If there’s one thing we can be sure about, it’s that Jenna Dewan has the kind of body anyone would kill for.
And if you haven’t already had these thoughts cross your mind, you sure will very soon.
Recently, the actress and dancer appeared completely nude on the cover of Women’s Health, it’s safe to say that our eyes diverted straight to her super-toned arms, abs of steel and toned glutes—and we’ve been curious as to how we’d get her rock hard body ever since.
Just like her World Of Dance co-host, Jennifer Lopez, Dewan’s body hasn’t come about by slacking off when it comes to diet and exercise.
Keeping her workouts intense and varied, Dewan works every single part of her body. She also maintains a clean, Vegan diet to fuel her body throughout the day.
Here, we run through everything Jenna Dewan has done to get the killer body she has today.
DIET: Clean, Vegan Eating
While clean eating does come with its low-cal benefits, Dewan considers her clean, 1,400 calorie diet as something more than a just dietary choice. “I consider eating healthy a way of life because I feel better, plain and simple,” she told People.
“I’m not a fan of dieting, which is why I choose to eat healthy most of the time. I keep it in balance, so I don’t have to crash diet. When I want to splurge I allow myself and don’t beat myself up—I just make a plan to eat extra healthy the next day or work out.” Her go-to splurge food? “French fries!”
When it came to her choice to become vegan, her decision was based in both ethics and specific food preferences: “I also choose to eat plant-based foods because not only is it healthy and yummy, but I feel ethically right,” she said. “We have become so off-balance with our animal consumption. Even one meatless meal a week helps!”
To top off her healthy diet, she’s also sure to drink at least 2 litres of water a day.
DIET: Smoothies To Start The Day
If you were to ask the 39-year-old what she starts her day with each morning, chances are she’ll say a green smoothie.
Speaking to Women’s Health, Dewan said she swears by green smoothies—containing a mix of spinach, kale, lemon, apple, banana, sometimes pear, a little cod liver oil, and black sesame seeds blended with water—to not only prepare her for her jam packed day, but also to up the health of her skin and hair.
Sometimes she’s switch up her smoothie recipe for a little variety, opting for Kimberly Snyder’s Glowing Green smoothie as an alternative: “I’ll have a smoothie made with spinach, romaine, lemon, celery, banana, pear, and apple,” she told Marie Claire US. “It’s filled with so much fibre, minerals, and vitamins—it’s changed my energy and skin.”
She’ll also add coriander and parsley to her smoothies for extra greens, or spirulina powder as a supplement to her diet. “It is alkalising, it is like superfood for your blood, your oxygen and your cells,” she told Women’s Health. “It’s amazing.”
DIET: Bowls For Lunch And Dinner
When it comes to lunch and dinner, Dewan likes to keep things fairly simple and easy, making nutrient-packed salads and bowls for many of her meals.
Speaking with Women’s Health, the host said that her go-to lunches are often fresh salads she can prepare in advance. “I’m part Lebanese—my dad’s family—so I grew up with tabouli,” she said. “It’s my favourite. I like to make things that will keep for a couple of days, and I can just grab and go.”
According to People, she also switches her lunches up by having a cucumber and tomato salads with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper, as a fresh mid-day meal.
DIET: Bowls For Lunch And Dinner
When it comes to dinner, Dewan is all about the bowls. One of her favourites? A Quinoa bowl, packed with black beans, chopped tomatoes, roasted squash, zucchini, red peppers, avocado, corn, salsa, tortilla strips, lime, vegan chipotle sauce, salt and pepper.
And when she feels like a change, the dancer will whip up a brown-rice bowls. Sharing the recipe with Marie Claire US, the bowl contains black beans and roasted veggies (carrots, purple potatoes, butternut squash, asparagus, zucchini) dressed with tahini sauce or olive oil, salt, and pepper.
If she’s out for dinner with her daughter, Everly, Dewan will almost always have sushi. “I’ll order some veggie sushi rolls and could eat my body weight in ginger!” she told Women’s Health.
DIET: Healthy Snacks Are A Must
To get her through her hectic schedule, the actress will always pack healthy snacks to refuel herself with through the day. According to People, Dewan will pack a fruit smoothie—containing apple, banana, raspberries, blueberries and water—to pick her up in the day.
Being an on-the-go mum, Dewan has become an expert at snack packing, paring her smoothie with extra fruit, dips and nutrition bars. “I always love hummus, and I always have some kind of fruit on me,” she told InStyle US.”There are these Luna bars that I really love that I always have in the car. It’s like emergency food.”
EXERCISE: Dancing Is Her Number One Workout
It should come as no surprise that a former professional dancer, and now-dance show host, turns to dance as a fun form of exercise.” I like going to a fun, upbeat class with loud music, like dance cardio,” she told Marie Claire US.”I grew up dancing, so I generally push myself a bit harder when I’m around a crowd.
And if she’s not completing a solely dance-focused workout, she is sure to incorporate it in her exercise regime somehow. Speaking to Shape, Dewan’s go-to trainer, Jennifer Johnson, discussed how she incorporates dance into her workouts.
“We start with a non-stop 30-minute dance warm-up,” said Johnson. “She knows a lot of routines from me, so I’ll call them out and she’ll start. It’s a ton of booty shaking!”
Johnson also vouched for the full-body benefits that dance-centred workouts can offer. “With dance, it’s not the same movement over and over, like running or [indoor cycling],” Johnson told SELF.”
“You’re jumping, you’re squatting, you’re on the floor, you’re side-to-side, you’re spinning, you’re turning, and you constantly [change] directions and intensity of movement,” she says. “And you’re having so much fun that it’s easier to get the cardio in.”
EXERCISE: Keeping Active During, And Straight After, Pregnancy
If you thought for one second that Dewan stopped training when she was pregnant with her daughter, Everly, you’re dead wrong.
Rather than giving out her workouts completley, trainer Jennifer Johnson, simply adjusted them during her pregnancy. “When she was pregnant, we did a ton of arms because she was mostly showing off her arms on the red carpet,” Johnson told Shape.
Even after she gave birth and went back to work, Dewan tried to incorporate workouts as often as possible into her everyday activities. “I used all of the minutes and hours that I would be rocking Evie to sleep, and I’d make it a workout,” she told InStyle US.
“So I’d be doing lunges across the room or squats or whatever I was doing, because I was going to be doing it for 40 minutes regardless, so I might as well turn it into a little bit of a workout.” This way, rocking her daughter to sleep could also double a toning workout. “I think that it fully helped kind of snap things back in shape a little bit faster than they would have,” she said.
EXERCISE: Quick, But Intensive, Workouts
Between her hosting duties, raising her children, and everything in between, Dewan isn’t left with a whole lot of time to dedicate to exercise—so she tried to squeeze in a quick, but intensive, workout whenever she can. “I love 45-minute power workouts,” she told Women’s Health. “I get in, do my thing, and then I’m able to go pick up Everly from school. It gives me energy.”
According to her trainer, the actress uses every one of those minutes to her full advantage. “[She’s like,] ‘Let’s go hard or go home!'” Johnson told Women’s Health. “She is a beast.”
EXERCISE: Quick, But Intensive, Workouts
Detailing their intense sessions to SELF, Johnson said she’s sure to squeeze every single type of exercise into Dewan’s limited time. Each of their sessions will include cardio and strength training, which comprise of both compound movements—to work multiple muscle groups at once—and isolation exercises that target smaller, less-worked muscles.
As mentioned before, Johnson also works a tonne of dance cardio into their workouts. But just to make sure Dewan is getting the strength training she needs, the trainer will combine dance with body conditioning. “My method is usually half dance cardio, half muscle conditioning, but with Jenna it’s more like one-quarter dance cardio and three-quarters muscle conditioning,” she said.
EXERCISE: Keeping Exercise Varied
Just because she’s a gun at working out, it doesn’t mean Dewan doesn’t need incentive to break a sweat. “For me, it has to keep my interest so I’ve got to switch it up,” she told InStyle US, citing dance-based workouts, spin classes, and weight training as some of her favourite exercise options.
And although she probably works out more than the average person, she still needs to enjoy exercise. “I have to make sure it’s something I want to do or I will make every excuse not to work out,” Dewan told Women’s Health UK.
When it comes to sculpting her midsection, Dewan has a tonne of different tactics. “We always end every workout with a ton of abs work,” her trainer, Jennifer Johnson, told Shape.
“She likes to slide on the floor instead of typical crunches, so we’ll work them in a million different ways—dancing and booty popping planks to bridges, all kinds of stuff. We mix it up so every workout is different.”
Her go-to ab workout? V-ups with sliding discs. “Your elbows are on the mat and your feet are on the sliders, and as you pike up, you open your legs out to a V, and when you go back down you put your feet back together,” Johnson told SELF.
“The most important thing is that your booty is high in the air, because that’s what’s activating your abs—you want to use your abs to lift you up, not your legs or your hip flexors,” she adds.
Dewan has also confessed that abs have become one of her major targets since giving birth. “My stomach after baby is something I have to put a lot of extra effort into,” she told Health. “So, for abs, Jennifer does these exercises where you’re in a plank and you move your legs all different ways and it engages you.”
EXERCISE: Her Go-To Butt Exercise
You’re probably not shocked to find out that Dewan works really hard on her backside. “I work my literal ass off for my ass!” she told Health.
“That’s the way it is. When you dance all the time, you’re constantly using that muscle. When you stop dancing that much, that’s the first thing that goes. So, we focus a lot on that because everyone likes a perky butt.”
In fact, the dancer loves butt-targeted workouts so much, her trainer Jennifer Johnson even named a move after her: the “Jenna Squat”, which you can see Dewan re-enacting here.
One of Dewan’s other go-to’s for toning her butt is working out on steps. “We’ll pull out steps to get the booty and the legs activated, while I’m sneaking cardio in,” Johnson told SELF.
Stacking four steps, Johnson works Dewan’s glutes and hamstrings by introducing lunges, squats, jumps, and kicks mixed into this specific workout. “We go all the way up and all the way down [in every exercise],” said Johnson. Following her steps exercise, the 39-year-old will work her butt even more doing donkey kicks and leg lifts with 10-pound ankle weights to amp the burn.
EXERCISE: Her Go-To Arms Exercises
To get the thin, toned arms that dreams are made of, Dewan often turns to ‘shadow boxing’. “I love shadowboxing,” Dewan’s trainer, Jennifer Johnson, told Shape.
“I’m not a fan of big weights; I like a defined, small, tight arm for a woman. I do a mix of shadowboxing with arm twists, pumps, and pulses using your own body weight. You do this for two songs, dancing to the music at the same time. You don’t stop, and by the end, your arms are dead.”
The actress also loves using resistance bands to work her arms and back. One of Johnson’s go-to moves for arms is tricep extensions. Doing 8 slow reps, followed by 16 reps (repeated twice), this workout targets the biceps, triceps and shoulders. Dewan Tatum loves using a resistance band to work her arms and back, says Johnson. For one to two songs, they’ll target her biceps, shoulders, and triceps. One of their go-to exercises is tricep extensions. They might do 8 slow reps, 16 quick reps, then repeat that one more time.
“Your arms are burning, but at least you’re having fun while you’re doing it—we’re working the muscle groups and still having a dance party at the same time,” Johnson told SELF.
EXERCISE: Her Go-To Legs Exercise
To get her legs burning, Dewan turns to a couple of different exercises.
According to New Beauty, the 39-year-old turns to barbell hip thrusts to work her lower back, hamstrings and glutes. She will then follow the thrusts up with barbell lunges and barbell deadlifts.
Her trainer, Jennifer Johnson, also told SELF that she incorporates kickboxing into the actresses’ workouts to widdle and tone her legs, including hitch kicks and punches in the exercise.
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
The Life-changing Benefits Of Caring For Others And Yourself
