Kristen, who currently stars in NBC’s The Good Place, has also opened up about how she keeps her marriage to fellow actor Dax Shepard healthy. It’s pretty clear that everyone could learn something from her. Here are 39 pearls of wisdom she’s shared about her health and wellness routine—and trust me, you’ll wanna steal one or two (or all of ’em).
1. She’s all about superfoods.
Boring salads? So over it. “I’ll make, like, eight acorn squash—they’re single servings—and put them all in a bowl, and that’s a cool thing to have instead of a salad,” Kristen told WH.
And when it comes to sweet potatoes, she has her cooking method down. Instead of cooking one for 45 minutes in a conventional oven, Kristen pops it into the microwave. Just a few minutes and it’s done. “The sweet potato is a superfood—it’s got so many vitamins and minerals,” she says.
2. She’s all about therapy.
Kristen goes to therapy occasionally but relies mostly on a “toolbox” she and Dax received when they went to sessions early in their relationship, she told WH. It’s how they’ve created helpful rules. For instance, if she’s in a down mood, she’ll tell him she’s going to be quiet for a bit, so he knows her silence isn’t aimed at him.
3. She works hard to communicate in healthy ways in her marriage.
Kristen delved into with WH how they actually resolve arguments in their relationship, and it’s a super thoughtful approach. “It’s always the problem underneath. It’s never about what we did that day…it’s never about the garbage. So my husband doesn’t even tolerate talking about ‘the problem.’ He’s like, ‘take five minutes and think about the problem under the problem and come back to me.’ It’s that standard that keeps us out of a ton of toxicity,” she told WH.
4. She uses her diet to care for her skin.
Kristen deals with eczema flare-ups from time to time. “I’m itching from head to toe,” she told WH. “About six months ago, I started just having severe eczema in my armpits. I was like, ‘Great, my hormones changed. Now I’ve got to deal with it again.’ I had eczema as a kid.”
She also tried an elimination diet to get to the bottom of an eczema flare-up.
5. She talks to her friends every day.
Kristen has said she keeps in touch with friends on the daily. She’ll go on the video app Marco Polo to connect with her girlfriends “all day, every day,” she told WH. “It’s just like, ‘I had a terrible day.’ ‘My husband’s being an a**hole.’ ‘I’ve got to have lunch with you because I’m f*cking freaking out.’ Anything like that.”
6. She accepts that her relationship doesn’t have to be perfect.
No relationship is all rainbows and butterflies, and Kristen leans into that. “There are definitely times where he’s driving me up the wall and I have to be like, ‘I love you, I’m just not talking to you right now,’” she told WH.
She went on to say: “There are times where we’ve gone to bed angry and we always regret it and say we should really work that out next time before we go to bed. There are times where I’ve slept in the front bedroom, [and times] where he has. But you keep your head above water when you recognise that the other person is also an autonomous human being who is trying to work around you, and that you have to try and work around them.”
7. She sweats to help her mental well-being.
Her mental health partially depends on her workouts. “Exercise should be the first stop for anyone who experiences depression or anxiety because it encourages serotonin and endorphins,” she told WH. “I feel so much more centred, patient, capable. It sets the next 48 hours for me.”
8. She double cleanses her skin.
“I never go to bed with makeup on,” Kristen told Shape. “I double-cleanse at night and use a wipe before I wash my face. I like the natural wipes from Neutrogena and their pore-clarifying cleanser, which I use with my Clarisonic.”
9. She double-cleanses her skin.
She told Elle her skin is on the dryer side, so “the oils that my skin produces during the night are vital to maintaining my moisture balance during the day. I don’t ever want to strip my own natural oils in the morning by washing.”
Instead of deep cleansing, try Kristen’s method of waking up your face with a hot towel. “It pulls all the blood flow to my face and sort of wakes me up,” she said. “I definitely do that before I put makeup on.”
10. She doesn’t give in to mental health shame.
“I realised that this is the shame that prevents people from talking about it. I immediately felt irresponsible, because I do care about depression not being taboo,” she told WH, “yet I present this bubbly, outgoing girl who seemingly gets through life with a smile on her face, and I’d never discussed that some days, I don’t.”
11. She supports tons of charities.
Kristen is ready and generous with this advice because she wants to help people, and also because she is constantly considering what it means to be a good human. To that end, she works on behalf of dozens of philanthropies and regularly features teachers’ wish lists on her Instagram, she told WH.
12. She looks for fun parenting hacks.
Kristen has been known to share some genius parenting hacks on her social feeds. In a cute Instagram featuring her girls’ hands, Kristen shared the trick she uses to keep her kids safe. When her children get out of the car, she reminds them to put their “hands on the circle”—the car’s gas pump cover—so she can load or unload the trunk without worrying they’ll run into traffic or wander off. She writes that her “brilliant sister-in-law” invented the trick, which has “thus far kept all kiddos safe.”
13. She eats a healthy, plant-based diet.
Kristen is on a new diet (in part to help her eczema). “We’re trying to do no gluten, no grains, no lectins, no nightshades, no dairy. I already don’t eat meat,” she told WH.
14. She self-reflects.
Kristen once revealed that she had to correct a few of her own toxic behaviours to save her relationship back when she and Dax first started dating.
15. She layers on tons of moisturising skin products.
“I have such moisture issues,” the actress admitted in an interview with Hello Giggles. Although she’s tried her share of trendy gels and what she calls “twenty-something products,” the moisturiser she swears by is of course the very product that she’s the face of. “I really, really like the Hydro Boost that Neutrogena has,” she said. “It’s got lactic acid and hyaluronic acid in it, which are the ones that plump you. Hyaluronic acid is apparently what actually plumps your skin from the inside out.”
16. She stays away from alcohol.
“I maybe have one drink a year solely because I think I might be allergic to alcohol,” Kristen told WH. “When I do have a drink, I experience the flu the next day. This isn’t normal. No one should have this much of a hangover over a glass of wine.”
17. She eats gluten-free.
“I woke up two months ago with celiac,” she tells WH. “I don’t know what the f**k is going on.”
I found that I had a genetic marker for celiac disease. “Who knows what that means yet but I am experimenting with being completely gluten-free, which is very annoying to do, but I think it is going to help my eczema.”
18. She loves an eye mask.
Kristen loves sharing skincare selfies on Insta, and also loves sharing her masks. Pictured here, she and Dax Shepard are “de-puffing” with the Skyn Iceland Hydro Cool Firming Eye Gels, which she told W Magazine is one of her skincare faves.
She also names iS Clinical’s active serum as the product she reaches for when she feels any breakouts coming on, and swears by her StackedSkincare micro-roller as a tool she “can’t live without.”
19. She moves through life one step at a time.
Kristen notes her kids helped her “step off the hamster wheel of checking the feed of my life.”
But if she does experience sadness, she reaches for wisdom from Dax’s AA meetings.
“You just have to do the next right thing. You just stand up. That’s the next right thing. Then you brush your teeth. That’s the next right thing. It’s very one-step-at-a-time,” she told WH.
20. She has a positive perspective on body image.
“I feel the ‘baby weight’ conversation is a stale one,” Kristen told WH back in 2015. “It’s just been talked into the ground—and does anyone really care that much? Just be healthy, don’t beat yourself up, and have fun with your kid. The only way pressure is lifted is if we choose not to accept it any longer. I think that’s what I chose to do.”
21. She makes her job work around her family needs.
Kristen and Dax are parents to daughters Lincoln, 6, and Delta, 4. And she loves spending time with them, especially in the mornings.
Kristen wakes, makes matcha with Ripple pea milk, drops the kids off at school, and then heads to the set. She’s insistent about working only on projects that shoot in L.A. “It’s too disruptive to my family [otherwise], and that’s what gives me the fuel to even be creative at all. If I had to choose, I’d choose them.”
22. She spends time in nature.
“It’s hard to pinpoint what made me be so eco-minded initially,” Kristen previously told WH. “I think it was a slow build starting with being a child who always loved nature. I was always outside as a kid. I think exposing myself to nature from a young age made me conscious of preserving it. I want those beautiful resources to be there for my children to enjoy. I want them to turn on the tap and not have to think about it.”
23. She varies up her workouts.
Kristen is a big fan of Studio Metamorphosis, which incorporates elements of cardio, circuit training, Pilates, and CrossFit.
She attends about three classes per week. “I’ve fallen so in love with it,” Kristen told WH. “I’m not in love with working out and I’ve never really found a class that I love like this. Something about this class gets me.”
24. She uses CBD oil for her mental health.
“Taking CBD oil turned off my mental to-do list that is constantly in a slot machine rotation in my brain,” she told WH.
25. She talks to her kids about mental health.
Kristen speaks openly to her children about mental health, too. She specifically wants them to know it is okay to be sad. “I think you can run into trouble when you tell your kid, ‘You’re okay, don’t be sad.’ And you can’t have people run from their emotions. Everyone is allowed to feel what they’re feeling.”
26. She makes time to be alone.
“I will get irritable when I have to do too much press or people interaction,” she told WH. “Turning into alone time is how I fill up.”
27. She’s been a vegetarian since she was 11.
Kristen went full vegan in 2012 after watching the documentary, Forks Over Knives, which investigates the relationship between animal-based and processed foods and degenerative diseases.
But first, Kristen was a vegetarian since age 11, and she stopped eating vegan and is back to being a vegetarian nowadays. “It’s more about the health benefits than the ethics,” she told WH back in 2012. “But it’s compounded by the fact that I love animals and feel better not eating them.”
28. She and Dax prioritise being a down-to-Earth family.
Kristen chalks up many of the couple’s daily proclivities to the fact that they are both from Michigan. Dax shops at the affordable chain grocery store and not the bougie purveyor of natural foods, for example, “because we’re from Michigan.” They wanted a basement—a rarity in L.A. real estate—“because we’re from the Midwest,” she told WH.
29. She doesn’t skimp on the sunscreen.
Kristen told Elle that she credits sunscreen as the reason for her ability “to maintain a youthful appearance,” and shared that Neutrogena’s Ultra Sheer Stick is her must-have for reapplication “throughout the day, either under my eyes, or when I’m driving and the California sun is trying desperately to give me as many liver spots as possible on my hand.”
30. She is here for modern medicine for mental health.
Kristen told WH that she takes an SSRI antidepressant every day that helps with what she describes as “waves of serotonin imbalance.”
31. She doesn’t stress about body changes.
“My children obliterated my abdominal wall. Good night. That’s a wrap. It’s never going to come back. What do you need it for? You’re married. SPANX exist. I had a fine abdomen when I was in my twenties, and now I don’t,” she told WH.
32. Now, she focuses on core muscles, not abs.
Kristen started doing classes at Studio Metamorphosis on the reg after having her kids.
“It got me that back,” she tells WH, referring to her core muscles. “I started doing this, and I was like, ‘I’m still roughly the same size but now it’s just all muscle. I feel so much stronger, and it’s a physical feeling, but it’s also a mental feeling. It’s about the muscle value in my body.”
33. She indulges.
Kristen leaves room for indulgences, too. “I’m not super restrictive,” she told WH. “If they make au gratin potatoes, I’m going to have some, but I am mindful of the portion I take. I find that through conscious eating, I’m able to have all the rewards and also maintain a healthy, steady diet.”
34. She’s careful with exfoliation.
She told Hello Giggles she cares for her sensitive skin by avoiding “harsher things like peels or even at-home exfoliators,” and prefers relying on her Clarisonic for gentle exfoliation.
35. She’s all about veggies.
She calls her go-to lunch a “garbage disposal salad.”
She starts with lettuce and piles on toppings. “It is just a bed of lettuce with everything on it,” she told WH. “I’ll do avocados, raisins, apples, tomatoes, egg, blue cheese, parm, nuts, carrots, cucumbers, and potatoes. I’ll just throw it on there.”
36. She grows her own produce.
Kristen allocated part of her front yard to two dirt beds that have yielded plentiful produce.
“There’s cilantro, sage, baby greens,” she told WH. “Carrots, broccoli, kale, potatoes, cauliflower. These are strawberries. Romaine, butter lettuce, thyme…Ooh, the spinach is coming up real nice.”
37. She’s worked hard on body confidence.
She told WH: “When you pass a mirror, don’t gag, go, ‘I look cute and chubby today—fine.’ We attach negativity and positivity to things in our life. If you are 70kg, you’re not fat, you’re 70kg. Stop using the word ‘fat’ to describe yourself. And that’s just an arbitrary number. Clearly for someone who’s six feet tall, that’s like rail-thin.”
38. She believes in home cooking.
For dinner, with an assist from her sister-in-law, who helps her shop and prep, Kristen will make something like Banza chickpea pasta with cherry tomatoes and olive oil.“I get too much joy out of cooking,” she says. And she wouldn’t want someone to cook for her, she told WH. “I wouldn’t actually feel comfortable coming home and having a meal served to me.”
39. Her skincare = self-care.
Kristen told ELLE that her skincare routine feels like she’s pampering herself. “When my kids go to bed, and I wash my face and prep for bedtime and put my moisturizer on, it feels like I’m loving myself a little bit,” she said. “It’s something I do that’s just for me, and it makes me feel great.”
This article originally appeared on Women’s Health US.
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