The Miss Fit Club takes Pageant Prep Seriously

Walk into the Miss Fit Gym on Worcester Street and you'll see the hot pink treadmills and a sequined beauty pageant gown hanging in the corner, but don't be fooled.

"People see the pink gym and they think, 'great, this'll be easy,'" owner Katie Boyd says. "Then we kick their butts."

Miss Fit is where Miss Massachusetts Loren Galler Rabinowitz puts her body through the "boot camp" workout three mornings a week. Along with about 10 other women, Boyd puts Galler Rabinowitz through a withering high intensity interval training class with hundreds of sit-ups, squats, curls and lunges.

Sprinkled in with the grunting and sweating is a lot of laughter.

As Galler Rabinowitz says, "this is the safe zone."

That's exactly what the Miss Fit Gym is all about. Designed exclusively for women, the 29-year-old Boyd used her degrees in exercise science and nutrition and experience as a beauty pageant contestant to create a gym where women of all ages, sizes, shapes and colors feel at home.

"It's a negative, scary, judgmental world out there," Boyd says. "I want women to come in here and feel comfortable about themselves. We can't stand negative attitudes."

In fact, Boyd says that in the seven months she's been open, she's actually written refund checks back to women whose attitudes don't fit with the philosophy of the gym.

"It's like a girl's clubhouse," says Boyd, who also plans occasional nights out at the movies for her clients to get together outside the gym.

But make no mistake. Boyd takes what she does very seriously. And while most of her clients are women from Wellesley and the local area trying to get or stay in shape and learn how to eat better, Boyd estimates that about 40 percent of her clients are beauty pageant contestants.

Along with Miss Massachusetts, Boyd says contestants from all over New England and as far away as California come to Wellesley for her expertise.

"She's helped me with everything." Galler Rabinowitz says. "I had no idea how to walk - and believe me, these heels are high."

Although an accomplished figure skater, having won national championships with her ice dancing partner as a novice and junior skater, and then placing third at the senior nationals, Galler Rabinowitz said the thought of walking down a stage in those heels was daunting.

"But she gave me the confidence that if I can balance on a skate blade, I can walk on a heel. She taught me how to walk, turn, where to look," Galler Rabinowitz says.

Boyd also taught her how to eat.

"People think we starve ourselves," Galler Rabinowitz says. "I eat more now than I ever have, even more than when I was a competitive athlete."

Being Miss Massachusetts started as a joke for the 24-year-old Brookline resident. While watching the Miss America pageant on television with her five best friends at Adams House as a student at Harvard College, she laughed and told them that she could totally do what the contestants were doing.

After all, she's not only an accomplished scholar and athlete, but has also published a book of poetry about her experience shadowing a hospital chaplain. The Brookline resident is passionate about volunteering and helping those less fortunate. She's studied classical piano since childhood.

Two days after the remark to her friends, she received a call from a pageant official inquiring about her application. Unbeknownst to her, her friends had entered her in a contest on a lark.

Galler Rabinowitz took the challenge. And although she "only" placed in the top 10 in that first contest, she tried again, inspired by the scholarship money available from the pageants.

On her second try she won the title of Miss Collegiate Area, and then won Miss Massachusetts.

She's already won scholarship money and started the application process toward her dream of attending medical school, following in the steps of her parents. Her dad is a cardiologist at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, and her mother is a psychiatrist whose research centers around childhood malnutrition at the Judge Baker Children's Center at Children's Hospital and as the director of the Barbados Nutrition Study.

While it may have started as a joke, she takes her role as Miss Massachusetts quite seriously,  especially since it gives her a platform to speak about a subject she's seen her mother dedicate her professional life to.

"My platform is fighting childhood hunger and I'm working with local and national relief organizations." Galler Rabinowitz said.

"I'm so lucky because I have very strong female role models in my family. My grandmother was a holocaust survivor and my mother is a successful physician and businesswoman who had all the time in the world for the three of us (Galler Rabinowitz and her 18-year-old twin sisters)," she says.

"But I know everyone isn't as lucky as I am. So I'm spending my time as Miss Massachusetts talking to as many kids as I can. ...It's been a crazy ride, but I'm so excited." 

Galler Rabinowitz is in Florida this week to help mentor the Jr. Miss America contestants and tape some segments for the Miss America pageant, which will be in January.

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