Selling Sunset star Vanessa Villela isn’t one to give up on her health and fitness goals over the holidays. Villela, 45, shared a picture of herself posing with friends in a blue workout outfit and orange sneakers, flexing her bicep to show off her strong, toned physique. “Happy Monday! Do you want to end the year feeling amazing?” she captioned the post. Villela is not only a star real estate agent, she’s a talented and accomplished actress—here’s what her diet and exercise looks like.
Villela practices intermittent fasting and a healthy diet. “Intermittent fasting has been the key to everything, it helps with metabolism, skin, gut health, and my energy levels,” she tells Healthista. “I don’t follow anything too specific, so there’s no 11am to 8pm schedule. If I finish my last meal at 9pm let’s say, then I just wait 14 or 15 hours to eat the next day. Sometimes I will have a planet-based protein shake that has superfoods with fruit and oat milk, or if I feel like I want to have a burger, I just have the burger without the bun – I follow what my body wants but do that in a healthy way.”
Villela does Pilates and online workouts. “I do [reformer Pilates] about five or six days a week,” she tells Healthiest. “For me moderate is something my body tolerates better. It strengthens the body and muscles in a different way – it elongates the muscles and I was in very good shape because of that. I combine it with weights, boxing, running 3k and other workouts, sometimes in person and sometimes online, called Strong Confident Living or Karen Lord for if you don’t have much time because they are about 10-20 minutes long. Find a workout that you enjoy the most and use it as something fun that you enjoy doing for yourself. No one else is going to benefit from the workout but you and it will always make you feel good when you finish.”
Villela is thrilled to have been a fan favorite on Selling Sunset. “I never really imagined that I’d be a fan favorite, especially in my first season!” she told Now Magazine LA. “It’s been so overwhelming, but in a good way. My heart is overflowing with gratitude, especially because it has given me the opportunity to fulfill my passion for helping other people. I also love that it really helps me feel more connected with people because they know me more as Vanessa, and not just as an actress. It makes me so happy, especially after all the grief and the chaos of the pandemic. I get to start a new era of helping people with what they’re going through by sharing what I went through and how I cope with day to day struggles. It’s been the best thing that could happen to me.”
Villela says that at one point, the stress of trying to lose weight spiked her cortisol levels and made weight loss even harder. “I would look in the mirror and I wouldn’t recognise myself,” she told Healthista. “My face is the first thing that gains weight. I think that the stress of wanting to lose weight was not allowing me to lose weight and recover my health. I was extremely tired with work and the energy with the [soap opera] characters was so intense that my cortisol levels, the stress hormone, went super high and created a lot of problems with my hormones and the thyroid – everything… I think that sometimes we don’t prioritize ourselves. We all have very busy lifestyles and sometimes it’s hard to say ‘ok I’m going to wake up 30 minutes before’ but I think it’s important for any person to live a healthy life.”
Villela is guided by her mother’s example and work ethic. “Well, my first role model was my mom, for sure,” she told Now Magazine LA. “My parents got divorced when I was seven, and I always saw my mom working non-stop and being a supermom and cooking and everything. She was sensational. She has been my inspiration since I was little because I always wanted to make her proud.”