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Being an athlete, you try to get protein.

There are a lot of great athletes who stop working out, and they get out of shape like everybody else in their 30s and 40s.

My mother was a P.E. teacher, and she was kind of a fanatic about fitness and nutrition growing up, so it was ingrained in me at a young age. As I get older, I'm finding out it's not about getting all buffed up and looking good. It's more about staying healthy and flexible.

The older I've gotten, the more I try to stay out of the gym.

I think it's impossible to maintain a good, strong, muscular physique without taking some supplements. Between the protein shakes and the multivitamins that I take, I use C4, the pre-workout mix. I try to keep it as basic as I can, but I think I would shrink and disappear if I stopped taking protein shakes.

I don't worry about protein. I don't worry about all that. I'm from old school. I grew up in south Georgia. They didn't worry about cholesterol or protein. They went out and worked and lived a long time, so I don't put a lot of worries in my mind.

The first time I joined the gym was during the Miss Sri Lanka pageant in 2006. Then, I went for the Miss Universe contest where I was exposed to girls who were very fit for their age. They could have joined the Olympics. They were doing crazy exercises.

So many older people, they just sit around all day long and they don't get any exercise. Their muscles atrophy, and they lose their strength, their energy and vitality by inactivity.

There is one thing on which most athletes and experts seem to agree. If you want to be an elite athlete, good nutrition at a young age is an important place to start.

Commonly, athletes will bolster their dietary intake with everyday vitamins such as magnesium and iron as well as more exotic products such as whey protein, creatine, carnitine and branched-chain amino acids specifically aimed at improving performance and recovery time.