How to look younger and youthful like Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow might be 48 today, but you'd never know it from just looking at her.
When Paltrow posted a photo of herself in her "birthday suit," we couldn't help but wonder if it was just us, or did the goop founder look exactly the same as when she started acting in the late '80s? She clearly stumbled upon the fountain of youth and retained her well-toned body.
While looking good is part and parcel of being a celebrity, it definitely isn't easy. “I think aging is hard. It’s definitely a process, and I think when you see your face start to change, you don’t necessarily feel your most beautiful externally. But the irony is it’s that time in your life when you actually really like yourself and love yourself. So you sort of internally feel really beautiful,” she said in a video for her brand, goop.
So how does she manage? In honor of Paltrow's birthday today, we list down some beauty and wellness tips we learned from the actress.
1. Focus on your overall lifestyle
The goop founder's goal has always been "to look and feel as good as possible" since she started the lifestyle website in 2008. And while beauty can be achieved through makeup and procedures, Paltrow believes that achieving beauty can be achieved based on your lifestyle—eating clean, getting good sleep, and making sure that your whole system is in balance. "It’s an entire system: beauty from the inside out."
2. Explore clean beauty
Wearing makeup is not a bad thing, and if it enhances your features and makes you happy then why not? But there are makeup that are made with toxic and harmful materials and are tested on animals. In a short video for goop, Paltrow shared why she believes in clean beauty. "I think I got into clean beauty because I was seeing so many friends struggle with infertility, autoimmune. And I wondered if there's a connection between environmental toxins and how much we're struggling with health. And then, clean beauty movement, I think, is so pro-female. It's very empowering I think for women to be able to choose if they want to put something that can be toxic or not on their body. And that there should be products available to us that aren't harmful."
3. Dry brushing will change your life!
You may have seen those hard-bristled brushes in pharmacies or your favorite celeb's Instagram stories. Dry brushing is said to increase circulation and blood flow, promote lymphatic drainage, and remove dry, flaky patches, and Paltrow is a big fan.
“I’m really into dry-brushing," she shared with goop. "It does the job of exfoliation and improving circulation," she said in her Harper's Bazaar "Get to Bed with Me" video. Before you shower, "You take the dry brush and, starting at your feet and working up, sweep it all over your body with light, firm strokes, always brushing toward your heart. I do it every night before I get into the bath," she said.
4. Drink your vitamins, supplements, and antioxidants regularly
Like she said, beauty is inside-out. “At goop, we approach skincare—especially glow—from the inside out," she shared as she talked about her morning routine. After washing her face, Paltrow takes her supplements including goop Beauty GOOPGLOW Morning Skin Superpowder, goop Wellness Madame Ovary—"a new vitamin protocol for perimenopausal, menopausal, and postmenopausal women"—and collagen. "Your skin is 75 percent collagen, and collagen declines with age and sun exposure. So I mix this with water once a day and drink it—it tastes like vanilla—to help support my skin’s firmness and moisture," she shared.
5. Watch what you're eating—but don't deprive yourself
When we think of healthy eating, we right off the bat think "diet" or self-deprivation, and for Paltrow, it shouldn't be. "Self-care and self-love have become overused words, but I don’t think these feelings are present enough in the kitchen or when we’re sitting down to eat. I never want to cook or eat something that feels like a compromise, like I’m saying “no” to what my body is craving," she said when she gave a sneak peek of her book, The Clean Plate.
Her philosophy is: "Eat good, fresh food that is totally delicious. It has to taste great and be fulfilling to all of the senses." She thinks of healthy eating as having a "rewarding effect" in allowing us to better undestand what our body needs and what it can live without. "This was partly the impetus behind my cookbook It’s All Good—to find a way to make mealtimes fun and full of taste and flavor, without falling back on the classic comfort foods."
6. Follow a skincare routine
If Gwyneth can post makeup-free selfies all the time, so can you. But to have an amazing skin like hers needs dedication.
For her nighttime routine, she first uses an exfoliator, followed by serum by Vitner's Daughter. "It's not only an oil-based serum. April, the woman who makes it, says it's full of all sorts of fantastic things—it really heals skin." Paltrow also uses Dr. Barbara Sturm's Eye Cream and applies it by dabbing it on the skin. "The dabbing alone is an important part of the process," she noted.
Paltrow noted that she has dry skin, and so she uses a night cream whenever she's in California or if it's winter. "In the summer I tend to use less night cream, because we are on the East coast and it has a nice humidity in the air," she says. And finally, Paltrow ends her skincare regimen with a swipe of Love + Sage lip balm.
7. And finally, you deserve a good bath
“A bath is nonnegotiable. I do it every night. My kids are welcome to come in and chat with me if they need to—it’s not like I’m meditating or anything. It’s really the only time I take for myself every single day regardless of what is going on. You can’t feel guilty about carving out time to daydream and not be on your phone," she said in a goop article.
Banner image from Goop's Instagram (@goop)