The Top Wellness and Fitness Advice from Zoe Saldana

Since it’s a new year, new year’s resolutions are everywhere — and who better to inspire your resolutions than action movie actress Zoe Saldana? The Marvel actress is best known for her work as Gamora in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, Neytiri in the Avatar movies, and Uhura in the Star Trek movies. She’s also famous for her beauty, her confidence, and her swoon-worthy romance with husband Marco Perego Saldana.

“Nutrition is super important in my life,” Zoe told Byrdie. “It always has been. These days, I’m really heavy into having a green juice in the morning because it’s hard for me to have a balanced meal sometimes as a working mom. I’m a professional; I’m working all the time. I want to make sure that I get my greens in, so I do that every day, and it helps me a great deal. But I try to be balanced. I don’t like hearing, ‘Oh, I’m doing this diet, or I’m doing that diet.’

Zoe also has good advice about shifting your terminology to better suit your new year’s resolution! “I like when people use words like ‘my lifestyle.’ When we use the word ‘diet,’ we’re preparing ourselves for a big sacrifice that we know, the older we get, we’re going to be too weak to fulfill,” she explained. “We just end up crashing and defeating ourselves. So I like telling myself that I’m not doing a diet, that this is my lifestyle, and I’m choosing to have a balanced meal. I don’t like having zero carbs or all protein. I like getting all the nutrition that my body needs so that it can heal itself naturally.

Zoe is also a great resource for anyone who’s feeling the winter blues and wants to mentally transport themselves to the tropics! She recommends using rum to naturally highlight hair and incorporating fresh flowers or flower petals into your decor more often (particularly “scents that come from real life” like vanilla or rose).

Since Zoe grew up in the Dominican Republic, she “learned to be very organic with [her] beauty routine” early on. “If you live in the islands, you get a coconut, and you use every part of that coconut…you drink the water, you make food with the meat, you can squeeze it and make coconut milk, and that milk you can put on your skin, on your hair. And then you can make coconut oil and coconut butter,” she pointed out. If you don’t live near coconuts, you can still find coconut water, coconut milk, coconut yogurt, or coconut cream in stores!

Since Zoe Saldana has a thyroid disease that affects the thyroid hormone, she is particularly focused on her health. Although she’ll definitely enjoy cookies or “some dark chocolate-covered almonds and a glass of rum”, she mainly focuses on salads, pasta, protein, and vegetables. Zoe is naturally very thin, but she has ballet training and loves dancing. She also gets her cardio in simply by being a busy mom!

If you’re trying to squeeze in a quick workout in between work, actress Zoe Saldana recommends doing “20-minute intervals either at the gym or at home”. Anything like running in place or doing squats or jumps will do! It’s an easy way to stay active if you can’t get to fitness studios for training. If she’s too busy to exercise at all, Zoe will just focus on eating healthier instead.

When it comes to skincare, simple is often better. One cleanser that is actually used by celebrities ranging from Lily Aldridge to Charlize Theron to Lily Collins is Cetaphil’s Gentle Skin Cleanser — and Zoe recommends the drugstore cleanser, too! “I’ve always used Cetaphil cleanser and moisturizer,” she told Byrdie. While understanding your skin type and sticking to a simple routine that suits your skin type can be very effective, Zoe also has pointed out the fact that women’s hormones mean “sometimes we have one week of radiant, glowy skin, and then another week of dullness”.

When she needs a pick-me-up on a bad skin day, Zoe goes for red lipstick! “It makes me feel beautiful and bold and in control of myself,” she said. Zoe also tends to gravitate towards eyeliner and lipstick overall as her makeup look, particularly for red carpets. Knowing your face shape and understanding what best accentuates your facial features is always helpful when crafting a makeup look, and Zoe clearly knows what works for her — but she also values natural beauty, and she’s not afraid to be barefaced when walking the red carpet!

Are you going to copy Zoe’s approaches to workouts, nutrition, skincare, or makeup? For more wellness tips for the new year, check out advice from Elle Fanning, Hailee Steinfeld, and Disney princesses!