Marilyn Monroe was one of the first Hollywood women to exercise on a regular basis,
about five days a week, with a routined fitness plan.
From as early as her marriage to Jim Dougherty, in the mid-1940s,
she had a fitness schedule which included free weights and machines.
She enjoyed activities such as weight lifting, jogging, dancing, yoga, bicycling, and long walks.
While she enjoyed the beach, she actually couldn’t swim well, as she never learned.
Arthur Miller once said, “It was the only awkward thing she ever did.”
In 1951, she told Rupert Allan,
“I study body structure because what the bones do, you do too.”
During an interview with Pageant magazine in 1952, she said:
“Each morning…I lie down on the floor beside my bed and begin my first exercise.
It is a simple bust-firming routine which consists of lifting five-pound weights
from a spread-eagle arm position to a point directly above my head.
I do this 15 times, slowly.
I repeat the exercise another 15 times from a position with my arms above my head.
Then, with my arms at a 45-degree angle from the floor, I move my weights in circles until I’m tired.
I don’t count rhythmically like the exercise people on the radio;
I couldn’t stand exercise if I had to feel regimented about it.”
During that same interview, she told Pageant,
“I spend at least 10 minutes each morning working out with small weights.”
That same year, photographer Philippe Halsman shot her for Life magazine with weights, and she joked,
“I’m fighting gravity. If you don’t fight gravity, you sag.”
In her later years, she continued to be active by taking walks, cycling, and yoga.
Due to having gallbladder surgery, her diet became very restrictive
and she had lost about 20lbs she had gained in the late 1950s due to pregnancy, stress, and some time diet-free. (с)
