Cobie Smulders on Working Out with Tom Cruise & Her Love of Powdered Greens

As a mother of two, Cobie Smulders, best known for her roles in How I Met Your Mother and The Avengers, values her family. It’s one of the reasons why she recently partnered with Frito-Lay to promote the brand’s “Dreamvention” program, a contest where families from around the country submit their best and most creative inventions for making day-to-day life easier.

“I was very excited about enticing families to spend time together creating, inventing,” Smulders tells StyleCaster. “I’m a mom, and I think that it’s very exciting to try to solve an everyday problem yourself. I just think in this day in age, everyone’s on their phones. Everyone is in their own bubble, and it’s important, especially from a childhood education standpoint, to get kids excited about building, about problem-solving.”

Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Frito-Lay.

With her parenting problems out of the way, Smulders also revealed a few secrets she swears by to stay healthy and keep moving—especially as someone who’s guilty herself of spending too much time on her phone. Smulders may play the fast-food craving, wine-drinking lawyer Lisa, on Netflix’s Friends from College, but her actual lifestyle could not be more different. Read on for her best health secrets.

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For breakfast I had: Juice and oatmeal. I try to eat something in the morning, but I’m not a big morning eater. But I do try to do a smoothie or green juice every morning.

Today I snacked on: Some delicious Sun Chips. I like the Harvest Cheddar.

My go-to healthy drink is: Green juice. I’m a big juicer. I sort of learned that me and juiced kale are good friends.

My favorite workout is: Pilates. I’m a big Pilates girl. And I’ve recently gotten back into dance. There’s this type of dance called PlyoJam. I like to do any exercise that has really loud music. I was Spinning for a while, but I’ve gotten back into this dance class and Pilates.

Source: Instagram

My guilty pleasure food is: Macaroni and cheese.

The one thing that always gets me motivated to work out is: I learned actually through doing movies where I had to do a lot of stunts and training how much I need exercise just to keep my mind healthy. I did this movie called Jack Reacher 2, and Tom Cruise was in it, and we trained for two months before the movie even started. It was really intense, but I learned a lot, and what I learned about myself is that I need to work out. Now as an adult I’m realizing I have to do this just to keep myself sane.

My favorite healthy restaurant is: I really love sushi so that’s a pretty healthy thing. I live in Los Angeles, so there are a lot of healthy places. I usually try to eat salads and keep it healthy sort of everywhere I go. There’s one called Sage that’s in Culver City that I really like, and it’s vegan,  but it’s not necessarily healthy. I just try to order wisely.

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The three ingredients you’ll always find in my kitchen are: Old-school Irish butter in a jar on the counter, avocados and Himalayan sea salt.

My biggest health tip for travelers is to: Powdered greens. I’m sort of a constant walking natural pharmacy. I’ll have like ginseng and I’ll have so many weird bottles. But what I do use a lot is I’ll pack individual things of greens, like powdered greens. I just put it in water or put it in smoothies to make sure I’m getting enough greens in a day. So I’ll bring that and just put it in a bottle of water and chug it and know I’ve gotten some vitamins and minerals for the day.

My signature healthy dish is: A rice cracker with hummus, avocado, sea salt and lemon.

The best part of my job is: I get to go to work and create and be artistic and be around really cool people. I feel like sometimes with people’s jobs, they have to have some kind of creative hobby on top because they go to an office. But I get to go to work and play, which I’m really lucky to do. You’re constantly stimulated, and you’re just doing new things. You have to think on your feet, and it’s just so interactive. I don’t think that many people get to be paid to do that. I get to go to work to play, which is magic.