think he's going to be more involved than he initially thought he wanted to be, which is good. I need help."
The logistics for couple (he's stationed in Ottawa, she's in Nashville and prepping for a new tour) "are going to be difficult," Underwood admits. "But it seems like this past year when I have time off they have away games…We're hoping the summer will be some nice time for us to spend consecutive days together."
