Yahoo Lifestyle 'Bachelorette' Star Explains 20-Pound Weight Loss Ahead of 'Special Forces' Premiere (Exclusive)
Former Bachelorette star Ali Fedotowsky-Manno became a diet-and-exercise machine to prepare for the upcoming third season of the grueling FOX show Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, which premieres Jan. 8.
“[The show] changed my life so much," Ali tells Parade in an exclusive interview. "I feel like I was getting to a place where I was unhealthy. I wasn’t taking care of my body in maybe the way I wanted to be. And when I got the offer to be on the show, I started training immediately and it made me fall in love with health and fitness."
The reality-TV mainstay, who was promoting Orgain protein powder at the time of our interview, told Parade that training began in Nashville, Tenn., where she lives, two months before shooting for Special Forces in Wales even started up. "I was training eight hours a day," she says. "I was doing oxygen chambers, I was doing IVs, I was doing saunas, cold plunges, boxing. I had like at least two-to-three workouts a day ... so it definitely transformed my body.”
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She estimates that she lost 15-to-20 pounds over the course of the experience, although she notes that she wasn't fixated on her weight as she trained. "I'd go to this fitness place where you get on this machine and they don’t just measure weight, they measure muscle mass and how hydrated you are and all these things," she explains. "My goal was to gain muscle."
Because Ali had to keep her casting on the show a secret for months, she admits her friends were curious about her body changes and what prompted them.
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“It was hard because people were like, ‘What are you doing? Tell me your secret,’" she says. "And I was like. ‘You don’t understand.’ The average person can’t dedicate eight hours a day to their health-and-wellness routine. But it was my job at that time. My job was the show and therefore my job two months leading up to it was preparing for it. It was so hard that I couldn’t announce the show [before] because I couldn’t tell people why my body was changing … I’m glad I can finally share.”
Fans first embraced Ali, now 40, almost 15 years ago when she was one of the contestants on Jake Pavelka’s 2010 The Bachelor season. After self-eliminating to return to her job at Facebook, Ali was chosen as ABC’s Season 6 Bachelorette that same year.
She eventually got engaged to her final pick, Roberto Martinez, on the show but their love didn’t last and they broke up in November 2011.
The beautiful blonde with the gift of gab went on to be a morning show correspondent at the Fox news station in San Diego, Calif., and later worked for E! News and Home and Family. In 2017, she married radio and TV host Kevin Manno, with whom she's raising daughter Molly, 8, and son Riley, 6, in Nashville.
Viewers will soon see her on Season 3 of Special Forces, which features Ali and 15 other stars (including actress Denise Richards, Ali’s fellow Bachelorette alum Trista Rehn Sutter, and motocross champ Carey Hart) undergoing military training and harsh living conditions that replicate the special forces’ selection process.
“This show is very different” from The Bachelorette, Ali tells Parade. "I went from wearing ball gowns to being covered in manure and no makeup. I think on The Bachelorette you’re there to find the love of your life. Special Forces is similar in the sense that you’re there to find the love within yourself. I wanted to see what I was made of."
