Sharny and Julius Kieser, the creators of the FitMum and FitDad workouts, are famed for their impressive bodies. Which is why the married Australian couple nearly went into hiding when they began gaining some weight in late May, shortly after the birth of their son, Magnus. “We didn’t want our followers to know we’d gotten to this state,” Julius tells Us Weekly.
Then one night, the parents of Josh, 20, Alexis, 5, Dante, 4, Emmett, 3, Hugo, 2, and Magnus, 6 months, were scrolling through their Facebook when they had an aha moment. “We were looking at all the fitness people and thinking, ‘What do they know about being fat, about being parents, about being addicted to food?’” Julius, 35, says.
That’s when the wheels started turning. Julius and Sharny decided they would publicly reclaim their bodies — but first they wanted to get even heavier. “We wanted to get back in the trenches with our followers and live it up with them … really go through the pain of quitting junk, feeling like crap and wanting to quit.”
So the authors of Never Diet Again and FITlosophy made a pact to give in to every craving.
“We ate a lot of sugar, which opened up the hunger,” Julius tells Us. “We didn’t want our kids to see us eating so much junk, so we had a ‘secret stash’ of chocolates, biscuits and ice creams that we’d raid during the day. Then when they went to bed, we’d get a takeout pizza. … We’d eat thousands of empty calories.”
He continued, “After a few days it became addictive.”
By August, Julius weighed 240 pounds, and Sharny, 35, was 152 pounds, whereas in May, they weighed 200 and 132 pounds, respectively.
“We went up about four clothes sizes,” Julius tells Us. “Sleep was horrible because we were always digesting the crap in our bodies.” At that point, Julius and Sharny decided they were ready to begin their transformation.
On Sunday, August 14, Julius and Sharny shared a video on Facebook explaining that they will be following two different programs — FitMum and FitDad, which they founded years ago — over eight weeks to get back into shape. “We set up a Facebook group so that mums and dads can do it with us,” Julius says. “We all keep each other accountable.”
