This summer has been my “season of not staying put,” as my family likes to call it. Without even realizing it, I have somehow planned a trip every weekend and booked over a dozen flights—and it’s only August. I’ve flown from California to Copenhagen and everywhere in between, and while it’s been so much fun to travel, quite frankly, I’m exhausted. Flying takes a toll on my health, but I’ve curated a routine that has kept my wellness in check all summer long (*knocks on wood*). My carry-on is stocked with digestive aids, immune support, hydration essentials, and sleep accessories that make red eyes more manageable. I’m certainly no wellness expert, but I swear the following items have been complete lifesavers. Keep scrolling to shop for the products I can’t travel without.
This vitamin C supplement was made with travel in mind. It contains anti-viral properties, immune boosters, and stress-relieving adaptogens for the ideal on-the-go concoction.
I’m the type of traveler who needs daily movement (we can sit still when we home) but not necessarily two hours in the gym. Jump ropes are an easy thing to pack for a quick cardio burst.
The greatest hack of all is adding a couple spoonful of chia seeds to a glass of water and mixing it with the Liquid IV packets above. You get a hydration and digestion boost (if you get what I’m saying).
The first thing I do when I get back to my house after a red eye is throw on this frozen mask. It looks crazy but feels amazing and de-puffs instantly.
It’s a Barbie world and we’re just living in it, or at least we can pretend to live out our childhood dreams thanks to Margot Robbie (who didn’t want to live in Barbie’s Dreamhouse?!). ICYMI, Robbie is bringing the iconic Mattel doll to life in the much-anticipated Barbie movie. As Barbie, she can fly down the stairs and walk on water, but behind the plastic-fantastic, jet-setting lifestyle, pink ‘fits, and glam, the actress keeps it real–albeit rigorous at times–with her IRL wellness routine. Keep reading for the lowdown on Margot Robbie’s workout and nutrition preferences. Hint: Her sweat sessions include Hot Skatin’ Barbie energy (think: neon rollerblades, leotard, bike shorts, visor, protective gear, and all).
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Before we dive in, remember that a celebrity’s wellness routine is likely very different from any of ours; they have money and resources to make a healthy lifestyle feel easier, and pressures such as looking a certain way for a movie role. But celebrity or not, all of our wellness routines should look different because everybody is different, and “healthy” means something different to everyone. Take anything that interests or inspires you from this A-List movie star’s wellness routine, and leave whatever doesn’t.
Barbie’s famous gams aren’t going to tone themselves—Robbie put in the (hard) work to transform into the life-size figurine, and the movie’s trailers and BTS pics are proof. Her workout MO? Rollerblading. That’s right, it’s not just on screen that Robbie takes to the streets in her skates. According to her interview with Vogue, she likes to lace up even in her real life (she “hates to break”–she’s that hardcore). ICYWW, she took up roller-skating after her ice-skating stint as Tonya Harding in I, Tonya. To prove my point, she even conducted her Vogue interview while rollerblading. Before you knock the nostalgic activity, consider this: Based on a study by the University of Massachusetts, roller-skating causes less than 50% of the impact shock to your joints than running does, making it a low-impact cardio workout you don’t want to sleep on.
Aside from skating, Robbie doesn’t shy away from weights, namely intense leg and butt workouts (think: back squats, front squats, leg presses, and deadlifts). She further proves she’s a badass by finishing off her weight-lifting sessions with a jog, jumping rope, jump squats, and mountain climbers. Then, there are her upper body and core workouts that include military presses, push-ups, planks-to-push-ups, pull-ups, and chest presses. As demanding as her workout routine is, Robbie gives her body breaks by alternating between the gym and lighter “activity” days such as Pilates, and ballet.
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Nutrition
Robbie’s idea of balance carries into how she nourishes her body, making sure there’s room for all foods–including indulgences–in her diet. She admittedly “can’t just have a salad every day and half a glass of wine every second day.” To drive the point home, Robbie continued her conversation with Vogue between bites of avocado toast, grilled Halloumi cheese, and Australian-style bacon (extra crispy), and they hit up her favorite ice cream shop, Salt & Straw, post-rollerblading. If you can’t tell already, she has a sweet tooth and knows it’s OK to indulge it. “Chocolate, waffles, and fries are the main food groups that make up my diet,” she expressed to Emirates Woman.
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However, a typical day of eating when she’s preparing for a role might look like porridge and a green smoothie for breakfast, tuna steak and sweet potato for lunch, and lemon chicken and brown rice for dinner. In her every day, Robbie has a major sweet tooth and knows foods you love are part of a balanced diet, but she prioritizesprotein-rich meals when prepping for roles like Barbe.
Sometimes even the most simple self-care tasks can feel hard – making a nutritious meal, working out, managing your stress – it’s a lot to manage. I’m a mom to five, wife, friend, sister, and business owner. Somewhere in the mix, I learned to take care of others before myself which has been to my detriment on occasion. I know I’m not alone! Thanks to social media, it’s clear that this is a widespread problem amongst women. It has become really important to me to take care of myself so that I’m the best version of myself to show up for my loved ones.
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I haven’t gotten it all figured out, but I do have what I like to call my “baseline”. My baseline means that I’m eating nutritious meals, I’m incorporating some type of movement into my week, and I’m managing my stress as much as I can. When those things are taken care of, life just seems a little bit easier. One of the ways I’m doing that is by adding Athletic Greensinto my day.
From superfoods and probiotics to vitamins and minerals, Athletic Greens is your one-stop-shop when it comes to nutritional supplements.
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What is Athletic Greens?
As someone with some pretty poor eating habits, the nutritional value this product offers was a huge draw for me. I was eager to see if such a simple product might make up for the nutrients I’m missing in my daily diet. Because of the product name, I mistakenly thought that it could be a replacement for vegetables—it’s not. But it did reap some small benefits.
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To start, let’s break down Athletic Greens’ history. Founded in 2010, Athletic Greens is most known for its flagship product, AG1. The greens powder combines vitamins, minerals, and nutrients designed to promote gut health, support immunity, boost energy, and help you recover faster from workouts and physical activity.
According to CEO Chris Ashenden, the brand’s focus is on “foundational nutrition.” I assume this speaks to the product’s role in supplementing a healthy lifestyle, helping to fill the nutritional needs our everyday diet might not satisfy.
Athletic Greens powder, called AG1, is such an attractive product is how nutrient-dense it is. The formula includes over 75 vitamins and minerals as well as prebiotics and probiotics. The full list of ingredients ranges from spirulina and apple powder to spinach leaf powder and pea protein. Even with so many ingredients, the product is vegetarian, vegan, paleo, and keto-friendly, has no GMOs, artificial flavors, sweeteners, or preservatives, and is gluten-free.
How is AG1 different from other greens powders?
While I’m referring to the supplement as a greens powder throughout this article, Athletic Greens is adamant about being much more than simply a substitute for your dark leafy greens. The recommended daily serving—a single scoop—supplies:
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vitamins and minerals to support immune health and strengthen your nervous system
prebiotics and probiotics to provide digestive support
superfood-derived phytonutrients that support the microbiome
immune-supporting mushrooms
adaptogenic herbs and antioxidants to relieve stress and provide metabolic and energy support
The product contains vitamins like riboflavin (B2), thiamine (B1), and various others (like A, B6, C, E, and K2); minerals like magnesium, potassium, and zinc; whole food-sourced nutrients such as carrots, wheatgrass, and spirulina; probiotics like lactobacillus acidophilus; and adaptogens like ashwagandha, chlorella, and reishi mushrooms.
Plus, if you don’t want to add it to water, you have several other options — you can add the powder to your smoothie or smoothie bowl, sprinkle it on your yogurt or fruit bowl, or cook with it.
My AG1 ritual
AG1 is pricey. I purchased the single, 30-day subscription for $79. With your order, you get a month’s supply of AG1, a storage jar and shaker, and five “free” travel packs. On top of that, my shipping cost was $9. While it might not seem like much, I had to grit my teeth in this heyday of free shipping. Thankfully, you can cancel your subscription anytime, so the commitment was relatively minimal.
I set out to see how AG1 would fare with my already-established everyday routine. That meant aiming for the same amount of sleep, and not making any major changes to my diet. While my week on AG1 was by no means a deeply scientific study, I wanted to know if I would feel any different by simply adding the supplement to my everyday habits.
Another great aspect of AG1 is that it is so easy to make. I was grateful for that because it wasn’t a chore or a big disruption to my daily routine.
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Day 1
As suggested, AG1 was the first thing I consumed in the morning. Before my coffee and oats, I mixed a scoop of AG1 with eight ounces of water. My package came with a branded wide-mouth water bottle exclusively designed for getting my greens in liquid form. After securing and shaking the bottle, I undid the lid to uncover a frothy, mossy green beverage.
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Hesitant but curious to consume the grass-like flavor reviews claimed, I took a sip. My first thought? There’s no way I’m finishing this. IMO, the taste was a little bitter. All in all, it took me about two hours to finish the whole thing (baby sips, folks).
I carried on with my normal routine as planned. Because this was my first day, I didn’t notice any shift in my energy or how I felt overall. My main takeaway from the kick-off of my experiment was: How the heck am I going to make it through this week?
Day 2
I woke up feeling a little more determined to discover the crave-worthy flavor of AG1 that everyone’s been touting. Adopting a different approach, I shook up my scoop with water and ice. That drop in temperature made a significant difference. When I drank the AG1 this time, it had a clearer, crisper flavor and mouthfeel. It was less sludgy than the day before. (Though I swear, I shook it as hard as I could.)
Feeling like a wellness girly, I plopped my AG1 down next to my laptop as I started my day sifting through my inbox. Though the placebo effect was obviously at play, something about having that green bottle next to me made me feel a bit more productive. There are worse things.
Day 3
At the tail-end of my period today, I woke up and noticed that my skin was significantly clearer than it had been the day prior. It was brighter than it usually is at this point in my cycle. I went to the kitchen, shook up my AG1, and found that I was already beginning to get used to the flavor. My initial impression was that of a slightly thinner green juice. It felt like the flavor had been engineered to mask something particularly unsavory. But I was coming around to it. At this point, I may have even liked it.
That morning, I texted a few friends who had tried Athletic Greens. They confirmed that the taste takes a little getting used to. For most, they began to look forward to their daily dose of AG1 between their third and seventh day—props to me for being on the early end.
Day 4
Athletic Greens’ Instagram is full of ideas for consuming their product beyond the ol’ H20 standby. So, I tried their ultimate summer smoothie bowl recipe to mix things up halfway through my trial. I found that the previously offending flavor was completely masked by adding almond butter, banana, apple, dates, and oat milk. I could see this becoming a go-to breakfast. And while the blood-sugar-balancingenthusiasts might protest this smoothie’s glucose overload, pairing your fruits with the almond butter’s healthy fats is a solid way to mitigate the spike.
This was the first day I noticed a subtle physiological change. I had more energy during my afternoon barre errands and—day five spoiler—wasn’t at all sluggish when I woke up the next day.
Day 5
The wake-up this morning was one of the best I can recount in recent history. With little effort, I got up immediately to my 8:00 a.m. alarm and went straight into a brief meditation. I would consider myself a semi-morning person, so this level of alertness was out of the ordinary. Mentally, I felt sharp, aligned, and motivated to transition to my to-do list.
I made the same AG1-infused smoothie as I did the day before and discovered an additional burst of energy after finishing my glass. I made it through my morning to-dos while staying on-task and focused. Thanks, AG1.
Day 6
While my wake-up call wasn’t as miraculous as yesterday’s, I did sleep soundly and awoke feeling rested. Craving my usual savory breakfast (a slice of vegan avocado toast with delicious oats), I opted for AG1 and ice water. Interestingly, it took until today to notice that my craving for a second mid-morning coffee had disappeared entirely. Instead, my single cup sufficed in terms of both my energy levels and feeling satiated post-breakfast.
I often fall victim to the dreaded 3 p.m. slump, but today, I managed to push through all my end-of-day tasks and even enjoyed a 45-minute yoga session. To say that my energy levels stayed steady throughout the day would be an understatement. I’m not an evangelist of wellness (meditation aside), but when something solves my dwindling energy, I have to shout it from the rooftops. I noticed an easy wind-down after dinner and was able to fall asleep quickly and soundly. That’s a lot to be said for someone who deals with occasional bouts of insomnia.
Day 7
I started this journey unsure of how I’d make it to this point. In hindsight, however, things turned out for the better on day three. By now, my daily rhythms came to expect the AG1 before all else, and I have to admit: Something is comforting and ritualistic about sipping on it first thing.
While I said I wouldn’t make any significant changes to my diet, I did notice that the supplement naturally inspired me to make nutrient-dense choices. I kept up a consistent pattern of greens throughout the day: a protein-packed salad for lunch, a green smoothie for a snack, and a tall pile of spinach to accompany that night’s meal. Something about doing good things for my body in the morning inspired me to keep up the momentum all day long. Can AG1 inspire a mindset shift? The correlation likely isn’t strong enough to call it fact, but after a week on the greens powder, I can confirm with confidence: The results I saw this week were enough to keep me going.
The takeaway
I still have about 20 servings left in my first shipment of AG1, and I will see it through to the end. Admittedly, a week isn’t enough time to feel the long-term benefits build up. Of course, the price point marks a steep barrier to entry, and as many nutritionists will confirm, you don’t need a fancy supplement to meet your daily requirements for vitamins and minerals. But with the positive results I experienced, I can confirm that it’s worth the hype.
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As someone looking to improve their eating habits, I’m glad I tried AG1. Ultimately, this is a convenient product that played into my brain’s positive reward centers—and that’s not a bad thing! The routine of prepping AG1 each morning before breakfast (or as a part of my morning meal) signaled that I was doing something good for my body. It helped set the foundation for those habits to continue throughout the day. A transformed perspective and more energy? That’s what we like to call a win-win.
What’s good enough for Jennifer Aniston is good enough for us. So when word broke outthat she’s obsessed with the health-tracking device Oura Ring, let’s just say we were pretty much sold right then and there. But being the wellness diehards that we are, we had to put the gadget to the test ourselves (it’s practically our wellness editor’s job to weed out the fads from the legit trends, after all). Sure, it makes a solid fashion statement, but does it deliver on all its health metric promises? Could such a small piece of jewelry disguised as wearable technology accurately measure our sleep patterns, predict our menstrual cycles, and monitor our physical activity? Read on for our honest review of the Oura Ring and whether it lives up to the hype.
From Apple Watches to Fitbits and Whoops to Oura Rings, it seems there’s a tracker for every need and type of health-curious individual out there. So what makes the Oura Ring stand out? For starters, it’s not worn around your wrists like most health-monitoring devices. Rather, it’s a ring that weighs in at just 0.1 pounds and comes in sizes 6-13 and five colors: silver, black, matte black, gold, and rose gold.
In a nutshell: it’s a fitness tracker haha but what we love about it is it tracks SO MUCH more than ‘fitness’. It tracks your overall health and wellness, sleep, workouts, stress, HR, body temperature, cycles, and more.
When you order an Oura ring, Oura will ship you a ring sizing kit so you can pick the exact size you want and decide which finger to wear it on.
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Advertised as inspiring “awareness of the intimate connection between mind and body,” it tracks sleep, activity, recovery, and your cycle in real-time by measuring from the palm side of your finger (where the pulse signal is strong) and provides three daily scores: sleep, readiness, and activity. According to Oura Ring’s website, “Your scores tell you how your body feels and what your body needs, every second of every day.” In other words, the Oura Ring takes the guesswork out of when it’s time to push yourself when you need rest and recovery, and when you might be getting sick by taking into consideration 20 different body signals—think temperature, heart rate, heart rate variability, and sleep—using infrared light, body temperature, and 3D accelerometer sensors.
Oura’s Infrared Photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor sends light through LEDs into the skin and captures how much light is reflected from your arteries to determine your heart’s activity, including resting heart rate, heart rate variability (AKA the constant variation in time between your heartbeats), and respiration. Heart rate variability can indicate whether you’re in a relaxed or stressed state, and when combined with body temperature, can be used to gather information about sleep. By monitoring your nighttime skin temperature, the Oura Ring takes note of your body temperature, which provides insights into the inner workings of the body, such as how well your body is recovering, if you’re coming down with an illness, or if hormones are hard at work. So that’s the science, but does it work in practice?
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Our Editors’ Honest Reviews:
As mentioned above, the Oura ring tracks so much more than your steps or your fitness. Probably our favorite feature about it is tracking your sleep, analyzing your sleep data, giving you sleep insights, and more. Oura ring uses elements like the amount of sleep you got, your resting heart rate, your body temperature, deep sleep, etc to calculate your sleep score. One AMAZING example we got from this: one night we had a margarita or two before going to bed that night. the next day we had a low sleep score and the Oura app told us “Something caused your heart rate and body temperature to stay elevated last night, so you didn’t get great sleep. Try taking it easy today since you didn’t fully recover overnight.” WILD to see actual data on how alcohol affects our sleep!
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It also analyzes your sleep data and gives you sleep insights. So after analyzing our sleep, my oura ring app advised us that our bedtime is between 8:45-9:45 pm. The nights we go to bed in that window are the nights we’ve gotten amazing sleep!
The Oura ring uses data from your sleep the night before to also calculate a “readiness” score for you. Your readiness score is based on how you slept, the level of activity you did the day before, your resting heart rate, and a few other things. So sometimes our Oura app will tell us our readiness score is at an all-time high because we slept great and had a rest day the day before. Other times it will say ‘You were active yesterday and it looks like your body could use some recovery time today’. We don’t need an app to tell us those things but it is cool to see how our daily activity and sleep can affect our “readiness” for the day!
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You can’t necessarily ‘start a workout’ on the Oura ring like you can on the Apple watch, but you can manually add in a workout and it will factor that into your daily activity goal! Or if we are going for a walk or a run, it automatically picks that up and at the end of the workout it will say “workout detected” and we can confirm it or cancel it. But, it won’t automatically pick up like yoga or a peloton ride. You would just manually put in “cycling”, the length of time, and the intensity (light, moderate, hard) and then it calculates the caloric burn based on that (and we have found it to be very accurate).
The Oura ring can also help track your cycles and predict ovulation! If you are going through IVF then your doctor probably regulating all of that. But, for the ones who aren’t in that boat, the Oura ring will automatically do that for you since you wear the ring overnight, and help track your cycles + predict ovulation for you!
The Oura ring also has guided meditations in the app which we LOVE. What’s cool about it is if you do one of the guided meditations in the app…your ring will track how meditating affects your body. It tracks if your heart rate and body temperature are lowered which in turn helps to lower your stress and boost your readiness score.
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The ring also detects naps! So if we lay down for an hour nap after church, when I wake up and check our app it will say ‘nap detected’ and you can confirm or cancel. When you confirm, the nap will boost your readiness score for the day!
Unlike the Apple watch which just has 3 rings you need to close every day lol the Oura ring has a ‘rest mode’. It can detect when you are tired or stressed by reading the changes in your key body signals associated with stress. It then automatically adjusts your daily goals to put your rest and recovery first instead of keeping the same ‘move goal’ you have every single day.
We are sure there are tons of other features the Oura ring has that we haven’t ventured into yet haha but the ones we shared above are some of our favorites and why we love the ring.
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Why We wanted the Oura Ring:
Last summer while on a hot girl walk with our best gal pal, we noticed a new, chunky gold ring sitting prettily on her middle finger. Naturally, because we are nosy and easily influenced, we waited a mere 45 seconds before asking where she got it. When we discovered it was a wellness tracker our jaw was on the floor. Before impulsively hitting Add to Cart, we did research, weighed the pros and cons, and finally got one for ourselves almost a whole year later.
Our initial attraction to the Oura Ring was the aesthetic. We loved the idea of being able to have consistent tracking, no matter the outfit, and that it didn’t look like an unsightly tracker at all. After learning more about Oura’s insights (particularly, how it tracked your sleep), we knew that was an untapped area of data that I wanted to improve, and that sold us in the end.
How it compares to other tracking we’ve tried:
We’ve had the Oura Ring for almost two weeks and we’ve been using both the Oura Ring and the Apple Watch simultaneously so that we could get a grasp on how they directly compared. While we prefer the Oura Ring by a decent amount, we will note that the biggest adjustment that we had when switching over was having to open the Oura Ring app instead of relying on a screen from the device itself. As far as actual analytics go, Oura Ring gives you so much more health data than the Apple Watch. We are talking about sleep insights, activity data, and temperature tracking (which is huge if you track your cycle). It pulls so much more data than just calories, steps, and heart rate, plus, it’s easy on the eyes which makes us much more likely to use it.
Our experience:
Before we picked out our Oura Ring size, we used their free ring sizing kit which we highly recommend since you’ll be wearing it nearly all day and it’s not adjustable. They note that it works best on your pointer finger, though we have seen some users wear them on their middle or ring fingers as well. The app was super easy to navigate and after a few minutes of exploring the intro resources on the app and a quick 90-minute charge for the week, we had a great handle on how it worked to take it for a spin.
What we liked:
To us, the biggest selling point of the Oura Ring is the fact that your numbered goals adjust every day depending on how much your body is recovered. So many times with the Apple Watch we would be discouraged that to feel the validation of closing our rings, we would have to hit the same goals every day despite a horrible night of sleep, feeling like trash while on our period, or being incredibly sore after a hard workout the day before. The Oura Ring adjusts your activity goal each day based on your other analytics and we’ve found that this has allowed us to work with our body, rather than against it.
The sleep data that the Oura Ring pulls has also been a game-changer for us. Every morning, we click on the app to see our sleep score. If it’s low, we skip the gym for the morning and use the extra time to snooze or we’ll schedule a nap for later. If it’s optimal, we will make the most of the morning and the activity plans for the day. The Oura Ring sleep score is based on your total sleep, time in bed, sleep efficiency (percentage of time spent awake vs. asleep in bed), your resting heart rate, and how long you were in different sleep stages—truly things we never thought about before using this wellness tracker.
We could talk about the pros of the Oura Ring all day: the user-friendly app, the ability to sync with the Natural Cycles app, how long the battery lasts in comparison to how long you have to charge it, the overall look and feel of it, and more. If we could go back and do it all over again, we 100 percent would. After two weeks of using it, we know we’ve just barely scratched the surface of all it can do like using tags to track how we felt, note what we ate/drank, monitor symptoms we experienced on certain dates, keep a record of our emotions, track when we have sex, etc.
What we didn’t like:
The reality is that no tracking device is perfect and while we love the Oura Ring, there are some things we wish we could change about it. The first is that, atop the lofty price, you do have to pay monthly for the app (after the free trial, it’s $5.99 per month). While you can take advantage of some functions without the app, to get the most out of your ring, you’ll want the subscription.
We’ve heard mixed reviews about Oura’s activity tracking and here’s our two cents on it: it’s a little clunky compared to the Apple Watch. Overall, it captures the correct amount of calories burned (compared to the numbers we see on our Apple Watch), but figuring out how to track our workouts isn’t as easy to figure out and seems to be done retroactively as opposed to in the moment. Once again, could be user error but as a pretty average person, we would assume others may have trouble here as well.
Another note: Having our Oura Ring and Apple Watch both connected to our iPhone’s Bluetooth annihilates my phone battery. On an average day, we sit at 59 percent by 10 a.m. so we pray to the tech gods hoping this will get better without us having to part ways with our Apple Watch.
Final verdict:
Knowing we had 30 days to return what we consider to be a large investment, we were still reviewing the Oura Ring super critically and it still passed all of the tests. This tracker is more intuitive than trackers we have used in the past and has motivated our wellness journey without making us obsess over it. We love how inconspicuous it is and how much it helped us to take accountability for our health beyond our activity tracking. And for those reasons and more, we are an Oura Ring stan.
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We’d recommend this ring to all wellness and fitness enthusiasts and pros looking to get more shut-eye, track their stress levels, predict their periods, and be more informed about their bodies plus it is waterproof so no need to take it off.
Editor’s note: While the Oura Ring is a great tool to use, always call your doctor or healthcare provider if you’re experiencing health concerns. The Oura Ring is a great supplemental device to use for everyday monitoring, but it shouldn’t replace visits to the doctor, nor can it diagnose illnesses.
We think we covered about everything we know so far but comment below if there’s anything else you want to know! Thanks for reading!
