Wellness
Are you craving a Summer 17 body?
Girl's Trip star Jada Pinkett Smith has the secret.
The Baltimore native is one of the leading poster women for aging gracefully. From the red carpet to showing off her bangin' bikini body on vacation, she's proof that you can still maintain a great figure in your 40s.
But what's the key?
The 45-year-old mom-of-two dishes on how she keeps in shape and hint: she's not cutting out any carbs or slaving in the gym for three hours either.
Her fitness regimen include cardio:
It's funny—my cardio workout varies. If I have a heavy carb week, I've got a heavy cardio week. I tell people all the time, 'You can eat whatever you want, as long as you're willing to put the work in, and that's a thing I had to learn. So I make sure I do something physical every single day. But that doesn't mean you have to go to the gym and freaking kill yourself! I do 20 minutes of cardio a day. Everybody's thinking you gotta be in the gym for an hour and a half. Literally, I'm never in the gym longer than 45 minutes. Just be consistent—that's it! It doesn't necessarily have to be intense, and you will see a difference. Just go out of your house and do a brisk walk! Every night, my mother and I take the dog and just walk, and that's a ritual for us.
[Tweet "I make sure I do something physical every single day -@jadapsmith"]
She doesn't ditch the carbs completely:
My husband's trainer started giving me diet tips, and he dismissed the myth that more carbs means you're going to be unhealthy. What I realized is that I wasn't eating enough of the proper foods like pasta and rice. I needed more of a high-carb situation in order to facilitate the amount of calories I burn. That meant more fruits, meant a lot of vegetables because those are carbs as well and, if I want, some pasta or toast or English muffins.
She doesn't eat for pleasure
I eat for my schedule so I have to eat high-protein, lots of greens and healthy carbs so that I don’t fall flat on my face. I don’t eat for pleasure,”[I] “had the only West Indian grandmother that could not cook. She was an awful cook, and she taught me that you don’t eat for taste, you eat for nourishment. And I have kept that over the years, so I can eat anything that’s healthy.
She embraces getting older and that her body will change
I'm getting older! I've never looked at myself as, like, a beauty. I'm not sore on the eye, but I know there's always going to be somebody more beautiful—always. My grandmother used to say to me, "It's not about what you look like on the outside. It's what you look like on the inside." So she helped me learn at an early age to be well-rounded, to be spiritual, to be compassionate.
And my mom said, "You can do whatever you want with your hair and your clothes." I went to art school, and I could make my hair lime green if I wanted. So there was a certain internal power that grew within me because I didn't have a problem being who I was, no matter what room I was in.
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