Habits and Hustle - Episode 470: Zarina Del Mar: From Exercise Bulimia to Body Awareness That Actually Works

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

Former tax lawyer Zarina Del Mar was working out twice a day, seven days a week—running in the morning, gym sessions midday, and CrossFit at night. She was chasing an impossible body standard while fighting her genetic baseline, until she realized she couldn't feel her own body anymore. In this Fitness Friday episode, Zarina explains how one movement session changed everything. We dive into the psychology of obsessive exercise, why GLP-1s are creating more problems than they solve, and how understanding your body's construction can replace the need to count calories forever. Zarina Del Mar is a fitness personality who transitioned from practicing law to teaching body awareness and sustainable movement practices to women worldwide. What we discuss: Her "Exercise Bulimia" Phase: Two Workouts Daily for Years The GLP-1 Problem: Fighting Your Genetic Baseline How One Movement Session Changed Everything Why Detailed Instructions Matter More Than Exercise Type The Plank Revolution: Feeling Your Fingers and Feet From Calorie Counting to Balanced Plates Forever Why Most Gyms Don't Teach You to Feel Your Body Thank you to our sponsor: Momentous: Shop this link and use code Jen for 20% off Therasage: Head over to therasage.com and use code Be Bold for 15% off  TruNiagen: Head over to truniagen.com and use code HUSTLE20 to get $20 off any purchase over $100. Magic Mind: Head over to www.magicmind.com/jen and use code Jen at checkout. Bio.me: Link to daily prebiotic fiber here, code Jennifer20 for 20% off.  David: Buy 4, get the 5th free at davidprotein.com/habitsandhustle. Find more from Zarina Del Mar: Website: https://www.whateva.club/  Instagram: @zarina_del_mar_world Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it! Hey friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits and Hustle podcast, where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self. So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to thank our sponsor, Momentous. When your goal is healthspan, living better and longer, there are very few non-negotiables. One of them, quality. And when it comes to supplements designed for high performers, nobody does it better than Momentus. Momentus goes all in on NSF certification, which means every single batch is tested for heavy metals, harmful additives, and label accuracy. And that's why they're trusted by all 32 NFL teams and top collegiate sports dietitians

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GEN for 20% off. Just act now, start today. Jen for 20% off, livemomentous.com. Today we have Zarina Delmar, who is a fitness personality, but was a tax lawyer, which is a crazy transition. We're gonna get into it. But before that, we're gonna do something with you because you are in the space of health and wellness. We're going to do a healthy shot. Are you ready?

Yeah. All right. So we do these magic mind shots. They're full of adaptogens and all these good, good ingredients that kind of keeps us like very alert and focused. So as opposed to doing like a tequila shot, we do a healthy adaptogen shot basically. Mine doesn't have caffeine though or sugar. I think yours may. I don't know. But we go like this. We go like this.

Yeah. And then we just, you know, down the hatch. I've been having so many of these. I'm only having half at a time. They taste really good. So you tell me what after you finish it or if you drink it. Did you try it? Yeah, I tried it. If you like it or not. I mean, if you feel more alert, you tell me.

You feel more alert? Yeah, did it work? It is fresh. I will tell you about my eating habits because I'm trying to get rid of any snacks and I'm looking at get rid of any snacks. And I'm looking at how many included added sugar. Not calories, just added sugar. Okay, I'm going to send you a bunch. So they just came up with this magic.

It's a no sugar and no caffeine. So, I mean, I'm blind as a bat. These have like 15 calories. That's it. That one I might think, I think has like 50, 50. But I mean, wait, hold on a minute. Okay, so you're counting calories to that level? No, no, no, I'm not counting calories. But I'm looking at the ingredients of the products I consume and only one field, added sugar.

I'm trying to get rid of any added sugar. Okay, that makes more sense to me. But I have never counted calories. I don't think that it is necessary because it's not about full life. Well, no, that's why you're here. We're going to hear about what your whole philosophy is. But yeah, I'm going to send you, I'm going to get them to MagicMind. Will you please send Zarina, if you're listening, some sugar-free Magic Mind shots? Because they really do work and they are super healthy. I would not be like sitting here blabbing about it

if I actually did not take, like, I drink two a day. And everybody who takes them says they're really good. So they also love them. But now, enough with that ad. It wasn't even an ad. It sounded like an ad. Okay, so then you are someone, are you very particular of like just sugar or what's your diet like? What's your diet? I prefer to call it eating style.

Like I'm this sweet tooth girl. Maybe because I had a long, long history of trying different diets from my puberty, because that was the time when I just realized I don't like my body image, I don't like my body composition, because I have short limbs, I'm like one meter 61 centimeters, yeah, yeah, yeah, short legs. And I was looking at these models, having a beautiful long and thin legs. So, after trying a lot of diets, when I was around 30, I realized that I cannot live this life. I cannot count calories. Think about what I eat every day. That's why I'm just trying to be super balanced. We have, I have my plate, I have my protein,

my fats, my complex carbohydrates, my veggies. And I'm just trying not to snack because I want to feel real hunger and feel fullness and be able to move freely. So it's just, this is all about basics. Of course, I eat cakes, I can eat cookie, I love cookies, but I eat them after I had my full and complex meal. And each meal is the same, like breakfast is the same as lunch

and lunch is the same as dinner. And when you say that, you mean like each meal you have the same breakdown, which is protein, complex carb, fat for each meal? I'm trying to do it, yeah. Okay, so when you were younger, were you athletic? You said you had some body image issues, which I think every girl has to some level. And, you know, very rare.

I mean, if they say they didn't, they're probably lying. Because I think there's a lot of different, like, we may not have, people may not have eating dys, like a full-on eating disorder, but there's a lot of disordered eating that's in our culture. And I actually think that the pendulum is swinging back to where we used to be, where everybody wants to be really skinny. And that's like the Kate Moss look has become like really popular again. Do you know what I mean? It used to be for... Like I mean nowadays it is coming back.

It's coming back. Yeah. Like the obsession about... The obsession with being thin because with all the GLP ones and with just overall it's not so much like there was this philosophy., actually I wrote this book years ago, like 10 years ago called Strong is the New Skinny. Yeah. And I believed that like the idea that like obtaining or trying to go for a goal like being strong is a much healthier goal than just being skinny. Because not everybody could be skinny, but everyone could be strong. And I feel like for a while there, that was kind of like part of our like zeitgeist.

And in the last couple years with all the GLP-1s, people are now focused on like who can be skinnier? If I'm a size four, I want to be a size two. If I'm a size two, I want to be a size zero. Like the pendulum now is gone and swung in a really unhealthy direction. That's what I've seen. Have you noticed that? Absolutely. It's because of GLP-1. And I thought that it was common for us.

Like I am 39 years old for my generation of ladies around 40 or 45. But then I found that even ladies of 50 and 55, they remember that they were dieting and they were trying to be as skinny as possible. And what I say, I have a 12-year-old daughter, and now she's thinking about her waist to be slim, her legs to be slim and long. And I'm just explaining her that you were born in this body composition. Like I'm genetically, I have strong legs. And even if I don't squat, I have strong legs

and my upper body is slimmer than my lower body. And that's, I was struggling. That's your body type. Yeah, yeah, that's my And I have to I have to accept it and I will I had once in my life I had very very thin legs when I was like four weeks pregnant and I wasn't able to eat anything for two weeks And I wasn't able to exercise. That was the skinniest form I have ever been

here, I've ever had. So, for all the ladies who were born like this, everything you can do just to keep moving and keep your muscle mass that is durable for you. Because for many ladies it is so difficult to gain muscle. And for us who are born with this particular body type, it's easier. So I believe, to be honest, and I know this is controversial, but I believe that we all have a certain body type and that you can only, you have a baseline, and you can only manipulate it so much one way or the other until it gets to be unhealthy. I mean, people can say all they want. No, you can, you know, it's about this, it's about that.

I'm a perfect example, right? Like I'm somebody who like, I'm more athletic by nature. Like I'm built, I'm not an ectomorph. You know, an ectomorph, an endome. Yeah, of course, an endomorph, mesomorph. I'm a mesomorph. Me too. And when I don't eat a lot, yeah, do I get skinnier?

Yes, but do I, can I maintain that level of thinness in a healthy way? No, because my body will rebound back to where it's comfortable. You can fight at 5, 10 pounds. Unless I'm on a drug, like a GLP-1, I'm not going to be staying 10, 15 pounds lighter than my baseline. So I think what's happening is people are fighting their baseline to such a point where it's so psychologically unhealthy, it's physically unhealthy.

I think these GLP-1s have been, I think it's like one of the worst things that's happened in this last couple years. I don't care what you say, it's great for people. There's a whole argument like, oh, it's great for inflammation. You know, it's great for perimenopause. It's great for microdosing, it's great for brain health. I want to see the data in 10 years from now because nobody knows right now.

If you're a diabetic and you're 150 pounds overweight, God bless you, go on GLP-1s. If you're somebody who is a healthy person and like maybe 20 pounds too heavy for your body type, go and die, like go walking every day, clock and watch your diet. You don't need to be on a GLP-1, because once you get on them, in my opinion, what I've seen is it's really hard to get off on top of it. When you're on it, yes, sorry, I see it within my community, like you don't change your lifestyle. You're not, it's not behavioral change.

So like unless you're doing things to change your behavior and make it, you know, it's all about like habits, right? Like creating these like these tiny habits that will make you behave different day after day, right? If you're just relying on a shot once a week where you're just not hungry anymore, right, and your appetite is now suppressed, once you're off of that, your appetite comes back with a vengeance. I've seen this with friends of mine. So when they try to get off their appetite, and even when they try to titrate off, you know, they start to like make their doses lower,

but they were still super hungry and like now they're having less muscle mass. They have more, because you lose muscle in addition to fat. And now they have less muscle mass, now they only have more fat on their body. And now when they go back to eating like a regular person, they're gaining weight because all of their metabolism is all wonky. That's why I just started my movement journey. I was fighting with the baseline, how you describe it, and I realized that I cannot live this lifestyle. Yeah. Like having two training sessions per day, seven times per week. You were doing this? Yeah, I was doing this. Yeah, tell me

what you were doing. I was trying to be as slim as possible, but keep my muscle mass. And what kind of training were you doing? So it was gym, CrossFit studio, and I was running. So I was running in the morning, then I came to the gym. Then in the evening, I was doing my CrossFit sessions because I am like, let's say type A personality, all or nothing. And I'm physically prepared for like a crossfit type of training. And then I realized that it's not healthy. I'm not an elite athlete and I don't have this regimen when I can sleep, eat. I don't have like my performance coach, my massage therapist, and I just didn't feel my body.

It was like not I'm dying, but I didn't feel comfortable. And I was looking for something. That's how I found all this story about movement, about being soft and flexible and feel these true motions in your body, not just repeating the same stuff as fast as you can, as hard as you can, yeah, repetitive. And I didn't feel anything while I was doing these crunches or burpees. We made like hundreds of burpees per minute, per five minutes. Were you getting injured a lot too?

No. You weren't getting injured? No, no, no. Because all what you're saying though is, that's funny, sounds familiar, like I think a lot of this what you're saying is you were like an exercise bulimic in a way, like you were just exercising yourself to death. And like typically what happens is

you just end up with a ton of injuries. You know, like I was similar, like I worked out a lot, like a lot. And it wasn't even so much for the physicality, it was because it was good, like a lot. And it wasn't even so much for the physicality. It was because it was good. My brain was getting much, like it was distracting me from things

I didn't wanna like think about, or it like turned on like my dopamine and my serotonin. But everything has like a breaking point, right? Like you can overdo everything, right? Like I love to run because of the cardio, but like I can run for 40 minutes or 30 minutes. I don't have to run for of the cardio, but like, I can run for 40 minutes, I don't, or 30 minutes, I don't have to run for like an hour and a half. Right? But like, to me, that's like, that's also again, like, that's a super unhealthy mechanism. How do you tell your

people, how did you, it was a good example, you're an example. How did you go from being so obsessive, like an obsessive exerciser, how did you get back into a moderate place where it's much more doable and manageable? Because the psychological element is so hard. Yeah, it's hard. And maybe I got more knowledge about the construction of our body, about anatomy and biomechanics. And I've just noticed that I don't even get sweat, but I feel how my muscles are working when I'm doing, let's say, mobility, or when I'm doing these mindful movement sequences, mindful movement flow.

And once you get knowledge about your body, you feel this confidence and you understand why softness is new strength. And once you get knowledge about your body, you feel this confidence, and you understand why softness is new strength. Because for me it was so difficult to make the motions, to think about the motion, to think about the position of my pelvis, the position of different parts of my spine. But how did you do that? Because if someone is listening to this podcast,

and they're an obsessive exerciser, because they're trying to burn as many calories as possible, how can, what do you tell people, the clients, your followers, like how they can get out of that hamster wheel into a more healthy, safe place where they can stop exercising like that and recognizing like they're actually like doing more harm than good to a place that's more like normal, that's not so insane. I see. Just try one session. I remember I tried one session with one movement guy and I felt something. So you changed the type of workout you were doing?

Yeah, just one session. And he explained me detailed instructions. That's why what distinguishes me from all the fitness world is just detailed instruction. I am explaining how to move. And there was one session and I felt something. I didn't have enough vocabulary to describe for myself what happened, but I felt really good. And we were moving slowly. He just explained to me all this anatomical stuff very shortly. How I need to control the tension, how I can move my pelvis, that there are lots of movements in my hip joints.

And it helped me. Just the words. Not even particular crazy or interesting movements or exercises, just the explanation. And at that time I didn't read any books on anatomy or biomechanics, I didn't know what is happening in your joints, etc. So he just explained to me that you are the main controller of everything what is happening. So it is like self-perception. You understand more if you have this knowledge. I didn't have them. Nobody explained me. Even at the gym, it was just pull-up, push-up, deadlift, squat.

And nobody explained me that. In order to make, for example, the plank position, you need to feel your fingers on the surface. Because this is how you engage your shoulders, your shoulder blades, how you protect your shoulder joints, and the same with your feet. Feel the surface, feel the grounding. And there are a lot of these small tips that help you to create this presence in your body. This is the main thing that I am teaching and I am presenting, not the movement. Because many of my subscribers and many people think that, give me one particular exercise to fix my knee problem, my lumbar spine problem.

I need one particular exercise, but it's not about exercise. It's about how you feel it, how you control the motion, and what do you understand about your body? What's happening with your joints when you do any movement, any exercise, call it. We just forgot how to feel comfortable and confident.