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First, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lifted weights on television. Now it's the first lady's turn to show off her workout.
Laura Bush, who has traveled the country speaking about women's heart health and childhood obesity, appears on Washington's NBC4 TV today and Thursday to illustrate her healthy ways.
It starts with walking (about 45 minutes a day, early in the morning), usually around the oval on the South Lawn of the White House. Sometimes she takes a friend and a security detail and walks off the White House grounds, on the National Mall, says WRC-TV morning anchor Barbara Harrison, who had also interviewed Rice.
"I love to walk with a friend," Bush told Harrison. "You find you talk so much the whole time, before you know it you've walked 45 minutes."
The issue is important to Bush, who noted in a speech last month that "heart disease kills more women in our country than all forms of cancer combined."
She told Harrison her fitness routine began after she married George W. Bush, whom she calls "a natural athlete."
"I was shamed into starting to exercise," she said.
The first lady also lifts weights but on a lesser scale than Rice. Bush uses 3- to 5-pound dumbbells about three times a week, sometimes working out with the president in the White House gym.
"Using the lighter weights ... may be slower for the definition to come," Harrison says, "but she definitely sees the difference in her physique."
Others have noted that the first lady looks better than when she arrived in Washington. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2004 that she went down a dress size since moving to the White House, from a 10 to an 8. That information is now restricted.
"We've actually never disclosed her clothing size," says Bush spokeswoman Susan Whitson. "And, since I would like to keep my job, I don't think I would say what her size is."
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