Has anyone been paying attention to Jennifer Lopez's Instagram page recently?
Just kidding: I know that everyone, myself included, can't help but cast a couple of curious glances at the 49-year-old's social media pages, just to get a peek at that bod. 49 years old. How does she do it? Well, if you were paying attention to that Instagram page, you'd have a decent clue: have you seen the workouts she undergoes on a daily basis?
Terrifying, really. But recently, she took it to a whole new level, when Lopez and her partner - former baseball star Alex Rodriguez - decided to take on something they described as the "10 day challenge"; that is, a week and a half without any sort of grains, sugars or any kinds of carbs.
We were all in awe of her willpower, even as JLo admitted it wasn't all gumdrops and ice cream (those were both, of course, off the menu).
"So it turns out when you don't have sugar and you don't have carbs you're really, really hungry all the time," she revealed in one such Instagram story, as she revealed that herself and Rodriguez were resorting to raw vegetables, canned tuna and sugar-free jello to get them through the cravings.
But as JLo struggled to stay away from the carbs, the one question on everyone's lips was: "why?" Luckily, Jennifer Lopez took the time to answer that burning question in between sessions of fat burning exercise, taking to the Ellen DeGeneres Show to dish out the info.
So why is JLo giving herself such a tough test? Turns out, it's all in preparation for her role in the movie Hustlers, where the actress and musician will be playing a stripper. "I'm sure that the outfits are going to be..." Lopez said before gesturing to her body, implying that she's expecting to show a lot of skin in this next movie role. "So I'm, like, getting ready for that."
"Just the whole ramp up to it was like: 'oh God,'" Lopez said on the show, admitting that it was an especially tough task because a lot of her diet consists of sugar and carbs. "It was really hard," she explained. "Not only do you get a headache, but you feel like you're in an alternate reality or universe. Like, you don't feel like yourself. You realize that you're addicted to sugar."
That being said, the 49-year-old added that the challenge does eventually get easier over time, but admitted that by the end of it, the cravings were almost too much to bear. "I'm like, 'When can I have sugar again? I'm going to have cookies and then I'm going to have bread and then I'm going to have bread with butter,'" she gushed.
But what then, did Jennifer Lopez learn about herself and her body by undergoing such a difficult challenge? Interestingly enough, after all that deprivation, she experienced a slight dip in cravings once the chance to gorge on carbs was available to her again.
"When you go back to the sugar, you don't want it as much," she explained, and even said that this wasn't the last time she was undertaking the challenge:
"It's something that you get used to a little bit," explained Lopez, as she revealed that she'd been talking with her trainer about taking a five-day break, before starting off again. You have to give my girl credit: she's willing to go all the way for that body of hers.
More power to her, I think.
