Belinda Chen received an M.P.H. from the School of Public Health in 2003 and has been at UCLA ever since. She works at the School of Nursing, where she is involved in several research projects, including one examining biomarkers of depression after heart surgery. Belinda is also a yoga teacher and has completed teacher trainings at YogaWorks, Golden Bridge Yoga, and with Erich Schiffmann at Exhale in Venice, CA. When she’s not teaching or working, she’s probably eating, as she loves food. You can find her in line at a food truck at the UCLA Court of Sciences during her lunch break. Belinda's interest in fitness and health started at a young age when her mother died from colon cancer and her father from a heart attack. She joined BHIP to learn new skills and techniques to keep the body strong and to cultivate the discipline to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
... I’m already noticing some changes to my lazy- girl routine. One of them is is sleep. I like to sleep. Ever since I started BHIP, though, I’ve been waking up at 6 a.m. to make it to the 7:15 a.m. class. And when I try to sleep in on the weekends, I can’t. ... . On Friday, we jumped rope, which did a number on my calves. I thought I lost any ability to jump rope after I hit puberty. But if there’s one thing I’m learning from this program, it’s that the body is strong, and it adapts. My first round of 100 jump ropes sucked. By the fourth round, I was starting to get the hang of it.
Four weeks into the program now, and after all the lunges, squats, stairs, and jumps — man, do I feel tight! I can feel muscles in my thighs, calves, hamstrings and butt protesting when I climb stairs or get up from my chair. So I’m trying to squeeze in as many yoga classes as I can [Belinda not only attends yoga classes but is also a trained yoga teacher]. ... This week, I want to talk about hips. 
I started the program thinking I already knew a lot about nutrition. Now, I feel like I don’t know anything. From vegetarian diets to raw food diets to Paleolithic diets, I’ve been reading and reading, and now my head is about to explode. ...