Gwyneth Paltrow has dropped her workout routine, and it's not what we expected

No vagina candles in sight

• In this article:

• How Gwyneth Paltrow looks after her body– and soul

• The workout routine Paltrow follows each week

• Why the actress is so passionate about wellness

At the age of 51, one of Hollywood’s biggest icons details how she keeps her body and soul feeling strong every day. 

What does it take to look – and feel – as radiant as Gwyneth Paltrow? 

Well, the actress herself has just dropped her exact fitness and wellness routine, sharing with her 8.4 million Instagram followers how she prioritises her health.

In an Ask Me Anything (AMA) series on Friday, Paltrow answered some of her followers’ burning questions, offering a glimpse into her favourite ways to sweat, as well as how the 51-year-old actress learnt to be ‘comfortable’ in her own skin.

When asked how often she exercises in an average week, Paltrow explains her usual routine, surprising many with her evolved approach to working out with intensity. 

"I do something six days a week, but with a lot less intensity than I used to," she says, filming her response in the Santa Monica headquarters of her lifestyle brand Goop.

"Even just going for an hour walk, or like now, I'm walking around our giant Goop office. I usually take multiple spins around to stretch my legs," Paltrow says. "But I try to do something – a little something – every day.”

Her lower-intensity approach to fitness reflects that of another industry icon and longtime friend Jennifer Aniston. Earlier this year, Aniston revealed she too had significantly reduced the strain she put on her body during workouts, swapping her intense daily cardio workouts for gentler, more targeted movements.

The importance of ‘becoming your own best friend’

With each outrageous product launch on Goop, Paltrow’s self-expression and self-confidence continue to permeate the wellness industry. But, as she shares with her Instagram followers, her unwavering sense of self-love was something she worked hard to develop. 

"Diane von Fürstenberg taught me how to do that, how to wake up in the morning and look at myself and be happy to see myself and say nice things to myself instead of terrible things to myself," Paltrow explains.

"She really taught me about the importance of becoming your own best friend," she adds. "And that really is how you relate to yourself and things you say to yourself."

In another AMA session back in March, Paltrow echoed a similar sentiment, encouraging her followers to embrace whatever makes them happy in the wellness space. 

For her, that includes gravitating towards Spanx and compression clothing during her workouts, “Weirdly I am very into Spanx,” she shared alongside a photo of her rocking what appeared to be a pair of contour leggings from the company.

Gwyneth’s signature wellness activities

In addition to her workout, the queen of wellness reveals she also enjoys a sauna session almost every day in a recent Instagram video. 

“I’m in [the sauna] usually every other day, I would say, for a good 20 to 30 minutes,” the Oscar-winning actress shares. “It’s one of the best investments I made.”

To get the star ready for the day, her morning routine is also filled with a few typical Goop-approved wellness tropes, such as dry brushing, eyes-open meditation and a plethora of restoring creams, serums and scents. 

The actress also revealed the origins of her wellness obsession during the Instagram Q&A session, explaining her late father’s cancer diagnosis and death inspired her to better understand her own health. 

“It was actually because my father was diagnosed with cancer when I was about 25 years old and that started to catalyse my foray into understanding food, environmental toxins, food as medicine [and] alternative stuff like acupuncture,” Paltrow shares.

Originally published as Gwyneth Paltrow has dropped her workout routine, and it's not what we expected