Is it just me or does Jennifer Aniston seem to look more beautiful and more fit since she left Friends and that guy a few years back… what’s his name (I think it rhymes with “Bitt”)? Even though Jen leaves a pretty private life, we have caught glimpses and bits of what she does to look so amazing and sport a body that would make a teenaged girl a bit green with envy.
Just a few months shy of turning 4-0, Jen is doing something right. Here are a few things that Jen does to keep herself in tip-top shape:
Yoga: Yep, here is one additional reason to invest in a $15 sticky mat and start down-dogging. Jen is a regular yoga practitioner and relies on her yoga instructor Mandy Ingber to custom-design private yoga lessons for her and come to her house to teach them. Mandy starts by leading Jen through five sun salutations, which are a sequence of movements that are synced with the breath. Additional postures like bridge, butterfly, tree pose and others are held for 30 seconds to one minute. Mandy also transforms these traditional postures into a strength training movements by having Jen do a series of scissor kicks, lunges or plie bends to build extra strength, but to also keep her muscles long and lean.
Jen first turned to yoga a month after separating from her now ex-husband. Before that, she felt very little connection to her body and her exercise as she worked out only on cardio machines. Now, yoga has bridged the mind-body gap that Aniston also feels infiltrate in other areas her life. She admits to feeling stronger emotionally as well as physically and she has drawn on the patience she has cultivated in her own yoga practice to her own life as she holds postures steady for minutes a time.
Cardio: In addition to thrice-weekly private yoga sessions, Jen also breaks a sweat during regular cardio routines. The treadmill and elliptical trainer are her two fitness machines of choice. She usually clocks about 20 minutes or more on one of these before her yoga session. Jen feels that the cardio not only boosts her metabolism, but it gives her muscles a warm-up before her yoga class. According to an interview with Self magazine, after a five-minute warm-up, Jen alternates one minute of high-intensity cardio with two minutes of recovery at a moderate pace. On high-energy days, Aniston will even follow up this interval training, which she does on the elliptical, with a 10- to 15-minute run on the treadmill at a 5.7-mph pace on a 1.5 incline.
Diet: A long-time devotee of The Zone Diet, from the looks of it, Jen does a pretty darn good job at maintaining the 40-30-30 ratio of carbs to fat to protein. Once told by the entertainment industry that she needed to lose 30 pounds, Jen was introduced to The Zone Diet during her Friends years. She credits the diet for working for her mind, body and lifestyle as she shuns bad carbs. Although she’s pretty quiet about her diet secrets and occasional indulgences, she reportedly eats lots and lots of salads with lean proteins. One of her favorite style of foods is Mexican. One of her favorite Mexican eats: Chips and salsa.
Locks: You can’t talk about Ms. Aniston’s beauty without mentioning that hair. Her trailblazing haircut on Friends inspired women to flood beauty salons and simply ask for “The Rachel.” Stylists knew precisely what to do. Her combination of multiple layers, California-sun-kissed highlights and the magic of the flat iron has everyday looking like a bad hair day for me. For those of you who miss seeing your favorite, lovelorn Friend Rachel every Thursday night, this fall she’ll be make a guest appearance on NBC’s 30 Rock as Alec Baldwin’s stalker. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to watch Jen again and see her comedic and lovely self on my television set.
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