90s icon Melissa Joan Hart loves working out with friends and family, especially when it’s outside in the sunshine. Hart, 48, shared a picture of herself wearing a gray shirt, hiking at beautiful Lake Tahoe with a friend. “Take a hike! In Tahoe! With one of your besties! #BestDayEver,” she captioned the post. “The best kind of self care 😍,” a fan commented. Hart has been a public figure since she was a teenager—here’s how she stays grounded, happy, and healthy.
Hart uses her workout sessions to spend quality time with her husband Mark Wilkerson. “Since he’s such an avid workout guy, I wanted to have him train me to see how my body could shift and change,” she told PEOPLE. “I’m very much driven by working out with peers or working out with Mark. If I’ve signed up for a class or I promised someone I’d be there, it just helps motivate me. With kids and work it can be very challenging. But if you can commit to just two hours a week to exercise together, it’ll work.”
Hart says diet is 80 percent of any weight loss journey. “I have been playing around with different shrimp dishes because the whole family likes shrimp and it’s a good way to get protein and they all like it,” she told SheKnows. “I like to do lemon, spices, garlic and play around with the different flavors and throw it on top of pasta.”
Hart tries to get the whole family to sit down to a movie or TV show after dinner to bond and discuss issues. “I’ve wanted to sit down with them the way I used to with my family and discuss a show,” she told SheKnows. “We just started The Wonder Years and I’m looking forward to not just binging shows but watching them as a family and having a discussion. I use it as an opportunity to rewatch shows I haven’t watched in forever.”
Hart likes to food prep for the week ahead. “I’m actually really good at making large portions of food like casseroles,” she told SheKnows. “My specialty is lasagna. I usually make three or four lasagnas at a time. When we moved from Connecticut to Nashville, I accidentally left the whole lasagna in the freezer. I’ve gotten good at my mom’s lasagna recipe and I can whip that up quick. One in the oven and one in the freezer for later.”
Hart’s hiking sessions are good for both her physical and mental health. “If you’re sedentary, just the smallest amount of effort will result in a lot of benefits,” sports medicine physician Matthew Kampert, DO, MS, tells the Cleveland Clinic. “But as you adapt and become more fit, you’re going to have to increase the stress on the body by either increasing the duration, the intensity or the frequency.”