![Tracy Anderson Tracy Anderson attends the Los Angeles Premiere of "Home" in Westwood, Cali. on March 22, 2015.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ap230456747809-copy.jpg?quality=85&w=2400)
Though she’s shaped the bodies of some of Hollywood’s hottest stars, Tracy Anderson says women should focus less on emulating their figures and more on achieving your healthiest self.
“To blow up their importance to the level of obsession takes away from our own beauty and our own gifts,” the fitness expert tells Health in their May cover story. “There’s a disease here—the disease is vanity, insecurity and the lengths of unhealthy behaviors people go to to achieve what they think is beautiful. The disease of ‘I’m not worth anything unless I look like that person over there.’ ”
To move beyond the traditional standard of beauty, Anderson, 40—who works with stars like Gwyneth Paltrow and Lena Dunham—stresses not all our shapes are created equal.
“I want to get away from ‘Tracy Anderson is going to make you teeny-tiny.’ I’m not trying to make everyone the same,” she says. “To me, ‘hot’ is not defined by a height or weight or measurement; hot is going to the root of who you are.”
And even though the workout guru started creating the Tracy Anderson Method at 21-years-old, she hasn’t always been as diligent when it came to her diet.
“I was in London, dunking cookies in frosting. And [Gwyneth Paltrow] looked at me and was like, ‘What are you doing?’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean? It’s so good!’ And she’s like, ‘Do you know how toxic that is?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And she’s like, ‘And you’re still eating it.’ I was like, ‘You know what? She’s so right,’ ” she says. “That was almost nine years ago. That was the last cookie dunked in frosting I ever had.”
This article originally appeared on People.com.
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