Janet Layug is modeling exercise clothes and driving her followers wild. In a new social media post the Ms Olympia champion shows off her trophy winning body in a pink workout set. She shared the video via Instagram. “Super cute,” commented one of her followers. “Pretty in pink😍💓🌸,” added another. How does she approach diet, fitness, and self-care? Here is everything you need to know about her lifestyle habits.
In an interview with Goss, Janet explained how she got into bodybuilding. “I’ve always been very active since a young age. When I first started [training] I didn’t know much about training. I had the mindset that you had to look skinny, and to achieve it do intense cardio and eat light is how to lose weight and to stay fit. I think we all know that that’s far from the truth. I also went to school for nursing. I was definitely intrigued by nutrition, the body, and things related to physiology. Beginning to learn how to train and be on a healthier diet was already something along the lines of what I was interested in in my career,” she explained. However, one day on social media she saw this division within bodybuilding called Bikini, “and I looked at their bodies and they had muscle,” she said. “They were tone and lean. I really admired that look and thought to myself, “I want to set a goal and train like a bikini athlete.” I got a trainer and I started doing research on my own about training and learning about dieting. I didn’t know any of it. It was a lot of work to learn all that.”
“I believe the holistic approach is everything. You will not be successful if you don’t have a mental balance along with that physical training. If you don’t have a support system with you. It’s a process to teach people what you’re doing. Not everyone will get it at first, but you give people the chance and be like, ‘Hey, this is what I’m doing.’ Not everyone will support it or your goals. Sometimes you have to just focus on yourself and do what you have to do to get there,” she says.
“I think it’s important that everyone educates themselves on health and wellness and training and eating better. That’s what began my journey. I learned so much about myself and about my health during my prep along the way. Beyond that, I learned so much about my work ethic and staying persistent and resilient. When people talk about competing at bikini or any other division, you learn so much more than anything physical. There’s so much mental that you can apply in your daily life as well,” she says.
Janet recommends working with a professional to achieve your goals in the gym. “I didn’t know anything about training or about nutrition but I took it upon myself to do research to educate myself. If you really want to take it to the next level, you want to take it to someone who has the certified training and knowledge to teach you the proper ways because sometimes you can end up teaching yourself bad habits that aren’t good for you and you wouldn’t even know it. That’s why it’s important to get someone who is certified. Sometimes you don’t see exactly what you’re doing and you teach yourself wrong moves. When you have a pair of eyes on you to help you do things properly, that’s the way to go,” she says.
Janet is a big advocate of strength training. “I never lifted a weight. I only ran on the treadmill and I had to learn and teach myself how important it is to do weight training. You burn more fat that way. Your metabolism goes up. You need resistance training. It’s good for your bones and your muscles. It’s hard for some people to understand that it does increase the fat burning process as opposed to just cardio,” she says. “Sometimes there’s this misconception that if you train hard then you’re going to gain all of this muscle. Honestly, it’s so far from the truth. There’s so much that’s involved with building muscles. You’d have to eat a lot of protein and a lot of calories, and that’s not really in our frame in our daily lives. Lifting is how we get that nice sculpted body. It’s how we shred the pounds. I really advocate that you have to do both cardio and weight training in order to reach your fitness goals optimally.”