Carrie Underwood’s Passion for Fitness Led to Writing ‘Find Your Path’

After months of waiting, Carrie Underwood‘s debut book, Find Your Path: Honor Your Body, Fuel Your Soul, and Get Strong With the Fit52 Life, is out! Underwood stopped by the Today Show to discuss the health and fitness book, which delves into her own journey from struggling with fluctuating weight to finding a balance that works for her –– and will likely work for others as well.

“That is a passion of mine, and I’ve been falling more and more in love with it over the past 15 years really,” Underwood shared with Savannah Guthrie and Carson Daly on the Today Show, adding that her idea sparked after launching her CALIA fitness line. “People would say, ‘You should write a book,’ because I really love health and fitness, and I geek out over articles and trends and things like that, so we went for it just to see how it would turn out.”

“I’m really proud of it,” she added. “I have some contributors, that are friends of mine –– they’re the experts in working out and nutrition. It was such a wonderful passion project.”

It was while Underwood was on American Idol that she began to hear negativity from some people, who falsely claimed she needed to lose weight. The comments inspired Underwood to try to eat healthier, but in her quest to stay thin, she sometimes ate only 800 calories a day.

“Everybody has insecurities,” Underwood maintained. “I had to start feeling not good, physically, before I was like, ‘Something’s not right here.’ It was a lack of knowledge. It was a lack of knowing how to take care of myself, and kind of going too far the other direction led me to figure out what works, because I wasn’t feeling good, I wasn’t happy. I knew it didn’t feel right, so it led me to do better.”

Now that Underwood has found a system and routine that works for her, even if it sometimes means combining cleaning up with exercising, the singer has wise words for other women, and men, who may argue that their schedule is too full to add in fitness.

“You are important,” Underwood urged. “Of course your babies are important, your family is important, but you are important, and if you don’t have your balance, everything else is out of balance. So give yourself 30 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour –– whatever you can spare to do something for yourself, to keep you healthy, to keep you around longer. I feel so much better throughout my entire day when I have that in the morning.”

Underwood is currently on her book tour to support Find Your Path. She also just launched a new app, fit52, which offers customized and varied workout routines.

Photo Credit: Getty / John Shearer