Last night, I attended the Fit Life Fitness Competition in Victoria, with guest speaker / clean-eating guru Tosca Reno. Her and her hubby, Robert Kennedy, had just flown in from Toronto to support the show. I was excited to finally meet my mentor…and I don’t mean Tosca.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Tosca like everyone else. She has done so much to help educate us all about the necessity of clean eating, and she’s a great ambassador for women wanting to get lean, shapely and healthy, and she herself epitomizes health, grace and beauty. But I was after her husband…in an honest kind of way!

See, when I first started lifting in my home-made gym 30 years ago, It was Robert’s pictures that graced my gym wall – pics of Arnold, Franco, Rachel and Carla. (He was the physique photographer at that time).

And when I got deeper into training, I leafed thru issues of MuscleMag Magazine, the industry’s first mag on hard-core training, still in publication today (He is also the creator and publisher of Oxygen Magazine). Robert was the first-ever to tell women to lift heavy and lift hard, in order to lose weight, tighten, tone and to create sexy, shapely bodies.

It was a special night for another reason too – the show was being held at the Royal Theatre, where I did my first-ever competition 20 years ago – the Gold’s Classic – which I won. Unknown to me, my now-husband was sitting in the crowd with his then-wife, cheering on that girl from Whistler in the tiny black bathing suit (me). Ten years later, we would meet and marry.

We talked about his work, and we laughed about the fact that my husband still has dozens of MuscleMag magazines from thirty years ago sitting in our basement that he won’t get rid of (I’ve tried, believe me!).

As we turned to leave, I asked for one more picture of us. As we hugged, he reached over, squeezed my waist and said, ‘Not bad….about 17 percent?’

Bang on, Robert. You always were the best!

Karen