6 Tricks You Can Steal From Gabby Douglas’s Daily Routine
Gymnast Gabby Douglas might not be advancing to the all-around gymnastics finals in Rio because of a two-athlete-per-country rule, but she only missed it by half a point. She’s still the Kim K of the US gymnastics team and goals af as far as we’re concerned.
The 2012 gold medalist has a daily routine worth studying, too, and she shared it with Cosmopolitan. We’ve picked some universal truths out that anyone can apply to their lives.
Because if the Olympics can’t motivate you to make some slight changes to your sedentary lifestyle, then what good are they?
1. Eat a lot of veggies.
Gabby’s meal plan is full of vegetables: asparagus, sweet potatoes, green beans. No matter what kind of diet you’re on, adding more vegetables is never a bad idea. They’re filling, they’re full of vitamins, and they’re even good for your skin.
After all, as Michael Pollan says, “eat food, not a lot, mostly plants.”
A photo posted by Gabby Douglas (@gabbycvdouglas) on
2. Don’t cut out food groups just because.
We tend to think eating healthy means banning certain food groups like carbs, dairy, meat, or booze. Gabby’s plan proves that this just isn’t necessary. She eats small amounts of chocolate, pasta, and even, oddly enough, gingerbread.
She’s also working out about 900x harder and longer than the rest of us. But still, let it be a lesson: if you don’t have a food intolerance, giving up food groups is not a magic bullet.
Well, except for the booze. Gabby makes no mention of enjoying a post-workday glass of wine or three, so alcohol might be the one treat she does abstain from.
3. Meditate.
Meditation is hard to do without feeling like a woo-woo hippie douche, but it pops up again and again in the daily routines of high-achieving people. And Gabby Douglas is no exception.
She recorded a meditation sesh on one evening of the two days she documented for Cosmo. Meditating “helps me learn to clear my mind and puts me in a good place mentally and spiritually,” she wrote.
What could be wrong with that?
A photo posted by Gabby Douglas (@gabbycvdouglas) on
4. Stay healthy even on your off-days.
Having a cheat day is something that’s come into vogue in the past few years.
That’s why sometimes I like to adhere to a practice called “Faturdays,” which consists dieting hard all week but eating literally whatever you want on Saturday. Honestly, it doesn’t work. And that’s probably why Gabby Douglas doesn’t do it.
“I stick to my clean eating plan even on my days off, for the most part,” she writes.
Noted.
5. Unless your grandma’s cooking waffles.
Gabby doesn’t go hog-wild on rest days, but she does make allowances. For example, on the rest day she catalogued for Cosmo, her grandma made “waffles, scrambled eggs with cheese, and kosher beef bacon,” so she indulged.
The difference between this practice and having a Faturday is that Gabby stuck to a healthy eating plan for the rest of the day. So the key is to have a cheat meal, not a cheat day.
The key is also to have a grandma handy who will cook for you, which seems to be one of Gabby’s most crucial lifehacks.
A photo posted by Gabby Douglas (@gabbycvdouglas) on
6. Limit your social media intake.
This was the aspect of Gabby’s plan that made me most envious of her healthy lifestyle: She isn’t sitting on her phone all day refreshing her Twitter and Instagram notifications. She actually only mentions checking social media twice over the course of two days.
Unless you’re making money off of it, social media is a pretty colossal waste of time that also can lead to depression. So it’s no surprise Gabby moderates her time spent scrolling and swiping.
