Meet Taylur Avery, the owner of Floyd Mayweather’s Mayweather Boxing and Fitness Studio in Torrance, CA.
The majority of us remain at home, waiting for the pandemic to die down, and in doing so, it can be challenging to stay active while practicing social distancing.
We spoke to Taylur about some of the ways that we can all remain active while in our homes and how we can still snack and not pile on the pounds!
ShineMyCrown: So when did you first like fall in love with fitness?
Taylur: Well, I’ve always been an athlete, so since I was in second grade, I played soccer. So sports has always been a part of what I do as a student-athlete, and that carried on through college. Jen just stayed with me even after college going into my career.
ShineMyCrown: Right. You said that you’ve always been into fitness, but have you ever struggled with it at all? Like your health or being motivated to be fit? How can you relate to others who struggle with trying to lose weight?
Taylur: I always struggle. I always struggle. It’s constant, every day. Right? So growing up as a student-athlete, it wasn’t really a struggle because there’s your accountability, right? After school, you go straight to practice. It’s a no brainer. It comes natural. You have to go. But then once you get into the real world, there’s nothing to hold you accountable. So for me, I started competing, I did bodybuilding. So that was like one of the first things that I did.
ShineMyCrown: Oh, wow.
Taylur: Yeah. So when I got out of school, that was the one thing that kind of pushed me as motivation to stay in the gym. Because I knew I had to compete. Right. Same for sports. So now that I’m not really competing anymore, it’s definitely a struggle now. And I can relate more to lifestyle clients or people who just want to be in shape because you go to work, and then you’re tired, and you’re like, “ah.” So I have a lot of little life hacks that I do and that I use to make sure that I still get my workouts done.
ShineMyCrown: Okay. You said that you used to do bodybuilding. What made you decide to go into that?
Taylur: So the reason why I started decided to do bodybuilding is because I’m in law enforcement, I’ve been in law enforcement since I got out of college. It was my major. And so when I was in college, I did ROTC. So it was counted the same as being a student-athlete. Right? I knew I had to get up and PT in the mornings at 5:00 AM. That was something that held me accountable. Once I got out, I went to training, and I was working out six days a week, waking up at four o’clock in the morning. So these things helped me accountable. So like I said, once I got out into my real life, and my real career and I don’t have anything to make me work out anymore, I’m like, “what can I do?”
And I turned to bodybuilding because I know that I’m competitive. I’m very type A, and I didn’t even know bodybuilding existed where I lived because I’m from Mississippi. I was in Mississippi at the time. And a girl that I went to school with, her name was Natasha Donald, and she body built. And I followed her on social media, and I just thought it was the coolest thing. And I was like, “I really want to do this,” so that’s kind of how I got into it. And that’s the reason why, because I needed something to be able to hold me accountable. And that’s the reason why I went into bodybuilding.
ShineMyCrown: Okay. So right now, most of us are stuck at home because of coronavirus, self-quarantine. You mentioned life hacks earlier. What can we do to make sure that we’re staying in shape but not getting all fat and sluggish in this period?
Taylur: Right. So one of the things that I’ve found very helpful for me, and it’s more of a mental thing than anything, is that I pack my clothes or I lay out my clothes for the week like I did in high school and middle school. Right. You’re so excited. You know, you got new outfits, and you want to make sure everything’s laid out. So I will literally down to my underwear, my bra, and underwear, my socks. Oh, I have it all laid out for the week. Because I work, usually I’ll work out twice a day. Like I’ll do cardio and weight lifting because I love both. But I’ll lay out my cardio clothes so which is usually sweats, and then I’ll have my workout clothes, so some leggings and a shirt. And then I’ll have my underwear cause I’m going to shower at some point from the morning before between workouts and going to work and I have my work clothes.
So I literally do all that, and I lay that out. That’s one of the things that really helps me. But with us being at home now, same deal. Even though you’re staying at home, it might be more of a mental thing, just laying out your workout clothes. You just get up in the morning and just put them on and go outside or go to your treadmill or whatever you have at home and go do that. Get some movement in for the day, and probably the morning is the best time to go because everybody’s sleeping in. Right. So you get up while there’s no people social distancing and go do your thing and get back in the house and shower and have a predictive day.
ShineMyCrown: Awesome. There have been a lot of memes floating around because of this whole coronavirus thing about snacking, getting all your snacks. Can you suggest any tasty nutritional alternatives rather than people just hitting the chocolate aisle and the cookies?
Taylur: Yes, of course. So one of my favorites, I know a lot of people don’t like it, but rice cakes are like one of my go-to snacks. It doesn’t have to be a plain rice cake because they have the flavors, so they have cinnamon, or if you like peanut butter, you can put a little… I love to get a plain rice cake, and I’ll put peanut butter and honey to give it a little sweet taste. So, and I’ll just take a butter knife and kind of spread it on. It’s so good. So I like that. And then bars depending on the diet, but with us being at the house, I think this is okay to have snack bars.
So Nature Valley, or what’s the other brand? I can’t think of the other brand. But Nature Valley is a good one; they’re little crunchy bars. Quest Bars. I like those. So those are the sports bars you can find that are really good too to snack on. Skinny Pop!
ShineMyCrown: Oh yeah. The popcorn.
Taylur: That’s a good one. Yeah. So if you want to snack, there’s definitely some healthy alternatives, and I have some recipes and stuff that I love to do. I make pancakes out of oatmeal and egg whites. And it helps. It helps because people don’t like oatmeal, but they like pancakes. So if you make pancakes out of oatmeal and put a little bit of syrup on it, it’s really good. It’s really good.
ShineMyCrown: Awesome. What are some of the things that can slow down metabolism, and if somebody does have a slow metabolism, what can they do to help speed it up?
Taylur: So one of the things that is very interesting about people and how we eat. One thing that I think slows down metabolism is not eating enough. Because I have a Facebook group where I have people in there, and we talk about health and fitness, and I give them… because if you know why to do things and not to do things, it helps you. Somebody just says, well, you need to eat five times a day –and you don’t know why it’s not as motivating as it is when you know why you’re doing what you’re doing. So people think, “Oh, if I don’t eat…” Or “If I only eat once or twice a day, then that’s going to help me lose weight.”
But really it works against you in a sense. Especially if it’s not on schedule. Let’s say you know you wake up today, and it’s already 10 o’clock, and you’re like, “All right, I’m going to go ahead and have me some breakfast.” You slept in, and then you sit around the house, and you work all day, and then you don’t eat again until six o’clock tonight, and then you wake up tomorrow, and you wake up pretty early. “You know what? I’m going to work out. I’m going to eat at six o’clock in the morning and then you don’t eat again until two o’clock that afternoon. That is not good, and that will definitely slow the metabolism down because your body eats, and it’s like, “I don’t know when she’s going to feed me again. I never eat on a schedule, so I’m going to hold on to this food because I don’t know when I’m going to eat again.”
So eat on a schedule that will help your metabolism actually speed up because your body will start to burn off those foods and it’ll go ahead and digest them because it knows, “I’m probably going to eat again two or three hours. So let me go ahead and digest this food so I can be ready for my next meal.” And that’s why it’s good to eat on a schedule.
ShineMyCrown: Okay. I wanted to ask you about Keto because I have been seeing it everywhere, and I also did it myself for a bit, and it worked. But then I read something… Somebody sent me something about an alkaline diet, which seemed to be the complete opposite. So is Keto a healthy diet? Should people be following Keto?
Taylur: You know, that is very dependent on the person because Keto doesn’t work for everybody. I’ve only tried Keto once, and I had a coach at the time. And so I highly recommend if you don’t know, to get a coach, get somebody to work with you one on one that knows what they’re doing, and you can pay attention to your body, see how I react. I’m not very familiar with the alkaline diet, but like I said, I did the Keto, it did work, but I was also under the instruction of a trainer who was more educated than me at the time. And so I had the Keto pills and to take up the things that I wasn’t taking in. So yeah, I think it’s very individual based, it does not work for everybody. But I think it’s okay to give it a shot.
And pay very specific attention to your body and how it reacts, because if it doesn’t work, that’s okay. And that’s the reason why we try things. If it doesn’t work, then you go to the next thing.
ShineMyCrown: Right. You are the owner of Floyd Mayweather’s Mayweather Boxing Fitness studio in California, in Torrance. What attracted you to the Mayweather brand?
Taylur: So, I actually found out about it through Instagram. And so, like I said, I’m in law enforcement. I’ve been in law enforcement for about six years now. And a big part of what we do is martial arts, boxing, we have fight nights. And we had a fight. And so that kind of sparked my attraction. Boxing isn’t something that I’ve been doing all my life besides like fighting with my cousins and sisters growing up.
So it became very much so a part of my everyday routine. So I had a one-on-one trainer that I trained with three days out of the week to kind of keep me up on my skills. And so I saw Instagram posts about Mayweather Boxing, and I’m like, “Oh great.” Because my trainer was so expensive, so I’m like, “Cool, maybe I could go to this gym and kind of cut costs a little bit.” And so I go on the website, and I see that they were franchising. So I sign up to be contacted for franchising. And at the time, I was in talks with another studio, another brand to franchise. So I’ve always been in the market to franchise. It just so happened that this particular one caught my eye because of the boxing.
ShineMyCrown: Right. What are some of the biggest misconceptions you hear about health and fitness?
Taylur: Let’s see. Well, I wouldn’t really call it a misconception, but a lot of people want a quick fix and — they want something like drop 30 pounds in two weeks or something outlandish like that. And there’s no healthy way to do something like that. So that’s a big misconception or a big thing that I see with a lot of people. That most of us struggle with the eating part, and that’s a big part of health and fitness and meeting your goals or your body goals. It takes time. So I teach all my clients to be patient. It takes about six to eight weeks to start seeing true results. So I highly suggest anybody know that is looking to meet some type of goal. Give yourself six to eight weeks of consistency. Yeah, there’s no quick fix unless it’s surgery.
ShineMyCrown: Awesome. So how will you be spending your time in self-quarantine then?
Taylur: I’m still working. I’m working out. I just finished my workout. I started at 9:00 AM so, I did about 45 minutes outside. So I’m still working out. I’m still eating. Last night I had cod and spinach for dinner. I’m still prepping my food and I’m working from home, so I’m doing stuff for work and I’m also doing stuff for the gym. So we’re still making phone calls. We’re still checking on our members, and we’re also still doing workouts for my members at the gym. So we do live workouts every day on our page at 6:30 PM through the weekday and at 10:00 AM on the weekends. So we’re still spearheading that. Yeah, I’m staying busy.
ShineMyCrown: And where can I readers find out more about you and your gym?
Taylur: So, my personal Instagram is @mind_ya_fitness. And my gym page is mayweatherfittorrance. That’s it. Mayweatherfittorrance. And that’s where you can go stream our live workouts every day. And we also post regular workouts on the page.
