The shelf life of a fashion model is four years at best.

Supermodel Carol Alt was able to parlay her “product” – herself – into a career that has spanned three decades using a strong work ethic and fearless business savvy.

“I’ve been around for 30 years in the modeling industry and have never been without a day of work. And that’s really a feat in itself if I do say so myself,” Alt told the World of Fashion class at Roy C. Ketcham High School in Wappingers Falls on Nov. 13.

“Some girls came, and some girls went,” she said, but others such as Cheryl Tiegs, Christie Brinkley, Lauren Hutton, Brooke Shields and Elle Macpherson have had staying power.

“We’ve been around because there’s something different in the way we think. And the difference is that we think in terms of business.”

Alt told the students of Susanne Shand that “the business of fashion and the business world are really one in the same.”

Great clothes, great shoes, great fashion and great parties aside, modeling is “the hardest job you’ll ever love in your life,” Alt said. “If you’re not 100 percent focused on this business and this career; it’s not what you want to do. This takes everything you have out of you. It’s nights, it’s weekends, it’s holidays, it’s birthdays, as my sister can attest to.

It’s everything. So once you decide you want to do this, the most important thing is to focus. And that’s what I was able to do because I came into this business as a 17-year-old kid. I didn’t know from anything. Alt was waiting on an ROTC scholarship as a high school senior, when she decided to try her hand at modeling. “Always have an alternate plan,” she said. She got the ROTC scholarship, but found modeling more appealing.

Alt told the students – who are studying design as part of the curriculum – there are a number of aspects to the fashion industry in addition to modeling, including agent, photographer, stylist, and studio prop handler. “But behind all of that the real engine that makes this whole thing run is the designer. Without the designer, the model has no job. Nothing to wear. Whoops! Without a designer you don’t have anyone to print in a magazine … a photographer doesn’t have a job.”

Designers never work by themselves, she said.

“There’s the business mind and the creative mind. Gianfranco Ferre had Dario (Pagliuca). And Valentino had Giancarlo (Giammetti). There’s always a creative mind and a business mind.”

When Alt faced the end of her lifespan as a model in 1983, she asked, “What do I do now?”

She knew marketing would be the key to her success.

“Marketing is everything. You can have the best product in the world; no marketing? Nobody knows about it. You can have the worst product in the world and the best marketing and you have a hit,” she said.

“My product is me; that’s all I got. I’m not creating anything … other than showing up in a studio and having my picture taken. I made other people’s creations look great.”

She considered doing a poster as a means of marketing herself. She took the idea to her agency. “They looked like I was crazy. John Casablancas said no way. I went to my agent and asked how can I do this without John.”

She did the poster and followed it up with four others, all successful.

But she said it got boring. While living with model Janice Dickinson, Dickinson and her sister, Debbie, landed a calendar assignment for Suntory beer in Japan. So Alt asked why not a calendar for herself? She made the suggestion to her agency and they gave it to another model. “I did my own and had five successful calendars.”

In 1987, Alt was onto exercise videos. Then it was two books on health. And then it was her own skin care line.
Alt told the class that to find something that they each really love and stick with it.

“It’s a real long (life) to do something you really don’t love to do.”

Her parting advice to the class was:
“My wish for all of you here is that the decisions you make further what it is you want to do and don’t hinder it. As you get older and you get out in the business world you’re gonna see that’s probably the most difficult thing in the whole world; to do the thing that’s right to further your career and at the same time make you feel good about what you’re doing.”

The workouts

Actress Ricki Lake, 39, has dropped an astonishing 127 pounds over the past few years, from 250 pounds to 123 pounds—all without surgery or pills, she says. Lake told Us she lost those last stubborn 20 pounds by following a strict 1,200-calorie-a-day diet. For exercise, Ricki now takes 90-minute hikes and does weight training three times a week.

Oscar winner Renee Zellweger, 40, is an avid swimmer and yoga enthusiast, but running is her true passion, reports Marie Claire. “That’s my alone time….my thinking time,” she has said. Zellweger jogs up to five miles per session several times a week, and when she hits the gym, she focuses on circuit training.

Dropping that baby weight

Few things are more mind-boggling than when celebs regain their pre-pregnancy figures in record time. Being a mom myself, I can affirm that it takes patience and consistent effort to get back in shape after nine months of pregnancy. These days, many Hollywood stars recapture their taut physiques almost immediately after birth—-some only a couple of months after delivery! Here are their secrets.

Brunette stunner Jessica Alba lost almost all of the 25 lbs. she gained during pregnancy just three months after giving birth to daughter, Honor Marie, in June 2008. “Jessica went from a size 8 to a size 4 pretty quickly,” Alba’s personal trainer, Ramona Braganza, told People.

Alba, 28, who has been a fitness fanatic for years, got back into shape by following a low-fat, low-carb diet and working out six times a week. Jessica’s exercise routine centers around cardio workouts using an elliptical machine and treadmill, as well as circuit training and core exercises. “[The workouts] were horrible,” Aba has said. “I cried.”

Few things can strike terror in the hearts of women more than having to strut down a catwalk in their underwear in front of millions of people. Well, that’s exactly what supermodel Heidi Klum had to do–not once, but twice! In Nov. 2008, the 36-year-old mother of three bared her superfit physique in her skivvies at the 2008 Victoria’s Secret Runway Show. Klum, who’s now pregnant with her fourth child (husband Seal is the proud dad), maintains her hot bod with rigorous strength training and cardiovascular exercise three to five times a week and consumes a moderate 1,700-2,000 calories a day.

Extreme eating

Defying age apparently isn’t a problem if you’re supermodel Carol Alt. Alt, who at 48 looks as radiant as she did in her modeling heyday in the 1980s, attributes her youthful good looks and fit body to a raw food diet. Basically, this means she feasts on lots of uncooked fruits and vegetables, limits processed foods and doesn’t heat food above 118 degrees. “This is guilt free eating. My body got younger and my face got younger,” Alt has said. While eating only raw foods isn’t a program most people can follow, it’s hard to argue with the results.

When pop star Beyonce Knowles needed to drop weight fast for her role in the 2006 musical Dream Girls, she turned to the controversial Master Cleanse diet. Knowles, 27, told reporters she lost 20 lbs in two weeks on the extreme diet. The cleanser, which is basically a juice fast where dieters drink only the prescribed blend of cayenne pepper, lemon, maple syrup and water several times a day, has been used by other celebs like Spice Girl Geri Halliwell and actor Billy Bob Thornton to drop the pounds quickly.

A saner approach

For those people who want to get in shape without resorting to exercise binges or extreme diets, it’s doable: Eat healthier and be more active on a consistent basis. Boring advice, but effective.

Written by Samantha Chang. Originally published on: www.examiner.com

“Then there’s the raw milk issue. Do you know that there’s a ‘coven’ of people in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen devoted to raw milk? You have to know someone who knows someone before you’re allowed to join it, because it’s a felony in New York to sell raw milk! How ridiculous is that?! If you obtain raw milk from a farm, it can only be for your own personal use and you can only give a donation to the farm, as opposed to actually purchasing the milk, unless they have a real (meaning taxable) sales stand. Naturally, the farmer and his family are all drinking the raw milk that they don’t sell or give away; they aren’t getting their milk from a supermarket, for heaven’s sake. Well, guess what: If it’s good enough for the farmer’s baby to drink, it’s good enough for me!

“I was able to find – online, of course – a farm in California that would sell me 100% raw almonds. Another company sells me the raw pickles that I love and I give them to my friends. We all used to buy these things at our Whole Foods market, but they made it so difficult for us to get the items we need that we now shop online.

“So…I wrote a letter to Whole Foods a few months ago. I wanted to know why I could no longer find the truly raw products that I was looking for, such as pickles, even though they carry raw sauerkraut; or Just Picked frozen orange juice, which is not a concentrate nor pasteurized – it’s the pure juice as you’d drink it, but frozen. How come the Whole Foods in California can sell raw milk, but the one in New York, where I live, can’t?

“I have to say I was really happily surprised when I received a response from Whole Foods in the form of a phone call from one of their in-house RAW FOODS chefs! It showed that they had actually read my letter and taken my concerns seriously. The chef was very knowledgeable and she gave me a lot of pertinent information. Her basic answer to my specific questions was ‘it’s the law’.

“I interpret that to mean the law of supply and demand. If enough of their customers were as concerned about their health and what they put into their bodies as I am, stores like Whole Foods would make sure that they supplied the products we demand. They could at least make it easier for their customers to locate and identify the raw foods that they do stock. A huge company such as this has it within its power to be lobbying the lawmakers to use common sense when it comes to regulating the foods that the public should have the right to choose for itself.

“I wish that everyone I know would just sit down and write a letter to Whole Foods, or to their own neighborhood healthy foods market, and request that they increase their stock of raw foods AND make it simpler to locate those foods within the stores. I’m really getting tired of having to constantly phone or write my local stores, just to verify if a product they tout as “raw” really, truly is.

“Remember: I had cancer once upon a time and the only “treatment” I chose to follow was a raw food regimen. I absolutely believe it saved my life and that it’s the only way to keep my body healthy…for the rest of my life. I love it; I love the flavors of the foods I consume; and most of all, I love the way I feel. I just want the organic/health food grocers to get on board and stock as many of the raw foods as they possibly can. I really don’t think that’s asking too much.”

Carol was happy that Whole Foods cared enough to address her issues, at least by making that phone call in response to her letter. Now she’s keeping tabs on the changes that may result from that interaction. As things progress (or not), she’ll keep everyone posted.

Two Sports Illustrated covers, lucrative contracts with Cover Girl Cosmetics and Hanes, countless fashion magazine covers… Carol Alt was flying high as one of the most famous faces and bodies on the planet throughout the eighties and early nineties. Playboy Magazine called Carol “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World,” and Life Magazine dubbed her “The Next Million Dollar Face.” She played Howard Stern’s fantasy woman in 1997’s hit biopic chronicling Stern’s life and career, Private Parts.

Carol Alt also found herself in the same precarious situation as most models, having to maintain an impossible body weight (125 lbs. on her 5′10 ½ frame) and eating very little, for years, as a result. During our conversation, Carol also shared with me her past lack of education about food and nutrition and how years of poor eating habits came to a head at the age of 34, when she found herself rundown and not feeling well on a regular basis. After a serendipitous phone call with an old friend and encounter with a holistic physician, Carol Alt explains how she became educated in nutrition and what the body needs to function at an optimum level of health and well being. She learned about the immense benefits of raw organic eating and started on a new path toward a lifestyle that would become her life’s passion. Now, at the age of 45 she says she feels better than she did in her twenties. Since embarking on this journey more than ten years ago, Carol has written the book, Eating in the Raw, in which she shares her own personal experiences and provides a “how to” guide that anyone can follow, for finding and preparing raw foods.

PR.com (Allison Kugel): In your early thirties you were experiencing some chronic health problems?

Carol Alt: Here’s the thing…I guess because I’m surrounded by young people all the time in the [modeling and entertainment] industry…there’s always somebody coming up behind you. I got a chance on a trip to Venezuela to work with a nineteen-year-old girl and I was about 34 years old at the time. I saw this girl happy, fun, full of energy. She was jumping on tables. Now I’m the name on the project, technically the big star there, but the entire crew was drawn to her because she had energy and she was jumping and she was laughing and everybody was having a good time with her. And I was kind of tired and sitting on the side. They were putting her in g-strings and I was hiding myself behind rocks, because the flight had made me bloat. I only had the one day [down there] and I was literally hiding behind rocks. As I got on the plane to go home I was sitting there thinking, “What happened to me as a body, as a person…between, say, 25 and 34?” At 34 years old I was on allergy medicines for my sinuses, I was taking eight Tums a night for acid stomach, and I was really, really tired. My body was starting to change. I was eating less food. I was already eating no food to maintain my weight at 125 lbs. at 5′10 ½” as a model. Now at 34, even starving myself for two days wasn’t getting me down to my fighting weight. It didn’t matter how much I worked out. I was up to 135 lbs. at that point and just couldn’t get it off, and I just couldn’t eat any less food. It took me Nyquil to fall asleep, it took me coffee to wake up. And it wasn’t like, “Oh my god, I have to have it!” It was just something I did. It was just my routine.

PR.com: It sounds kind of extreme though. It sounds like, maybe you were doing the opposite of what you’re doing right now, and sort of really letting yourself go.

Carol Alt: But here’s the thing, Allison…it wasn’t extreme! It was pretty normal. Look what people take! I wasn’t feeling extreme. I was just like, “Everybody takes Nyquil when they have the flu.” It just makes me fall asleep so much faster. It gets into your veins. You can feel it going in…you know what I mean? It’s a drug, even though it’s over the counter. My point is, at 34 years old, I was experiencing those things that everybody was calling “aging.” You’re just getting older. All my girlfriends say, “Oh, I hit the wall. I just started gaining weight. All of a sudden I got wrinkles. All of a sudden this. All of a sudden that.” My point to you is it wasn’t all of a sudden.

PR.com: When did you first start to feel your body not cooperating?

Carol Alt: It was this trip (her trip to Venezuela) because I got to see somebody in front of me who was like I was at nineteen. And my question was, “How did I get where I was at 34?” My acid stomach I looked at as a badge of courage. I’m stressed, I’m the highest paid model in the world, I’m doing four films a year…I wore it as a red badge of courage. But truthfully, I’m just as stressed now. I probably work harder and I do more diverse things, and I haven’t taken a Tums in ten or eleven years.

PR.com: How did you learn about raw eating? Because you’re saying, I was not liking the state of my mind and my body. How did you find the solution?

Carol Alt: Coming back from that trip made me very depressed. And I thought, “You know, I just don’t feel like working anymore. I don’t feel like being in L.A. I don’t feel like pounding down people’s doors for parts.” So I took off to the desert. I went to my mother-in-law’s house. Nobody had the number there. And I just remember being there and trying to relax, but just tired and not feeling like doing anything. I thought, “What’s happening to me?” And I remembered my father saying to me, and my father died of Liver Cancer in 1983 on Christmas morning, my father said to me just before he died, he said “Carol Ann, I should’ve known there was something wrong with me when I didn’t feel like working.” And my father and I are exactly alike. I am my father’s daughter. I love to work, I love my job, I love the people that I meet and I didn’t feel like working anymore. Something in my head said there’s something seriously wrong. This is not aging. And certainly if I was aging at this rate, what am I going to be like at 45, 55, or 65?

PR.com: Yeah, because 34 is not all that old…

Carol Alt: Exactly. But people were saying, “Oh don’t worry about it. That’s just aging. Oh yeah, I get headaches too. Oh yes, I have acid stomach.” I was experiencing the things that are actually normal for most people. Depression here and there, bloat at their period, moodiness, tired…those were the things that normal 34 year olds were experiencing. But my mind was going analytical. If I want to keep a career, if I want to… I can’t believe life is supposed to be like this at 34, because they’re saying our lives are longer and more productive and I’m thinking, “This is 34!” So I just remember being in the desert and thinking, “God, please! There’s got to be something more than this. You’ve made me somewhat famous. Allow me to do something with this fame. I want to do charity work. I want to do things to help people, and I feel like I’m dying and I need your help.” And I swear to God that he answers whenever you do that. I got a phone call from a friend of mine, and I write about it in my book (Eating in the Raw), at my mother-in-law’s house. Now how many friends of yours have your mother-in-law’s number? None! I Go, “How did you get this number?” and he said, “I have no clue. I just have this number for you.” He goes, “I have to tell you this…you’re the healthiest person I know, so you’ll appreciate this…” And I’m thinking, “Holy cow, if I’m the healthiest person this guy knows my PR is doing a very good job, because I personally am feeling like garbage.” He goes, “My girlfriend is 22 years old and they wanted to do a radical hysterectomy on her. She was full of cancer. I took her to this doctor. Everybody was saying [we were] crazy. We went against every doctor, but I’m telling you, he will make you look at food like you’ve never looked at food before. He will change your life! You will not be able to eat with friends and watch what they put in their mouth, because you will know they are poisoning themselves. In six months, he cured my girlfriend of cancer. She just got a negative biopsy.”

PR.com: This is an alternative doctor he took her to?

Carol Alt: This was an M.D. in Los Angeles. I write about it in the book. His name is Dr. Timothy Brantley. Dr. Brantley doesn’t say he cured her. It’s not a word he’s allowed to use. Just so you understand the technical problems with using that language…

PR.com: No, I’m sure. I understand…

Carol Alt: That was the word that my friend said to me. Now that girl, who they wanted to do a radical hysterectomy on, that meant take everything out, just had a baby two years ago. So you tell me what’s cured.

PR.com: This was from putting her on a raw diet?

Carol Alt: He put her on a raw diet, juiced her, did high colonics, clean outs. Put her on his herbs, enzymes and supplements. Just basically taught her how to re-build her body, which at 22 she could do really easily because she was 22! She had a lot of reserves and she was able to do that. At that point I just thought, “If that [doctor] could do that with that girl with cancer, could you imagine what he could do for me with all the stupid little aging things that are making me crazy?” I don’t want to be like everybody else. I want to be happy. I see all my friends on Prozac and Zoloft and all this kind of stuff. I don’t want that for my life. I don’t want to be on all these OTCs (over the counter medications). I just thought, “What the heck?” And I gave the guy a call, putting all ego aside, because believe me, I rolled my eyes when Steve told me about this. I don’t know man. Just a voice inside of me said, “Don’t be an idiot! You need something. Check it out.” I called the doctor and left a message. He called me back and we started chatting. He asked me what I eat. I said, “Well I love turkey heroes, I eat pasta for dinner but with tomato sauce, not cream sauce, because I’m watching my weight. I have my coffee in the morning. If I’m not working, I’ll put a little scotch in it and whip cream and make it my only drink. I only drink once a day, that’s it.” I’m making all these excuses for my diet. He just listened and finally he said, “Do you eat any vegetables?” I said, “If I eat a salad it just doesn’t fill me up,” and he said “That’s because you eat iceberg lettuce.” He starts talking about the food and he goes, “I’m surprised that with your food, you don’t have sinus problems, trouble falling asleep, colds and flues.

(Carol suffered chronically from all of these conditions).

I got colds and flues all the time, after every movie [I did]. Ten days. As soon as the movie [wrapped], I’d land in New York and I’d be sick in bed for ten days…

PR.com: Just from being on set and being in close proximity to other people?

Carol Alt: Allison, they would say, “Oh my god! Cough cough cough, Carol Alt! I’ve always wanted to meet you!” And then extend their hand to me. Three months on a movie and so many people come in and out of my space.

PR.com: Right, and the long hours…

Carol Alt: Yeah, long hours and tired. People wanting to meet you, and coughing in their hand and then sticking their hand out to you. I got to the point where people thought I was such a diva because I’m like, “I have to have my own hair and makeup!”

PR.com: I’m not a shaking hands kind of a person, so I don’t blame you. I don’t like that.

Carol Alt: Yeah, I mean, I would rather chest to chest hug…

PR.com: Yeah, I am not a fan of shaking hands.

Carol Alt: Yeah and when they kiss, I just kind of do ear to ear…

PR.com: Yeah.

Carol Alt: Yeah. So, then Dr. Brantley asked, “Are you depressed?” And I said, “Yeah. I go through mood swings.” Then he asked about PMS problems and I said, “Yeah, they just started.” And I had a rash and the doctor told me it was Poison Sumac! It turned out to be…the yeast was coming through my skin. And I went, “Oh my god! That’s what that rash is! It’s not gone away for three months!” I said to [Dr. Brantley], “Ok, I’m coming to see you.” I got in the car and drove up to L.A. the first moment he had free. And he diagnosed me, literally, right in the pharmacy in Santa Monica [California]. He looked at my feet, he looked at my hands, he looked at my eyes, he looked at my tongue. He sat me down in a restaurant and he started to teach me about food. And in that moment…you know when you so profoundly know you were given a gift?

PR.com: Yes.

Carol Alt: There has been three times in my life when that’s happened to me. Once was when I walked into the agency and the entire agency just stopped dead and I knew I was where I was supposed to be…

PR.com: You’re talking about your modeling career…

Carol Alt: For my modeling career. This was the second. I just knew my life, in that moment, was never going to be the same. He talked to me and I put my finger up and said, “Wait a second.” I ran out to my car and got my date book, came back and I said, “I don’t want to forget anything.” He said, “You’re my first patient that’s ever written anything down.” I said, “Doctor, this is so speaking to me. I just know this is the right thing.”

PR.com: How did you make, not just the intellectual connection, but the emotional connection? Because it’s one thing to say that you know your not eating well and this is the right way to eat, but now [you] have to have the discipline and the follow through…

Carol Alt: It was no discipline. You have to understand something. I was starving myself (referring to the eating habits she maintained to stay at 125 lbs.). That was discipline. I was trying to maintain weight. I was not eating what I wanted to eat, and that’s the mistake that everybody makes when they think, “Eww, raw food. Oh my god, I can’t have the discipline!” I eat everything that a football player would eat! I just eat it prepared differently. That’s the end. I’m not Vegan. I eat raw milk and cheeses. They’re unpasturized. I eat meat if I want to; carpaccio, tartar, or even a seared steak.

PR.com: Ok, I have to ask you about that. Most people who are raw foodists, by definition, they are Vegan…

Carol Alt: That’s not true. It’s just that Vegans are more verbal about being Vegan.

PR.com: So there are plenty of raw foodists who eat animal products?

Carol Alt: Absolutely. Vegan and Raw Food are not hand in hand in my book. And if you’ve read my first book, Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez …he wrote the foreword to my book and now he’s written the foreword to my second book…this is a man who has studied this. My whole thing is about health and what’s right for each and every individual body. We have to go back to what our ancestors ate because each body is different. For example, the Eskimos only ate fat. They ate no grains at all. They lived on ice. They were very capable and they had no cancer, nothing. No high blood pressure, no problems. They got everything they needed.

PR.com: Here’s why I get confused. I’ve been to the restaurant, Raw, in Santa Monica [CA]. Their chef, Juliano, and all of those other raw chefs…they will look at you and say that animal products are the reason why people get sick. The reason people have heart problems, cancer… you name it. If you eat a plant based diet you will be…

Carol Alt: Are they a doctor?

PR.com: No, but this is why I’m confused.

Carol Alt: They’re giving you an opinion…

PR.com: It’s confusing!

Carol Alt: They’re giving you an opinion, as I am giving you an opinion. But I am basing my opinion on a doctor’s research, and the research that’s in books. There was a man… Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez [who] put his name in my book. This guy researched the world over. He spent two or three years traveling the world and he went to every remote place. He went to Alaska and saw them eating fat; he went to The Amazon and saw them eating only grains and no animals at all; he went to the valleys of Switzerland; He went to Africa. Every diet was different. But the people there had been adapted to that diet since the very beginning. So how I found out what to eat for me is I actually went to Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez and had him do a hair test on me. He told me I’m a moderate vegetarian, which means, and here’s the difference, if I don’t have fish I don’t feel good. If I have too much meat, it’s too acid for me. My boyfriend, he can’t survive without meat. He gets literally pale and sick without meat. So I’m sitting here looking at different people and I’m saying, “What’s good for one is not good for another.” We are not one blanket, one person in this entire world. We’re trying to homogenize the world today. But we’re not. Everybody comes from a different stock. You can’t take an Eskimo, and they did this… the Eskimos came down and they started eating the western diet, and they’re now full of cancer and everything. You’ve gotta understand where cancer is coming from. Cancer is an acid reaction. We’re cooking food. That’s acid.

PR.com: What is this concept of alkaline versus acid?

(Carol prefaces her next comment by stating that she is not a doctor and is simply relaying information that she has been educated with.)

Carol Alt: This is just based on the research that I’ve found and what I found with my own body and from the doctors that I’ve worked with. I was taught by Dr. Timothy Brantley that the body is acid by nature but alkaline by necessity. That means when we work out, when we stress, when we digest food… whatever we do, we make eight different kinds of acids. Hydrochloric Acid, Lactic Acid…you name it, we make it. We don’t make anything alkaline. But our organs like to sit in a neutral PH. Well how do we do that? If our bodies are only producing acid, how do we get our organs to sit in a neutral PH? Well, if you pull spinach out of the ground and it’s on the alkaline side, but you cook that spinach and now it becomes a tub of acid, what do you do? Do you cook it?

PR.com: Ok, so by cooking food you’re making it acidic?

Carol Alt: You change the PH as well as the molecular structure, as well as de-naturing the vitamins and minerals, as well as killing the enzymes. Here’s the problem. People are like, “Well they ate wheat way back when and they made bread.” Yeah, they germinated their grains. They ate the whole grain. They put them into patty cakes and they laid them in the sun. What is that? That’s dehydration. When we started creating ovens, we started dehydrating things faster and at a higher heat. The trade off was, at the higher heat we killed the enzymes and de-natured the vitamins and minerals. Those four things are the most important things the body needs. And when you give the body everything it needs it can cure itself, in my opinion, from anything. Because every disease we have is from de-generation; from the body breaking down. Well don’t you think acid breaks down the body? It destroys cars; rusts them right out! Molecular structure. Do you put tea in your car? Why not? It looks like gas. It’s liquid like gas. It’s the same color as gas. Why don’t you put tea in your car? The molecular structure is different. The car can’t read the molecular structure of tea. Well, our body is brilliant and it can read the molecular structure of a lot of things, but when you change the molecular structure to the point where it looks like a toxin to the body, it’s going to react to the food like a toxin. We call that allergies.

PR.com: So when food is in its natural state, it’s alkaline.

Carol Alt: Your body’s 5.5 and you put an 8.0 alkaline in it…you get a neutral PH. It’s that simple.

PR.com: And the enzymes in food, when food is in its natural state or when food is alive… most of us are missing these vital enzymes?

Carol Alt: Here’s what happens. Your body’s brilliant. And we stress it out completely all the time. And when disease starts to happen it’s just because the body got to the point where it’s so stressed and it’s so not getting what it needs that it just starts breaking down. So when you eat a food and it has its own enzymes and vitamins and minerals, that food goes into your mouth and you start to break it down, and it activates the enzymes in the food. It goes down into your stomach. Your stomach doesn’t have to do anything. The enzymes in the food break it down. The hydrochloric acid helps, and it gets digested. Out of that food comes the natural vitamins and minerals, because they’ve not been cooked. So for example, when you take Calcium, you don’t just take Calcium. Look at every Calcium there is. It says Calcium with Magnesium and Vitamin D. Why is that? Because Calcium can’t be absorbed unless it’s in the presence of Magnesium and Vitamin D. Some vitamins are not bothered by heat but some are. You de-nature their natural [state]. So all of a sudden, these de-natured vitamins and minerals no longer react the same. And their partners no longer react to them the same. So now the body doesn’t absorb them the same. If you’re eating raw food and you get these vitamins and minerals in a little compact perfect state, your body goes, “Oh yummy!” and absorbs it. Out of those vitamins and minerals, amino acids, and essential fatty acids your body is building itself. It builds its immune system, it rebuilds your hair, your skin, your nails, because your body is shedding its stuff all the time and it needs something to rebuild from. It’s keeping the integrity of the organs. It’s creating enzymes in the blood from the protein.

PR.com: Going back to the raw fishes, meats and cheeses, everything you’re getting you can get at your local Whole Foods Market?

Carol Alt: A lot of things you can. A lot of things you go on websites. I go to my butcher. He orders our meat for us. I go all the places you go. I eat all the foods you eat. I just ask for different things. I go to a restaurant and if they won’t cook my fish seared, I know it’s not fresh fish. Why would I even want to eat that cooked? Let’s get real! I want the best for me. Now, here’s the other thing, Allison; there are people out there who are enzyme deficient, who have no reserves left, who already have health problems. Raw foods can be hard to eat when you’re not used to it. That’s why I say, you work with a doctor on your diet. Find out what type of body you are. Like I said, I’m a moderate Vegetarian. I need fish. Some people don’t. Some people are Vegans, and it’s good for them. Some people eat meat and it’s good for them. [Go to] a physician who is versed in raw food, who is not a quack, who is a real genuine doctor. Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez is an M.D., but he also reaches out into alternatives because he’s looking at what we’re doing as a society and wondering what’s happening. Well you know the definition of insanity, right?

PR.com: Doing the same thing over and over and…

Carol Alt: And expecting to get different results…

PR.com: Yes! (Laughs)

Carol Alt: Well people are eating these foods and they’re breathing in this pollution and they’re not eating organic stuff and they’re not eating what their body needs and they’re getting sick, but they’re still continuing that and then taking a pill. I’m just thinking, “That’s not the way God created us, is it?”

PR.com: Well it breaks my heart when I see my parents and my grandparents being put on more and more medication as they get older.

Carol Alt: Yeah, because they have this problem and then they take a pill and that pill causes this reaction…

PR.com: Yup.

Carol Alt: Listen, I’ve got friends who are my age, I’ve got friends who are younger… I’ve got friends in their twenties on anti depression pills. What’s happening? I’m just looking at what’s happening and saying, “I don’t want to do the insanity.”

PR.com: Do you believe that a condition like depression can be, and I’m not asking you to testify to it, but…

Carol Alt: What do you think was happening to me? I was depressed, I was tired, I was moody! I was so unhappy. And hey, people are calling me the most beautiful woman in the world! And I’m going like, “Why am I so depressed?!”

PR.com: Do you think [depression] is from malnutrition?

Carol Alt: If depression is a chemical imbalance in the body, which is, I believe what the doctors are saying. Correct?

PR.com: Yes.

Carol Alt: Okay. How do we get chemically imbalanced? Something in our bodies are going wrong or something in our bodies are not able to fend off whatever is assaulting that body; pollution or whatever. I believe God is brilliant and he’s created a body and thought in the future about what we were going to be doing to ourselves and he’s created a body that can deal with all that if we feed it correctly. Bottom line. So yes, I believe that just about anything can be taken care of with proper diet. The problem is, nobody teaches you what a proper diet is. And nobody teaches you what the proper diet is for you. Now I can’t tell you, “Allison, you are a moderate vegetarian metabolizer.” So how can Juliano (famous raw vegan chef from the Los Angeles restaurant, “Raw”) or anybody else say, “You’re Vegan.”

PR.com: Well, I’ll tell you something, there have been three times in my life that I attempted a vegan diet. And all three times I felt a little bit weak until I started to incorporate some animal protein back into my diet.

Carol Alt: You’re probably a moderate vegetarian metabolizer, because I get the same way.

PR.com: Yeah, and I said “What’s up?!” This is supposed to be the healthiest diet in the world.

Carol Alt: It’s not healthy if it’s not right for you. Go to a doctor. Find out what you are.

PR.com: In your book, Eating in the Raw, what exactly is the book comprised of besides your personal story?

Carol Alt: [The book] is a beginner’s guide. It’s a resource book. There’s just so much stuff out there now. There are so many things you can eat and so many people experimenting with fabulous stuff that you can buy just about anywhere. And the big argument is that it’s so expensive. Here’s the thing. If I’m being nutritioned… first you have to build your body to the point where you are nutritioned. That took me two or three months. If you’re nutritioned and your eating food that nutritions you: a) you’ll eat way less food; b) you don’t snack because you don’t need it; c) anything that you buy out there can be made by yourself…cheaper. A dehydrator costs fifty bucks… an oven costs hundreds of dollars. You know what I’m saying? Most important, I don’t take any over-the-counter drugs. It was forty bucks every week and a half for whatever I was taking.

PR.com: So you’re probably going to make less trips to the doctor, less trips to the pharmacy, less trips to the dentist and so on…

Carol Alt: I don’t advocate that. I go check with my doctor all the time…

PR.com: But I mean as far as having a million different ailments that need to be looked into…

Carol Alt: Yeah. I don’t have all those ailments anymore. I know they went away for me, and I know I’m no different than you. I just know that the difference between me and you is I don’t want to be 60 in a bed somewhere with my arm paralyzed because I had a freakin’ stroke!

PR.com: What’s happening to me right now is, I just turned 32 a few weeks ago, and all of a sudden…

Carol Alt: All of a sudden! See, you said it!

PR.com: Yeah. All of a sudden I’m like, “Aging, aging…oh my God. Oh my God.”

Carol Alt: Wait till you hit 40! See how you age at 40. That’s just it. It doesn’t get better… unless you do something different. That’s my point. I’m just saying, raw food is all around you. It’s there more and more. And it’s great. It tastes good. Not only that, it tastes better than cooked food. When you find the things that you like you won’t be able to, literally, live without it. What can be a better gift from God, to you as a child of God, than that? The only gift we have is health. I don’t care how much money you have. I don’t care what Mercedes you are driving. When you get sick, there is nothing in the world that is more precious to you than getting healthy.

PR.com: I’m glad that you said that. I think it’s so important for people who are perceived to have so many material things to say something like that, because the majority of people out there don’t have an overabundance of material things so they are almost more fixated on that then on their physical well being and their emotional well being.

Carol Alt: You know what, if you’re not healthy, I don’t care if you’re Donald Trump. If you’re not healthy, how long do you think you’re going to be around to enjoy those things that you’ve earned. There’s nothing more fabulous than having healthy, happy family around you. And there’s nothing more depressing than having family around you and they’re dying young. My brother died last year. Fifty years old. He wanted to live fast, live hard, die young. Well he got his wish, but look what happens to the people around you. So when you eat crappy like that, your health affects everybody around you. My brother left three kids at fifty years old. My father left me. Do you think everyday I don’t think about the fact that if I would have known then what I know now that I could have saved my father’s life?! I think about it every day.

PR.com: In body, mind and spirit, how old do you feel?

Carol Alt: I feel better than I did in my twenties.

Alt is a dedicated mentor to aspiring models, and uses her books as platforms to help young women succeed – and survive – in this demanding arena. “Much of what I write about within these pages happened to me, or to other young women who rose through the ranks with me. I hope that This Year’s Model and Model, Incorporated will help give a healthy awareness of what it really takes to make it big…what really goes on certainly isn’t covered in today’s highly-glossed reality TV platforms.”

Keeping an eye towards nurturing future talent, supermodel Alt launched a contest in 2008 to put a face to Model, Incorporated covergirl ”Mac” discovered a truly fresh new face: young university student Rianna Hardesty won an online competition engineered by the author, in conjunction with her publisher and the fashionable retailer Lord & Taylor, and her gorgeous visage graces the cover of Model, Incorporated.

This Year’s Model introduced readers to Melody Ann Croft, a stunningly beautiful young woman who is discovered by a well-known fashion photographer while waiting tables in Morristown, NJ to make money for college. Now, in MODEL, INCORPORATED, Melody—rechristened Mac Croft by her agent—wants to take her career to the next level. But is she prepared to make the sacrifices this cutthroat business demands?

Mac is a small town girl with a level head and a loving family; so far, she’s kept herself well- grounded enough to avoid the pitfalls and temptations of the fashion industry. But after getting a sweet taste of success (glam gigs, flying around the world first class and staying in five-star hotels) — her attitudes and priorities are changing.

Modeling was supposed to be a short detour on her way to college; now it’s hard to imagine trading a life of catwalks and cameras for one of lectures and books. Making it to the top, though, requires a punishing routine of racing around Manhattan for go-sees and photo shoots, not to mention demoralizing rejection and the outright hostility of a certain Chanel-clad executive. Meanwhile, the pressure to be stick-thin leads Mac into some dangerous habits.

Filled with wit, warmth and plenty of fabulous designer labels, Alt’s second novel will make readers fall even deeper for Mac, as she tries to keep it real in a business built on fantasy.

Some photos from Rianna’s photo shoot

Cheryl Tiegs and Carol Alt at The Met

Every year, Vogue Magazine hosts a gala social event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. This spring, a spectacular dinner was held in the museum’s Egyptian wing, in the Temple of Dendur. The guests – celebrities and socialites – pay literally thousands of dollars per plate, with the profits going toward keeping the museum in the black. Back in the 1990s, when Anna Wintour took over as editor of American Vogue, she also took control of this annual event, making it even more glamorous than it already was.

This year’s theme was “The Model as Muse” – how artists, designers, stylists, editors and such get their inspiration from models. “It was a fantastic evening”, Carol Alt reports. “The hosts were Kate Moss and Justin Timberlake, who also were the co-chairs along with Anna Wintour and designer Marc Jacobs. That was just for starters. I saw so many stars on the red carpet, it was incredible! Renee Zellweger, Jessica Biehl, Shalom, Amber Valetta, Cheryl Tiegs, Bono, Kate Hudson, Iman, Kanye West (who also performed on-stage), Heidi Klum…the list just goes on and on. There were over a thousand guests there!

“You know, everyone thinks I must have worked with every famous photographer in the world, but…that isn’t exactly the case. There’s a really great photographer named Peter Lindberg, with whom I never got to work. So when I saw him, I actually walked across the room to say hello to him. He got up out of his chair and said, ‘Oh, my god! Carol Alt!’ I said, ‘How come we’ve never worked together?’ and he laughed and said, ‘I don’t know. That was a huge mistake!’ And then he added, ‘But life’s not over…!’ He is just amazing!

“Of course, I also had a chance to see some old friends, such as Paulina Porizkova, who was on last year’s ‘Dancing With The Stars’, looking as gorgeous as ever. I’ve known Paulina since practically the very beginning of her career. In fact, she and I did a film together, which became a cult hit, called ‘Portfolio’. I finally got to meet her husband, Ric Ocasek, of The Cars, who’s also is a music producer. The night of this gala also happened to be their 25th anniversary, so they left a little early to go have a quiet dinner together, which I thought was so beautiful.”

“The photo that accompanies this article shows me with another of my friends from the modeling world: Cheryl Tiegs. She looked absolutely amazing and it was so good to see her again! My dress, by the way, was a D-Squared creation, and I thought the Grecian style was a great fit (no pun intended!) for this particular event.”

For those of you wondering how an event such as this could possibly be held inside one of the world’s foremost museums, Carol explains:

“The Temple of Dendur is in the glass room that can be seen from the park (that would be Central Park) and it’s huge. They hold a lot of big events there, so it’s really set up to accommodate huge crowds. Can you imagine walking through the museum, holding a cocktail in your hand and “toasting” the old masters?! Then going up in the elevator to the temple and having Bono give the opening speech to a thousand celebrity guests, followed by Kanye West, who actually made his entrance by walking out through the temple to perform.

“Now, for me personally, the most amazing thing was seeing myself hanging on the wall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art…in my Sports Illustrated cover photo, no less! I had to laugh, actually. Of all of the thousands of photographs they could have chosen of me, (for example I had 15 Vogue and Bazaar covers around the world that I KNOW of!) they went with the least ‘fashion’ one. They also had each of our names written on the walls. Donald Trump came up to me at one point and I said, ‘Can you believe it? I’m hanging on the wall of the Met! Like a piece of artwork!’

“I think it’s a case of just when you think there’s nothing much left to experience with a ‘wow’ factor, along comes something like this!”

The “Model As Muse” exhibit continues at the Met through August 9, 2009, so if you’re planning a trip to New York (or already live there), be sure to make time for a visit. Carol would love to hear from you if you do go – let her know if you enjoy the exhibit as much as she enjoyed participating in it.

“I knew the results I was getting throughout the years, but at first, I thought it would seem kind of strange to have me, my mom, my sisters, and my friends reporting these fantastic results, because – let’s face it – that would tend to look like some kind of set-up. But the reality is that I was shocked by some of the results that my friends were reporting. We have testimonials on HSN, raving about the results of Raw Essentials. For example, my friend Kitty’s remarks about always having been a ‘before’, never an ‘after’, and that her skin was basically controlling her life, really moved me. She had been somewhat shy and didn’t really want people to look at her too closely, because she didn’t like the way her skin looked after having spent a great deal of time outdoors. She credits Raw Essentials with completely changing her skin and her outlook – she walked into the studio to shoot her testimonial with a whole new attitude and demeanor!

“My mother came in without makeup on her face. I can’t remember ever seeing my own mother without foundation on her skin, so for her to go on camera with nothing on her face was a total shock! Add to that the fact that she had had a 4” scar across her nose and one on her lip, both of which had all but disappeared, and it just shows how fantastic the results of using Raw Essentials can be.”

Carol explained how these testimonials came about. She and her business partner, Steven Krane, were only given a total of 5 sample packets to give away prior to launching the skincare line, so Carol gave one to her mother, one to her sister and one to her friend, Kitty. Steve gave the remaining two to women that he knew.

“Steve and I discussed the fact that it probably wouldn’t be a very good idea to only have 5 people try the products, not to mention giving them only a couple of weeks to try them out before we launched the website. Well, needless to say, it did work and the written testimonials we’ve since received are right in line with the on-camera ones.

“I’m really surprised that we got so many letters so quickly (following the launch in December) from women who wanted us to know how thrilled they were with the results they were seeing right there in their own mirrors. Talk about gratifying! One 66-year-old, for example, told us that she had never gone without foundation in her adult life, but with Raw Essentials, she was finally able to just put a little color on her face! We now have five stars on HSN, which is very rare, all based upon these letters that have been pouring in.

“My sister, Christine, has had terrible problems with her skin for years. She comes and raids my cabinets now,” Carol laughs, “just so she never runs out. She can wash her face and not worry about having an adverse reaction from some non-raw product.”

With results and word-of-mouth support such as this, it’s little wonder that Raw Essentials sold out after the soft launch in December and then again after the official premiere in January. “This wasn’t even the anti-aging line”, Carol says. “It was just the normal/sensitive skincare products that were selling out. The anti-aging products hadn’t even arrived yet!

“You know, with most other skincare lines, the big push goes to the anti-aging formulas. My own skin is maturing, of course, but I wanted to promote the normal and sensitive products first, not only because that’s what I’ve been using myself for several years, but because that is the line used by the largest number of people. I really can’t wait to see how the anti-aging products are received, once they become available!”

Carol wants to share a little about the process she went through when it came to choosing the actual packaging for the various products. “We had some complaints in the beginning about a couple of the containers – that the dispensers on the night cream and day cream weren’t working as well as they should. I want people to know that we do listen to criticisms as well as compliments and, whenever possible, we intend to correct any problems that are brought to our attention. In this case, we have already changed the bottles, because those complaints were absolutely valid. As a matter of fact, we were in such a hurry to launch the line, after so much work on the products themselves, that we accepted whatever dispensers were available at the time. We already had pre-orders, prior to the official launch and just couldn’t wait for our chosen bottles to arrive.

“We were able to immediately correct the bottle that was spraying the product too forcefully. That means that when someone re-orders that product, they’ll automatically be getting the “new and improved” dispenser.

“We also had some – not many – negative comments on the scent of the night cream. Well, those were only samples of the night cream that we gave people who ordered another skincare product. It was never intended to be the final scent. Of course, it’s understandable that nobody knew that – we never mentioned it and probably should have. Now the night cream smells exactly the same as the day cream. Those samples were a gift that we added at the last minute, using the original light ginger scent, which we already knew we were never going to use.

“I must say, it kind of amazes me how some people are so ready to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I wouldn’t care how a product smelled, if it had the results on my skin that ours does. Yes, I understand that some people are highly sensitive to certain scents, but come on! We use healthy, low temperature processed essential oils, not synthetic fragrances, and they are a light scent that dissipates leaving behind only…fabulous results!”

Carol acknowledges that starting a new company such as Raw Essentials has been a fascinating experience. Despite the difficulties of finding a laboratory that would create exactly what she wanted; the design challenges; and the entrepreneurial life in general, she is absolutely thrilled with the results. She thinks you will be, too.

“It’s been a very interesting experience, I must say”, Carol tells us. “For one thing, I ripped a 15mm tear in a muscle in my back and then there I was, dancing the jive with that kind of injury. I honestly never had a clear picture of what a dancer’s life is really like: The concentration, the intricate moves, and how incredibly technical it all is. Then there is the sheer number of dances. By the time this is finished, I’ll have learned 11 separate dances! And that includes, by the way…the Flamenco!

“Until you actually do it, you don’t really think about all the different steps and moves that go into the various ballroom dances – and each one is very, very different from the others. For example, sometimes both legs have to be kept straight; other times, they have to be bent; and then sometimes, one is straight, while the other is bent! And that’s just the lower half of your body! Some dances call for a really smooth, gliding style and then in others, you have to bounce. It’s a lot to learn and a lot of hard work before you feel comfortable doing any of it.

“I have to admit that when I accepted this project, I didn’t understand how challenging it was going to be. You know how when you’re out on a dance floor with your partner, you kind of learn how to dance together and it’s usually not any particular “formal” dance. But when you’re dancing on a professional level (or trying to!), you have to give up control and follow your partner, who, in this case, is a professional, highly experienced dancer. Of course, when I say “follow”, that also means the guys who are learning to dance with a professional female partner, too, even though they’re supposed to lead. You can’t lead OR follow if you don’t have a clue what you’re doing! And some of those moves are pretty bizarre, too.

“Take the waltz, for example. Your hips are together, his leg is placed between your legs, you’re bending backwards, with your heads away from each other and you aren’t even looking at each other!” Carol pauses and then laughs as she continues: “In the olden days, when young ladies could only dance with their chaperones in attendance, I can certainly understand why they wanted to waltz. Think about it: From the waist up, they looked like they weren’t even touching. All the “action” was from the waist down…!”

Carol was fortunate to have Raimondo Todaro, winner of previous “Ballandos”, as her partner/instructor. The unfortunate part was that Carol and Raimondo each lost a lot of valuable rehearsal time, she by having to fly to Florida for work and he by having to attend a competition in London. In addition to that, Carol was invited to join the show rather late in the game and already had commitments that prevented her from starting at the same time as the others (they began rehearsals on December 15th, but Carol wasn’t available until January 5th). The producers and agents involved were all aware of this situation when they offered Carol the show, but she is so popular in Italy that they apparently felt it was worth taking a little risk. All in all, she and Raimondo were 5 weeks behind everyone else and were never really able to catch up on that lost time – although they certainly gave it their all, as you can see in the following clip of their beautiful waltz, from Italian YouTube:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdih8fc5OwM&feature=channel_page

“Raimondo was very patient with me throughout and that really helped. For some reason, the rhumba was particularly difficult for me, because you have to keep your legs straight and the muscles tight, while executing lots of turns. But other dances, such as the tango, quick-step, waltz and jive are really good for someone of my height, because they’re somewhat looser and yet still sensual, and I found I was able to move more freely. Of course, many of the movements involved here go completely counter to the way I’ve had to move most of my life as a model.”

The competition aspect of “Ballando Con Le Stelle” is over now for Carol. She and Raimondo were eliminated after the fourth episode. Of course, that doesn’t mean her work in Italy is over quite yet, since she’ll be participating in various ways until the season ends for “Ballando” in late March.

“Tough as it was – especially knowing that we were coming into it late, with a couple of weeks less practice time than everyone else – I still feel that it was a wonderful, amazing experience. I actually enjoyed being tired physically for a change, since most of what I do now is pretty cerebral and I’m usually exhausted mentally at the end of the day, yet fully awake physically. Plus, I learned more than I could possibly have imagined and I know that from now on, I will certainly be able to hold my own on a dance floor. I’m more versed in a type of social interaction than I ever would have been otherwise, for which I am truly grateful.

“Now, if someone would just invite me to waltz in Vienna…!”

“I was so excited,” says Hardesty, 20, “but I was trying to pay attention, too.”

The contest stems from veteran supermodel Carol Alt and other industry execs, who chose four contestants from thousands of entrants. Hardesty, a Columbus native, didn’t enter herself — her mother, Kristen, did. Then Kristen didn’t tell Rianna about it until she was picked as a finalist.

On Thursday, Hardesty heard about her win, chosen by online voters. She receives a trip for two in February to New York City, where she will participate in a photo shoot with her picture likely landing on the cover of Alt’s book “Model, Inc.” While in New York, she will meet with a top modeling agency and receive a $500 wardrobe package.

Hardesty, who studies communication arts, is an intern at International Learning Community in UW-Madison’s Adams Hall, a dorm with sections concentrating on different languages.

She has never done professional modeling, but she was interested in pursuing it. “I didn’t think I’d get anywhere with it,” said Hardesty, a 2006 graduate of Columbus High School. “I have a friend really into photography and she would use me as her model. But that’s it.”

Hardesty’s mother will join her daughter in New York. They’ll meet Alt, and Rianna will receive the chance to break into a highly competitive industry.

“It’s an amazing opportunity,” she says. “Whatever comes of it, either way, I’ll enjoy it.”

Posted in Wisconsin State Journal on Dec 14, 2008

The grand prize winner, Rianna (and a guest) will be flown to New York City, where Rianna will stay for two nights in a four-star hotel. She will also receive a professional photo shoot; HarperCollins will consider the images for the cover of Carol Alt’s next book. The prize also includes a Lord & Taylor wardrobe gift valued at $500.