Demi Moore gave up 'hard exercise' after years of 'obsession'. Here's how she works out now
Demi Moore has just won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for her performance in The Substance. The 62-year-old plays a famous aerobics instructor who's fired on her 50th birthday and is then offered a substance that transforms her into an enhanced, younger version of herself.
It was a narrative that resonated with Demi, who she shared a powerful message about her 45 years in the industry during her acceptance speech. '30 years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a "popcorn" actress and at that time, I made that mean that this wasn't something that I was allowed to have,' she said.
She thought that meant she 'could do movies that were successful, that made a lot of money, but that I couldn't be acknowledged. That corroded me over time.'
She triumphantly finished: 'And as I was at a low point, I had this magical, bold, courageous, out-of-the-box, absolutely bonkers script come across my desk called The Substance, and the universe told me that you're not done.'
Her approach to health and fitness has also undergone an evolution. While promoting the movie, the actress shared her shifting attitude to fitness over the years, plus her favourite ways to move.
Demi felt ‘pressure’ to lose weight postpartum
Demi, a mum of three, filmed her iconic 1993 movie Indecent Proposal after having her second daughter, Scout. But the process wasn't easy: Demi was stressed about losing weight postpartum and pushed herself too hard.
'I put so much pressure on myself,' she told CBS Sunday Morning on September 22. 'I did have experiences of being told to lose weight. And all of those, while they may have been embarrassing and humiliating, it’s what I did to myself because of that.'
Scout was five or six months old when Demi was shooting Indecent Proposal, she said. 'So, I was feeding her through the night, getting up in the dark with a trainer, with a headlamp, biking all the way to Paramount, wherever, even on location where we were shooting; then shooting a full day, which is usually a 12-hour day; and then starting all over again,' she said, noting that this would sometimes equate to 60 miles of biking a day. 'Even just the idea of, like, what I did to my body, it’s, like, so crazy, so ridiculous.'
Now, Demi said she’s not thrilled she did that. 'You look back and you kinda go, "Did it really matter that much?" Probably not,' she said. 'But at the time, I made it mean everything.'
She gave up hard exercise after developing an 'obsession' over her appearance
Demi has shared little snippets here and there of her workout routine, including doing exercises with the help of the Mirror (now known as lululemon Studio).
But in the 90s, Demi developed an 'obsession' over her appearance for movies. It began with her 1992 film A Few Good Men, where she played a naval lawyer.
'I didn’t feel like I could stop exercising,' Demi wrote in her 2019 memoir Inside Out. 'It was my job to fit into that unforgiving military uniform I’d be wearing in two months in A Few Good Men. Getting in shape for that movie launched the obsession with working out that would consume me.'
After five years, Demi decided to ease up on working out regularly.
'I added into my daily prayer a new mantra: to have the courage to be seen without padding or protection. I couldn’t go on fighting my body and my weight; I had to make peace,' she added. 'I started by giving up hard exercise. I never went back into the gym in the house. Never. The room it occupied is now my office.'
She practices hot yoga
According to Cosmopolitan, since 2010 Demi has been a fan of Bikram yoga, a kind of hot yoga that involves two breathing exercises and a series of 26 poses. According to Healthline, it helps to improve flexibility, build bone density, reduce stress and provide a cardio boost.
Her then-trainer, Gregory Joujon-Roche said to InStyle that she had combined the workout with strength training. Demi became a certified Kundalini yoga teacher a few years later, say MailOnline.
She enjoys dance cardio
Demi announced on Instagram in 2019 that she had taken up virtual dance cardio classes. Cosmopolitan shared that she captioned the post: 'I haven't exercised in over four years' and asked her followers to wish her luck. She was taking her dance classes through 'The Mirror,' now known as the 'lululemon Studio.'
She didn't try to reduce the muscle built for G.I. Jane
After shooting 1997's G.I. Jane, Demi broke her pattern of disordered exercise. She was 'bulking up enormously' for her role as a military officer; after filming was done, she weighed more than her usual, but she decided she had enough.
'My usual reaction would have been to start starving myself again, to begin an exercise regime designed to reduce the bulk, but I did neither. I had reached my limit,' she wrote in her memoir. 'When I got home to Idaho, I had an epiphany in the shower one day: I just need to be my natural size.'
In September, Demi said she 'really experienced the gift of surrender.'
'I was so kind of worn down in this battle that I had been in that I finally surrendered,' she told The New York Times. 'I just started to ask to be my natural size because I didn’t know what it was. I literally couldn’t go in a gym. I couldn’t control food in that way.'
Now, she’s more focused on self-confidence
Demi joked with the Times that faking it until she makes it is 'my primary university'. Now, she feels 'emotionally sober'.
'What it is to be emotionally sober means how I’m choosing to live my life, the quality of how I interact with people, my ability to show up for others,' she said. 'That’s all within my emotional sobriety... I can go into a room; a gathering, and if I’m uncomfortable, I don’t need to try to take the edge off it. I can actually just go: "Oh, wow. Isn’t that interesting? I’m a little uncomfortable right now."'
Read now: How to practise self-compassion and become more confident
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