When she felt herself gaining weight, Scheana Shay wasn’t about to risk baby bump rumors. Enter: carb cycling.
“Football season started, and I started drinking beer again and the pooch started growing again,” the Vanderpump Rules star tells Us. “Like, ‘Oh! Baby bump?’ I’m like, ‘No! Oh my God, no. It’s cheese and beer.’”
She had even broken her cardinal rule and Photoshopped a social media photo of herself to avoid speculation. “I had had my sister flatten my stomach a little, so people didn’t say that on my post. Something like that, I just don’t need the rumors,” she explains. “But somebody else already posted it.”
As soon as that online troll speculated she may be pregnant, she took action. To tighten her middle again, the 33-year-old decided to start carb cycling. “It’s like, one day carbs, one day no carbs. Or one day carbs, two days no carbs,” she explains. And it worked. Reveals Shay, “My stomach’s getting a little flatter.”
Though the diet isn’t the same as intermittent fasting — which typically involves consuming all your daily calories within an eight-hour window, then fasting for 16 hours overnight — Shay says it feels similar. “Because I go to bed starving on the no carb days, even though I’ve had, like, three meals and a snack!” she jokes.
Besides changing her nutrition habits, the 33-year-old — who’s single heading into season 7 of Pump Rules after splitting from her former flame Rob Valletta — has stepped up her fitness regimen. “I’m working out with my trainer three, four times a week,” the reality star tells Us of her sessions with L.A.-based pro Seth Browning. “He’s amazing.”
Her other big life change? Total transparency. “I realized that it’s so much more relatable putting your truth out there than trying to pretend that everything’s perfect,” says the “Better Without You” singer. “Even just, like, getting Botox or fillers or stupid like things like that. I’m going to talk about what I do because it’s, like, no I don’t just look like this, or it’s makeup.”
Vanderpump Rules returns to Bravo on Monday, December 3, at 9 p.m. ET.
