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"  Anytime a woman makes a living using her body, people are inevitably fascinated by what she eats and how she works out. Just read pretty much any article written about Victoria&amp;#039;s Secret models. I&amp;#039;m completely guilty of this type of scrutiny of my fellow womankind, but I never really considered porn stars&amp;#039; physical characteristics in this way. Then last week Gabrielle Union appeared on Conan O&amp;#039;Brien&amp;#039;s show and told him that the porn stars she sees working out at her gym (she recognizes them \u2014 wink, wink) inspire her to work out harder. She even follows them to the juice bar to copy their vegan-food-ordering ways. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m on the porn diet!&amp;quot; she proclaimed. It was a funny quip and it got Union a lot of attention, but then I started really thinking about it. Absolutely nothing is left to the imagination in porn, and you see every inch of these women&amp;#039;s naked bodies, often in positions that aren&amp;#039;t so flattering. The assumption \u2014 and there have been plenty of ex-porn-star memoirs to fuel this \u2014 is often that drugs are prevalent in the industry and everyone stays fit by having coke-fueled orgies and plastic surgery. This could very well be the case, but the fact that some porn stars are working out at Gabrielle Union&amp;#039;s undoubtedly upscale LA gym aroused (heh) my curiosity about these mystical creatures/caricatures: How does a porn star stay in shape? I tracked down four adult film actresses \u2014 Dana de Armond, 34; Asa Akira, 29; Chanel Preston, 28; and Jessie Andrews, 21 \u2014 to ask. And surprisingly, their routines are more Goop than 50 Shades of Grey. (Well, except for their descriptions of which sexual positions are the most difficult and calorie-burning. Hint: Try a strap-on.) Read on to hear their fascinating conversations about body image issues, their conflicts with food, and the pressures they experience working in the porn industry.  Dana deArmond THEIR WORKOUTS Dana: I was doing the barre method for a little over a year and then I decided to not go. I was really strong, but I also kind of bulked up a little bit. [Not working out] doesn&amp;#039;t make that much difference for me because I&amp;#039;m tall. Shorter models maybe have to work a little bit harder to hide flaws because a pound or 5 looks like a lot. If I gain 5 pounds it looks great. Asa: I&amp;#039;d like to [work out] seven days but I try to force myself to take a day off. I&amp;#039;ve been going to Barry&amp;#039;s Boot Camp for 3 or 4 years now. And then the other days I&amp;#039;ll do yoga. I have tried everything. Working out is definitely addictive. I think there are a lot of drug addicts and alcoholics in porn. When they get sober it carries into the working out thing. It&amp;#039;s a different addiction. Chanel: I do work out, but I wouldn&amp;#039;t say regularly. I&amp;#039;ve been active for most of my life so it&amp;#039;s easy for me to maintain my body. Now that I&amp;#039;m in LA, I hike with my girlfriends usually every weekend. I do a lot of Pilates, too. I purposely try not to do too much [cardio work] because I don&amp;#039;t like to see really skinny girls have sex, so I don&amp;#039;t want to be that. Jessie: I do all sorts of workouts. Mostly boot camp and hiking, with some hot yoga in between. I love fun activities that don&amp;#039;t necessarily feel like a workout (dodgeball, bowling, and carrying around shopping bags).  Asa Akira THEIR DIETS Dana: If I feel like I&amp;#039;m a little bit sluggish I will just cut back on bread. I eat a lot of meat which I think is funny because Gabrielle thinks we&amp;#039;re vegan. I can&amp;#039;t even count how many times we&amp;#039;ve all freaked out over bacon! And I split my meals with my boyfriend most of the time. I&amp;#039;ll have something that is delicious but only eat half of it. I don&amp;#039;t really eat fast food or overly processed food. The food on set is a nightmare. They lay out cookies or they order pizza and I&amp;#039;m just like &amp;quot;Nooo, get it away from me!&amp;quot; And I don&amp;#039;t drink or take drugs. Asa: I&amp;#039;m hungry all the time. I eat a lot of salad with no dressing. I binge once a week, and I binge really hard. I&amp;#039;ll definitely have a pizza. I mean a whole large pizza to myself. Or a lot of Thai food. And I love Chipotle. Chanel: I don&amp;#039;t like to diet, I just don&amp;#039;t believe in it. But I also don&amp;#039;t eat like shit. I try to stay away from fast food. In the last few months I actually cut gluten out of my diet, which makes a huge difference for me. I&amp;#039;ll probably stick to that because it enables me to basically not worry about what I eat. Jessie: My diet used to be a complete mess, drinking iced soy chais from Starbucks three times a day and eating maybe one meal a day. Now I&amp;#039;ve committed to eating healthier, no bread, milk, or McDonalds. I probably have kale once day, with either fish, steak, or chicken. I&amp;#039;ve been juicing a lot too. My favorite splurge right now is Justin&amp;#039;s organic milk chocolate peanut butter cups frozen.  Jessie Andrews THE SEX MOVES THAT GIVE THEM A WORKOUT Dana: A lot of people complain about doing the reverse cowgirl position because you&amp;#039;re up top and you have to hold yourself up with your arms, kind of like a crab. You have to use your thigh muscles a lot. Yesterday I worked on a site called footworship.com and it&amp;#039;s a lot of foot jobbing \u2014 stroking dicks with your feet. It&amp;#039;s a core workout because you are basically doing a reverse crunch most of the time. My shoulders are really strong from doing scenes. Asa: I think posing for photos is a good core workout, just because you have to hold every position for so long. The stronger your core is, the easier that becomes. Reverse cowgirl is basically doing squats. If you&amp;#039;ve worked out your legs that day, to do reverse cowgirl is like torture. So I try to get out of that as much as I can. The kind of scene that is a real, real workout is when I wear a strap-on. That&amp;#039;s a lot of leg work. Chanel: Any scene is going to be difficult physically. Even a fairly easy scene. You&amp;#039;re sometimes having sex on strange objects that are hard for you to stand on so you&amp;#039;re holding yourself up by one foot. People don&amp;#039;t understand how hard we work to keep those positions going. A lot of women do dom scenes, the role reversals where we have strap-ons. We&amp;#039;re basically taking on the male role and we&amp;#039;re having to squat and do a lot of activity and be in charge. And I know it sounds stupid, but I have a huge suitcase I bring to work everyday. That thing is so heavy. Most of the time we bring our own wardrobe. I&amp;#039;m hauling that big thing everywhere I go. Jessie: The amount of work that you do all depends on what kind of performer you are. If you&amp;#039;re a new girl in the business you might just lay there and let the guy do all the work. If you&amp;#039;re a proper award-winning performer you&amp;#039;re probably doing all the work. Reverse cowgirl [is the most physically demanding]. No doubt. Imagine pulsing in a squat for 5 minutes straight. You really want to collapse after that, but it&amp;#039;s also my favorite in terms of positions, because you get the best workout.  Chanel Preston THEIR BODY IMAGES Dana: People do like softer figures so it&amp;#039;s not like you have to be a bodybuilder or anything. Alexis Texas is one of the most popular girls and she&amp;#039;s got a giant butt and she&amp;#039;s very curvy. I&amp;#039;m a size 2 and 5-foot-8 and about 125 pounds. I&amp;#039;ve been curvier, up to 140 maybe. So many people have said I&amp;#039;m too skinny or they&amp;#039;re worried about me. And I totally cop to this: I had some lipo before I was 30. It really helped just smooth everything out. I don&amp;#039;t want to portray an unrealistic body image. For porn I am natural, I don&amp;#039;t have a fake ass or fake tits, but if anybody wants to do anything to tweak their look I think they should go for it. After seeing a million pictures taken of yourself you see that one thing you don&amp;#039;t like and then go and fix it. I don&amp;#039;t want anybody to think I&amp;#039;m unhealthy or anything but I have a standard for myself. I&amp;#039;m really proud that I&amp;#039;m 34 and I look so fucking awesome. Asa: It&amp;#039;s my personal belief that every girl in porn, after you&amp;#039;ve been in it a certain amount of time, all have a certain level of body dysmorphic disorder. It&amp;#039;s because we see our own bodies so much. What I&amp;#039;ve learned in porn, no matter what your body looks like, someone&amp;#039;s gonna like that and someone&amp;#039;s gonna hate it. You can never win. But you can also kind of never lose! I just did this thing called Cool Sculpt. I did my waist. It&amp;#039;s kind of a vacuum machine. It freezes the fat cells. In the course of the next 9 weeks the fat cells die and you pee them out. People have noticed. It&amp;#039;s minor, but I want to do it again. I&amp;#039;ve never had lipo. I have my boobs done so I&amp;#039;m totally not against plastic surgery at all. I&amp;#039;m like if you can make it better, why not. But that&amp;#039;s always a slippery slope. I see a lot of girls coming into the industry looking amazing, and they fix one little thing and then they just get addicted. The next year they look like a different person, like a freak show. Chanel: I&amp;#039;ve never had anyone tell me that I look too much one way or the other. I&amp;#039;m not saying it doesn&amp;#039;t exist, but I haven&amp;#039;t had an issue with that. My big issue is my midriff area, which I think is a common thing for women. And especially in our industry we&amp;#039;re put in these really compromising positions and we&amp;#039;re not always spread out in the most flattering way. You can be put in a pretzel and anyone&amp;#039;s stomach is going to roll a little bit. Jessie: I&amp;#039;ve never felt pressured because of the industry. But I did see pictures of me when I first started shooting and told myself that I wanted to look better on camera. It really does add an extra 15 pounds. To be honest, there are so many pros and cons in the industry about weight, some companies might like you thicker and some companies might like you anorexic skinny. You can never please everyone. You just have to be yourself and go with what makes you happy and feel good.  Cheryl is a former nurse practitioner who now writes about beauty, health, fitness, and fashion. Follow her on Twitter. Photo Credit: Getty Images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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