It’s business as usual for Entertainment Tonight star Mark Steines. He’s up at 5 a.m. with his son Avery, 5 months, for some male bonding while Steines gets ready for work. By 7:45 a.m., he has shared breakfast with his son Kai, 2, and is passing Avery to his wife, Leanza Cornett, television personality and Miss America 1993. Then it’s off to the set of ET, where he will spend the day interviewing some of the world’s most famous people. Sometimes he flies to New York for the day, other times he’ll cover movie premieres, but today’s to-do list includes chatting with actors Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore. At the end of the day, he arrives home and plays his favorite role of all: Dad.
We caught up with Steines, Cornett and their kids during after-work playtime and talked with them about their fun and fit life in sunny Los Angeles.
Family Energy: How are you living a fit and healthy life with your kids?
Mark Steines: We have an elliptical trainer in the house, and I ride bikes. We do some light weight training and Leanza has a trainer who comes to the house occasionally to work with her or she goes to the gym.
I think you set an example by what you put in front of them and put in front of yourself. It’s not just about what you do physically but what you consume, because you are what you eat. We gave Kai a tricycle with a bar that we can push. We used to take him in the Baby Jogger? on weekends. We would go for an hour walk and he would fall asleep. We also put him in a baby backpack and went hiking.
Leanza Cornett: I love to cook and love to try new foods myself, so that is something Kai has grown up with. We have a 2-year-old that loves sushi, and pretty much anything. In fact, he just sat down to plateful of turkey meatballs and edamame (boiled soybeans).
I feel lucky that he is a good eater, and that contributes to a healthy lifestyle and it makes you more active. Kai loves to run and play. Mark is a former football player and that will be a fun thing for him to teach Kai. And my dad is making a Little Tykes? basketball set for Kai and shooting hoops.
Family Energy: Leanza, as a Miss America, did you grow up with a healthy lifestyle?
Leanza Cornett: My mom was always on a diet and taking diet pills – that was the lifestyle back then. That was what I grew up listening to, so my idea of healthy lifestyle was a little bit warped. When I was doing pageants, over 10 years ago, I constantly starved myself, I was always sick. I was probably the unhealthiest that I have ever been. It took that to sort of push me over the edge and say, ‘You know, this is no way to live. I am 25 years old and I am sick all the time because my body weight is so low.’ When I met Mark he had already so much knowledge about fitness and then my interest in cooking led us to define our healthy lifestyle. I don’t want our kids to grow up thinking that deprivation and starving and thin equals healthy.
Mark Steines: Then there is the flipside to that. I grew up in the house of the ‘clean plate club,’ which doesn’t exist in our house, If Kai doesn’t want to clean his plate, we don’t make him sit at the table until everything is eaten because it’s not fair to him. We try to let him eat naturally, when his body wants to be fed.
Read the full interview in the current issue of Family Energy!
