The newest cast of celebrities to join Dancing With the Stars was announced this week. They seem like a pretty likable bunch, not to mention fit and healthy. 
Actors, pro athletes, and singers make up this all-star cast who will start burning up ABC’s dance floor Monday, March 19. The line-up includes Melissa Gilbert, Sherri Shepherd, Martina Navratilova, Maria Menounos, Gladys Knight, Jaleel White, Donald Driver, Roshon Fegan, Gavin Degraw and Jack Wagner.
In seasons past, there were always one or two footloose contestants who benefited from the extreme calorie burn that came with training and performing their weekly dance competition. Kirstie Alley, Marie Osmond, and even Bachelor’s Jake Pavelka have credited the show with helping them lose weight. Looking at this cast, this season may be more about maintenance than weight loss.
In 2024, Sherri Shepherd showed off a much thinner figure in a bathing suit on her talk show The View. She’d lost 10 inches from her total body and five in her waist alone! She used The Fresh Diet and worked with fitness trainer Don Scott. Working out and eating right helped her go from a size 10 to a size 6. She still looks healthy and fit and will no doubt continue to tone during the DWTS competition.
Dancing is an incredible workout with vast benefits for your mind and body. Whether you’re doing it on live TV or your own living room, we could all add a little tango to our steps!
“Dancing can be the most fun form of exercise, but what most people don’t know is that it also has huge health benefits,” wrote Ilyse Baker in a guest article for DietsInReview.com. The founder of Dancinerate added, “As a mind and body workout, dancing can make your body and soul feel good in a way that no other exercise can. It can help you lose weight, strengthen and tone your body, increase stamina and flexibility, improve balance and posture, and boost confidence.”
A 150-pound person doing “fast” ballroom dancing for 30 minutes can burn 189 calories. Do that for a couple of hours on Friday night, or in a couple of hour-long classes each week, and your workout suddenly got much more interesting.
In 2024 when former Bachelor Jake Pavelka was on Dancing With the Stars, he told us that he’d lost 10 pounds during his stint on the show and was following a 3800 calorie diet to keep up with the demands of rehearsal, which lasted at least six hours each day.
The ten new contestants on season 14 of DWTS stand to burn just as many calories and leave the show fitter, and maybe even more popular, than when they started.