You probably know her from Buffy, when she was kicking butt and taking names in the late ’90s and early 2000s every week on the WB. But at 48, Sarah Michelle Gellar is less concerned with slaying vampires (although there is a Buffy reboot in the works that we absolutely can’t wait for), and more focused on taking care of her body.
“I always make sure to look at food holistically,” she tells Parade. “It’s not just about the food I ate today, but the food I ate this week or this month. Because as you get older, you realize it’s about the whole picture.”
Gellar is famous for bringing her own food to set, on airplanes and basically anywhere else you can think of. “I bring my own food to set a lot of the time so I can eat the food I want to eat when I need it, versus when they break for lunch,” she explains. “We don’t get the ability to be like, ‘Oh I’m hungry now, let me eat.’ I bring my lunchbox on the airplane so I can eat when I need to.”
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As for what she eats? “I always make sure to eat a balanced meal. You need your protein, your carbohydrates. You need to figure out what gives you energy and what works for you,” she says.
Clearly, Gellar is a pro at packing nutritious food for herself. But what about the exercise part of it? It’s shifted quite a bit since her 20s, and now she focuses more on keeping her bones strong as she ages. And she has one trick, in particular, that we can’t stop thinking about.
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The Workout Sarah Michelle Gellar Swears By
Sarah Michelle Gellar is obsessed with an Electromuscular Stimulation Vest (EMS) for toning and bone density. An EMS vest works by delivering mild electrical impulses to targeted muscle groups through built-in electrodes embedded in the vest. These impulses mimic the signals your brain would naturally send to your muscles, which then makes them contract.
“You can only do it twice a week for about 20 minutes, so it cuts down the time you spend on your workout,” she explains.
Consider us influenced.
But that’s not all Gellar does to stay fit. “I’ve added lifting into my life. That’s something I’ve always avoided, especially as an actor,” she tells Parade. “You play these characters and you can’t be shredded, and you have to look a certain way. As you get older, you realize, as a female, you have to focus on bone density. I work with a trainer once or twice a week for real strength training, and I also love Pilates.”
Related: I Walked With a Weighted Vest for Months—Here’s How It Worked for Me
How Meal Prep Factors Into the Equation
Obviously, Gellar is always prepared to take on any health challenge, whether it’s putting on a vest that delivers little toning electrical impulses (still not over it) or having a nutritious meal packed for an airplane ride.
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She credits her meal prepping prowess to her partnership with MyFitnessPal. “Meal planning is something I’ve been attempting to do for some time now, but [MyFitnessPal streamlines it],” she says. “You can go through and pick out recipes based on what you’re looking for, high protein, vegetarian, whatever. Then it will make you a grocery list, and you can even hit a button to purchase everything on that list from a grocery store near you. It takes out all the pressure of meal planning and just leaves you with the best part, which is having food that’s really accessible.”
It’s safe to say Gellar is slaying (see what we did there?) the meal-prepping, exercise and overall health game.
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