JOHNSON, Victoria 1958-

PERSONAL:

Born 1958, in Ruston, LA; married; children: one daughter. Education: Attended Eastern Washington University and Kinman Business University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Portland, OR. Office—Victoria Johnson International, P.O. Box 1744, Lake Oswego, OR 97035. Agent—AIE Speakers Bureau, 214 Lincoln St., Ste. 113, Boston, MA 02134. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Fitness trainer and educator, entrepreneur, consultant, lecturer, and author. Owner and president, Victoria Johnson International, a marketing, management, and consulting company; owner of a distribution and sales company marketing health and fitness products. Star and producer of more than twenty-four dance fitness video programs; executive producer and host of Celebrity Health and Fitness television program.

WRITINGS:

(With Megan V. Davis) Victoria Johnson's Attitude: An Inspirational Guide to Redefining Your Body,Your Health, and Your Outlook, Penguin (New York, NY), 1993.

Body Revival: Lose Weight, Feel Great, and Pump Up Your Faith, Health Communications (Deerfield Beach, FL), 2002.

Contributor to periodicals such as Northwest Woman and Essence, and to volumes such as Health and Healing for African-Americans, edited by Sheree Crute, Rodale Press (Emmaus, PA), 1997.

SIDELIGHTS:

Fitness trainer and health advocate Victoria Johnson is the producer and star of more than two dozen dance videos designed to help viewers get in shape. Johnson uses her expertise in exercise, anatomy, and nutrition to train fitness instructors, physical education teachers, personal trainers, and other fitness professionals. A frequent lecturer and speaker, Johnson has traveled the country offering insight and instruction in losing weight, becoming fit, and maintaining a healthy, happy lifestyle. Her company, Victoria Johnson International, provides marketing and management consulting and distributes health and fitness products.

But this trim fitness queen did not always have model qualities. Born in Ruston, Louisiana, Johnson was one of eleven children in a family of migrant farm workers. When she was young, the family relocated to the Yakima Valley, in central Washington state, where Johnson grew up. "When you are migrant workers, the only time you come together with the family is around dinner," Johnson commented in an interview with Kristi Watts on the Christian Broadcasting Network Web site. "Every night we would have a huge dinner of fried chicken, red beans, and rice." The family "would get together and laugh and tell jokes," Johnson continued. "That's when I felt comfortable, so I started to associate food with comfort."

Fried foods and sugared desserts and drinks contributed to Johnson's weight problem as a child. "When I was younger, almost all the food I ate was fried," she related in an interview with Bev Bennett in Chicago Sun-Times. "And if it didn't have sugar, I didn't have it." During the summers, Johnson indulged in rich, high-calorie foods and gained weight; then, when school started again, she starved and purged herself to lose the weight so that she could be on the school dance team. She developed bulimia, and "the results of the stuff-and-starve regime took her body years to overcome," Bennett remarked.

From being an overweight child, Johnson became an overweight adult, at one time carrying 175 pounds on a body only five-feet, three-inches tall. She came to the abrupt realization that something was wrong when she passed out while teaching an aerobics class. She developed type II diabetes, high blood pressure, and discovered her arteries were beginning to clog. "I was having blackouts because I was going into mini-diabetic comas," she said in an interview with Neela Sakaria on the Bookwire Web site. "Here I was teaching aerobics, I was a certified instructor, I had my own training company," she related to Sakaria. "I knew all about dieting, weight training. But for some reason, I wasn't walking my talk." From there, Johnson took up a regimen of sensible diet, exercise, and nutrition counseling. It took her almost four years, but she lost the excess weight, "and it hasn't come back," she commented in the interview with Bennett.

Johnson took her health and weight loss message to a much wider audience as the producer and star of more than two dozen dance exercise videos. Victoria's Power Shaping Workout, for example, provides "easyto-follow routines, effective exercises, and cheerful encouragement," wrote Lynn Voedisch in Chicago Sun-Times.

She has also offered her expertise and inspiration in books. Victoria Johnson's Attitude: An Inspirational Guide to Redefining Your Body, Your Health, and Your Outlook explores how she became overweight and how she achieved her fitness and weight goals. She advocates a diet high in nutrition along with high-energy workouts, as well as achieving personal control and discipline. Johnson stresses setting goals and taking tangible action based on those goals. "Having a positive attitude and sheer determination when trying to seek personal fulfillment" is a key message of this "upbeat and inspirational fitness book," remarked Jeanette Lambert in Kliatt. Victoria Johnson's Attitude "is the perfect book for someone wanting to improve their health and tired of diets that don't work," commented a reviewer in Skanner.

Johnson's religious faith has consistently been an integral component of her health and fitness philosophy. "She contends that we acquire extra weight because we're trying to fill a spiritual void," remarked Molly Martin in a profile of Johnson in the Seattle Times. In the Bookwire Web site interview, Johnson observed that "Weight is a result of what we're doing. It's a [by-product] of our habits, thoughts, desires, and actions. So I learned to separate what I was eating, thinking, doing." This process led Johnson to write Body Revival: Lose Weight, Feel Great, and Pump Up Your Faith. In the book, "I start from the inside and have you work on that, and then I have you work on the outside," Johnson said in the interview with Sakaria. "I teach you to go inside and really truly figure out … what is going on." From there, Johnson remarked, readers can take control of their bodies to lose the weight they want. "We have a divine purpose," Johnson said in the interview with Sakaria, "each of us—we cannot trade that for food."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Sun-Times, January 24, 1992, Lynn Voedisch, "Gonna Make You Sweat," video review of Victoria's Power Shaping Workout, p. 59; July 22, 1993, Bev Bennett, "Fitness Expert Suggests Healthy Change to Blacks," interview with Victoria Johnson, p. 7.

Essence, September, 1993, Portia Hawkins-Bond, review of Victoria Johnson's Attitude: An Inspirational Guide to Redefining Your Body, Your Health, and Your Outlook, pp. 34-36; October, 1996, Joy Duckett Cain, "Victoria Johnson: Work That Body!," p. 54.

Houston Post, February 17, 1994, Deborah Mann Lake, "No Excuses," section D, p. 1.

Kliatt, September, 1993, Jeanette Lambert, review of Victoria Johnson's Attitude, p. 34.

Peoria Journal-Star, October 6, 2002, Shannon Countryman, "Gear Up Girls—It's a Women's Show," B4.

Recorder, March 20, 1993, Connie Gaines Hayes, "Exercise Key to Training Heart and Mind: Keeping Off the Pounds Leads to Happy, Healthy Life," B7.

Seattle Times, September 8, 2002, Molly Martin, "The Spirit Moves: For This Portland Fitness Pro, Working on the Outside Begins with Working on the Inside," p. 8.

Skanner, February 24, 1993, "Ex-Diet Diva Offers Realistic Take on Fitness," review of Victoria Johnson's Attitude, p. 7.

Tribune (Chicago, IL), April 19, 1992, Lisa Twyman Bessone, "Muscle Ballet: A Workout for a Longer, Leaner Line," video review of Dance Step Formula, p. 64.

Women's Sports and Fitness, January, 1992, Lisa Paul, "Funky Fitness," p. 68.

ONLINE

Bookwire Web site,http://www.bookwire.com/ (August 15, 2002), Neela Sakaria, interview with Victoria Johnson.

Christian Broadcasting Network Web site,http://www.cbn.com/ (August 21, 2002), Kristi Watts, interview with Victoria Johnson.

Victoria Johnson Home Page,http://www.victoriajohnson.com/ (June 30, 2004).*