Dietitian in condition: whether she's acting, modeling or counseling clients, Stephaine Logan's fit body is her first calling card - Real Women

Muscle & Fitness/Hers, Dec, 2002 by Jeff O'Connell

A grayish Thursday in normally sunny L.A. nonetheless offers a clear view of the fashionably electric life of Stephanie Logan.

Earlier that morning, the lifelong sports and fitness buff had worked out at a gym after going for a half-your jog. Later in the day, the occasional model would tend to that vocation by auditioning for a lingerie-modeling job, before heading off to her commercial agency, where she would check out photos for a new comp card. Later still, the budding actress would meet with the co-owner of a film company regarding possible movie roles.

A four-meeting day in Southern California requires a full tank of fuel in more ways than one, so Stephanie the registered dietitian emerges as she sits down for a lunch interview at an outdoor cafe, Hollywood adjacent. Asked how she sorts through a menu as encyclopedic as the one handed to her by a waitress, she says: "I need a minute to look, 'cause there are so many good, yummy things on here. I like veggie burgers and I love fish, but I pretty much eat no meat. And I do better if I stay away from bread and potatoes, unfortunately." Wearing a white blouse,

Blue jeans and sandals, Stephanie, whose hazel eyes glow as if plugged into some invisible current, decides on a Caeser salad topped with salmon for herself, and recommends the blue-corn waffles to her interviewer. Sold. If you are what you eat, as they say, then Stephanie is a walking sandwich board for her own nutritional expertise.

That advertisement was a handy calling card in 1997, when Stephanie arrived in Los Angeles from Oklahoma City to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. Her participation in the Venus Swimwear Model Search had given her better connections than most actor-models enjoy upon hitting Hollywood, and Stephanie's first modeling gig was with Kathy Ireland, for the latter's Kmart swimwear collection. Her first TV exposure, on the recently cancelled "Ally McBeal," was even more revealing: She played Courtney Thorne-Smith's body double in the famous episode in which her character walks into the office of Billy, played by Gil Bellows, wearing nothing but high-heeled shoes.

"Yeah, that was my body, so all the hours weightlifting in the gym paid off," recalls Stephanie, laughing, of the episode. "I actually ended up being nude on the set to tape the scene, and they had strategically placed some furniture to hide things when they filmed different angles. I had to learn the lines to do the scene, so here I am standing naked in front of Gil Bellows, trying to remember these lines. Before we did the first take, I remember standing there and thinking: Wow, welcome to Hollywood. Here we go."

making her pitch

The training to which Stephanie refers happens six days a week, always in the morning. "I do it first to get my blood pumping and feel energized for the day," she says. Her workouts are as diverse as her resume, ranging from weights and cardio to yoga. "I used to lift weights like there was no tomorrow," says the former high school cheerleader, who grew up playing softball welt enough to receive several scholarship offers--which she turned down, much to the dismay of her father, who played minor league baseball and coached Stephanie on many of her teams growing up in Oklahoma City

Today, she doesn't lift as frequently or as intensely as she once did, a shift in emphasis she attributes to having to maintain a body-type suitable for casting calls for not only fitness gigs but also swimsuit and lingerie shoots and other mainstream print work. When she does lift, she prefers free weights, with exercises like dumbbell squats and triceps extensions helping to firm up her thighs and triceps respectively. For cardio, Stephanie either goes for morning jogs in L.A.'s Runyon Canyon Park or hops on a treadmill, often setting it at a slight incline. Occasionally she carries light dumbbells in each hand for some intense powerwalking.

Increasingly, however, the cornerstone of Stephanie's workout regimen is yoga, about which she doesn't talk so much as rhapsodize. She first encountered it hack in Oklahoma City, in the form of an Ali McGraw exercise video, but the real revelation came more recently when she began studying a yoga style called Kundalini at Golden Bridge studio in Los Angeles under the tutelage of world-renowned instructor Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa. "This place has literally changed my life," says Stephanie, who practices yoga 2-3 times a week. "I feel very privileged to be living where I have access to taking classes from [Gurmukh]."

The sessions have helped Stephanie become stronger, more flexible and less injury-prone, but those physical improvements are dwarfed, she says, by the mental, emotional and spiritual benefits she derives from Kundalini, which relies heavily on mediation: "You do kriyas, where you hold a pose for two minutes, seven minutes or even 11 minutes, focusing on your breathing, and through time you learn to apply that to every aspect of your life. It gives me the strength to persist in whatever it is I'm doing, whether it's aerobic exercise, hiking or pursuing my acting career If I can hold that yoga pose for 11 minutes and work through this pain, I can do anything. What's another five minutes on the treadmill?"