Houston's fittest couple: Christian Guzman and Heidi Somers share diet and exercise tips

HOUSTON (FOX 26) - Texas fitness celebrities Heidi Somers and Christian Guzman have helped thousands around the world get back in shape with their popular YouTube channels.

Now they're showing FOX 26's Ivory Hecker what they eat and how they workout to stay fit.

IVORY: "Tell me about how you first got into fitness."

HEIDI: "So I grew up in Alaska, and when I moved to Texas, I think I gained like 40 pounds, just 'cause I started eating all the different fast foods. Then I started kind of working out and kind of getting into it, and I was just trying to lose a little bit of weight, but I really fell in love with everything. Not only did I lose weight, but I just felt really good."

CHRISTIAN: "I actually had like an opposite story. So at 6 foot tall, I was 125 pounds, and I'm still six foot tall, so right now I'm about 180 pounds, so I was just a twig. I just wanted to have more confidence and have more muscle--be stronger--and so for me that was like the goal. And fitness brought us together."

HEIDI: "I was like, 'You're into fitness? Me too!'"

DIET

Christian and Heidi say they make sure their diets are high in protein. Egg whites are a staple of their diets almost every morning. For FOX 26 they made Egg White English Muffin Breakfast Sandwiches.

CHRISTIAN: "It's just an easy, quick to cook, 5-minutes-you're-done kind of meal. You want to keep the protein high, the fat low to moderate, and the carbs fairly low. By doing that, you end up reducing calories overall. A higher protein diet is going to allow for more muscle growth. You swap certain foods out, and then you realize, 'Wow, I'm saving so many calories by not using the butter on here, by swapping from bacon to turkey bacon. Instead of doing four or five whole eggs, I'm doing a few servings of egg whites with maybe one whole egg.' All the calories build up, and and then you're gonna actually end up losing weight, because you're saving all that."

Egg White English Muffin Breakfast Sandwich

• 1/2 cup All Whites liquid egg whites
• 1 whole egg
• 1/4 cup fat free shredded cheddar cheese
• 2 slices turkey bacon
• 2 tbsp diced bell peppers
• 2 slices Kraft singles fat free cheese
• 2 whole wheat English muffins
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions: Mix egg, whites, salt, pepper and shredded cheese in a bowl. Heat pan stovetop and spray with Pam oil. Briefly saute bell peppers, then pour egg mix into pan and scramble with peppers. Remove from stovetop, spray pan again, and cook turkey bacon. Chop the bacon up. Spray pan again, and lay down English muffins on pan until toasted. Place muffins on plate and top with eggs, bacon and cheese slice. Cover with top half of muffin to make a sandwich. Eat up!

EXERCISE

For exercise, Christian and Heidi both prioritize weight lifting as more valuable to transforming your physique as opposed to cardio or any other exercise. They'll often lift weights for 45 minutes, and bookend the lifting session with two 10 minute cardio sessions before and after the lift. The couple works on targeting all muscle groups in their bodies over the course of a week in lifting.

For FOX 26 Heidi demonstrated one of her typical lower body weight lifting workout, and Christian demonstrated one of his typical upper body weight lifting workouts.

Heidi's Workout:

- Barbell Squat

"The reason I love this exercise so much is it's primarily focusing on the legs, so quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves--little bit of everything on the lower body and a lot of back," said Heidi.

- Leg Press

"I think a common misconception that females have with weight training is that the more weight that you do, the bigger and the bulkier you're gonna get," said Heidi. "But that's not true, because with leg press, sometimes I'll have up to five 45 pound plates on each side. That's a lot of weight to lift, but I'm 110 pounds, so that has not made me bulky at all. It just kind of shapes and molds my body, which is good. I like that."

- Glute Hip Thrust on Smith Machine

"I prefer doing these on the Smith Machine for safety reasons," said Heidi. "Also it's nice to kind of have everything set up for you. This movement is going to be, more so, just for the glute area."

- Lunges with Kettlebells

"You can use dumbbells. You can use a barbell--whatever you want. I'm choosing kettlebells today, and this is going to do all over your legs really. It's a full body movement, and I'm using this to kind of tire my legs out since it's the last exercise."

Christian's Workout:

"Since we're doing a full upper body workout, I want to hit one exercise per muscle group, so one for chest, one for back, one for biceps, triceps and shoulders," said Christian.

- Incline Dumbbell Press

"This is kind of my go-to choice if I had to pick one chest movement," said Christian. "Keep your upper back really tight, push up, squeeze our chest, come down--really nice, slow and controlled."

- Wide-Grip Pull Down

"Key tips: You want to grab slightly outside of your shoulder width--come about 2-3 inches outside--pull down, come up slow."

- Dumbbell Lateral Raise

"We're going to be working more of the outside of the delt to give us that nice capped look. I try to bring my elbows higher than my wrists on this one."

- Biceps Curl

- Triceps Extension

CHRISTIAN: "Getting into fitness just focus on being supportive."

HEIDI: "Getting back into it can be intimidating and kind of hard in the beginning, so having someone there to be supportive and help in any way really goes a long way."

CHRISTIAN: "And give some compliments every once in a while--some random compliments every once in a while."

HEIDI: "Yeah, 'Hey you look good! Your cooking's amazing."

CHRISTIAN: "It helps a lot. I think by both doing the same sort of journey and both starting that and both seeing progress, life is just elevated."