Heavy Lifting, Lighter Spirit

Meshach Taylor and I met at my favorite place for breakfast--Green Street restaurant in Pasadena. Now, I thought he was funny on the sitcoms “Designing Women” and “Dave’s World,” but he’s even funnier without a script. He had me laughing so hard I couldn’t eat--and that takes a lot.

“Nine years ago, I gained a lot of weight when my wife was pregnant,” Taylor said. He, Bianca and their children live in the San Gabriel Valley. “I was just feeding her and sitting there with her and eating, too.”

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Question: Sympathy weight?

Answer: Yeah, and she had the baby, lost hers, and I didn’t lose mine. I was 40 to 50 pounds over.

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Q: What’d you do?

A: First, I started walking, and it came off slowly. Then jogging for two or three years, and that kept my weight down, but I wasn’t developing any muscle. Now, two or three times a week, I work with a couple of personal trainers at Bodies in Motion [Pasadena].

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Q: What have they got you doing?

A: I do a very substantial free-weight routine. And I’m training with Mike Weaver on boxing. You want a trainer who knows your body’s strengths and limitations, especially when you’re fortysomething; you don’t want to get an injury. I mean, you go through all this anxiety when you’re at home and can’t work out. You get really mean and short with people, and you start just hating folks.

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Q: And start picking on them.

A: You do. I’m telling you. You get a lot of stress on you in the course of the day in the business that we’re in. I find kick boxing really helps. I do that two to three times a week with Mauricio Gonzales--ab work, leg lifts, sit-ups, a boxing routine, and I skip rope, hit the heavy bag, and we do a little light sparring.

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Q: Is that all you’re going to eat--just oatmeal?

A: I’m a light eater. I had a protein drink before I left home. I have to have that in the morning. Then for breakfast I also have a piece of fruit. And before I work out, I like to have coffee. Also, I take a blend of herbs that tweaks your metabolism.

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Q: You think that stuff works?

A: I guarantee you it works. Don’t take but two. You take four of them, and they’ll harness your energy to run the lights in L.A. Then for lunch and dinner I’ll have broiled fish and pasta with marinara sauce or just some olive oil, garlic, tomato, and that’s it.

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Q: If you were going to eat whatever you wanted, what would you have?

A: I’m from New Orleans so I like Creole food--something really fattening and full of butter. But it’s OK because I don’t eat like that all the time.

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Q: Can you imagine if you did?

A: Those down-home breakfasts--that’s why all our folks down South are so damned fat. That’s why we’re making those trips down there every two or three months. “Auntie Somebody keeled over with a stroke. She had a ham in her hand when she died--not a sliced ham, a whole ham.” What was she doing with it? “She was making her sandwich with it.” Uh-hum, that’s why she dead.

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Q: But, Meshach, if you’re skinny, they say you’re looking poorly. You have to have some meat on you.

A: “A big old robust, healthy girl.” That’s what they say down home. Now in California you would say, “She’s a morbidly obese individual.” Every time I would go down to Mississippi or Louisiana when I was single, somebody’d want to introduce me to somebody. Finally, I just had to tell one of my friends, “Look here, now, I don’t want to meet anybody who weighs more than I do.” Understand, I weigh 180 pounds. I’m not sayin’ you gotta bring a skinny person in here. Just don’t bring anybody in here for me that’s weighin’ 230, talkin’ about “I’m tryin’ to lose weight” or worse than that come in at 230 and say, “This is Clarice, and she’s been really working on her weight, and she has lost 45 pounds.” And you’re looking at a woman weighin’ about 230 and said she lost 45 pounds and you have to say, “Well, honey, you may think you’ve lost it, but if you look behind you, I think you’ll find it.”

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Q: You should have your own show.

A: Well, we’re looking at doing a daytime talk show. I want to put the Southern thing out there--in a sophisticated way, though. Everybody thinks that if you’re from the South and you’re down-home, that means you’re not sophisticated. That’s just total bull.

* Guest Workout runs Mondays in Health.