Vampire Diaries star Nina Dobrev is proof you can have a balanced approach to health and fitness, and still look incredible. The 33-year-old actress posted a photo of herself wearing a one piece swimsuit with pants and a shirt on top, captioning the shot "❣️❣️❣️." "So beautiful," said one commenter. How does she stay so fit? Read on to see 6 ways Dobrev stays in shape and the photos that prove they work—and to get beach-ready yourself, don't miss these essential 30 Best-Ever Celebrity Bathing Suit Photos!
Dobrev put together an at-home gym so she could continue to work on her fitness during the COVID-19 pandemic. "I started slowly, over time, accumulating equipment and things that I could use to move my workouts at home," Dobrev told Shape. "When I'm done shooting and I have to memorize the next day's work, I can sit on the bike with my script and exercise, and learn my lines for the next day. I'm really proud of my home gym, I use it a lot. It's really nice to have that flexibility of working out, whether it's really early in the morning before I go to set, or really late at night when I get home from set, or after a long flight."
Dobrev starts her day with "some real strong, strong coffee," she tells Harper's Bazaar. "I do a shot of espresso and then I do a regular coffee and I mix them together." Coffee has been shown to have protective benefits for the liver—but there's an important caveat. "We have a lot of evidence that coffee is good for the liver," says liver specialist Jamile Wakim-Fleming, MD. "You have to consume regular coffee — not decaf — daily to get the liver benefits. There's something inherent about caffeine that is helpful to the liver."
Dobrev loves free-diving with sharks and is an outspoken proponent of shark conservation. "If you've been following me for a while you know how much I love free diving with sharks," she captioned an Instagram video. "I used to be afraid of them until I got into the water to try to get over my fear. That's when I realized how uninterested in humans they are. Since then, I've gotten to be in the water with so many different kinds of sharks, and it's been a dream of mine to swim with Tiger sharks specifically, which I FINALLY got to do with @oceanramsey & @juansharks."
Dobrev is not interested in a carb-free lifestyle—the actress loves to eat bread. "Sometimes you eat the bread basket, and sometimes the bread basket eats you 🥖," she captioned a tongue-in-cheek Instagram snap. "Traditional sourdough undergoes a slow fermentation process, the result of which is an increase in the bioavailability of the bread's vitamins and minerals," says registered nutritionist Nicola Shubrook. "This process also starts the breakdown of protein (including gluten), making sourdough easier to digest. Research suggests that the fermentation process improves the bioavailability of fiber and minerals. This is because a naturally occurring compound found in grains, called phytic acid, is broken down and this enables us to access the grain's nutrients more readily."
Dobrev has a background in gymnastics and is a regular practitioner of yoga. "Despite popular belief, yoga is more than just a physical practice—yoga is a complete program of how to live in the world," board-certified internal medicine physician and registered yoga teacher Ingrid Yang, MD, tells SELF. "You never hold any posture for too long; therefore, if you dislike a posture, you know you'll get to move on soon enough. And if you love a posture, you learn to let it go because you cannot dwell in only the things you like—the next posture will be called out soon enough. Thus, it teaches us the natural rhythms of life. When you are uncomfortable, you learn to sit with discomfort because you know it will pass. When you are joyful and want to hold onto something, you learn to let it go because things inevitably change."
Dobrev loves to mix up her workouts, enjoying a "workout cocktail" of running, yoga, boxing, weight training, and walking her dog, Maverick. "I'm getting older and more conscious of what I eat and how I eat it and what I do," she says. "Doing something different [each day] has been the most fun, and I've seen the most benefit because you shock your system. I need to sweat every single day somehow, even if it's just in the steam room. Some days are better than others, I'll be honest with you. Some days, Maverick gets a shorter walk than she probably deserves, if I'm running late or don't have it together or press the snooze button 18 times too many."
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