This article originally appeared on People.com. 

Before having her son 2-year-old son Isaiah, Carrie Underwood would work out six or seven days a week, but she doesn’t put pressure on herself to maintain such an intense workout schedule anymore.

“It just happens if and when it happens,” Underwood, 34, told PEOPLE of her new approach to working out at the CALIA by Carrie Underwood Summer Kick-Off event in Malibu on Friday. “I’ve gotten a lot better at doing what I can when I can, but also cutting myself a little slack. You have to!”

That means squeezing in a workout when it’s doable.

RELATED: Carrie Underwood's Trainer Erin Oprea Shares the 4 Best Moves to Tone Your Arms

“Now it’s like, ‘Okay, I have 20 minutes. What can I do in 20 minutes?'” she says. “I can go run for a little while, I can go do some tabata rounds, I can do something. Sometimes I’m like, my workout today is going be running around after my kid. If we’re going to go to the park, why not run there and push him in the stroller? Then I get a good cardio session to and from, and then he gets to play, so everybody wins.”

If she does have a little more free time, she’ll do a full tabata workout.

“I ‘play cards’ a lot — I assign different exercises to each suit, and I sit down at breakfast and plan out what each suit’s going to be,” she says.

Her other go-to activities are running and group exercise classes, like Barry’s Bootcamp.

“I love just putting headphones in and going for a run,” says Underwood. “I feel so good when I get home, especially when it’s hot. I’m one of those weirdos that likes to run when it’s super hot outside! Or classes. I find myself competing with other people in the room. I’m like, ‘Oh she’s good, I want to be like her!’ I try to ‘beat’ someone in the class. They have no idea we’re competing!”

RELATED: Carrie Underwood Works Out With New Gym Buddy: Her Son!

The singer says finding time for herself is possible thanks to family support.

“It helps having a supportive husband and a great unit around me,” she says. “You have to sit down and talk to those around you because I feel like I’m a better mom, a better wife, a better friend when I feel good about myself. It’s endorphins and all that stuff that’s being released, too. No bad things can come out of taking care of yourself!”

And having her own fashion line of workout gear is extra motivation to hit the gym.

“I used to go to the gym in ratty old sweats, but if you already feel good going into your workout, it just kind of gives you that little extra lift,” she says.

Underwood says her drive to work out comes from herself, and not from external pressures to look a certain way…

This article originally appeared on InStyle.com. 

I have this long, ongoing love affair with dry shampoo. My hair is pretty thick and takes some time to style, so I try to wash it as little as possible. Hairstylists will tell you that this is a better route, but I'll be real with you, dear reader—I'm just really, really lazy.

It's rare that I actually blow-dry it, and I usually just fall asleep on it wet so I can kill it with my flat iron in the morning. Certainly not the most arduous task since I've gotten a bob, but it's a task, and sometimes I just don't feel like dealing with it. That being said, I rely on dry shampoo as heavily as I rely on my iPhone, and I used to hoard bottles upon bottles of different formulas so I'd never run out. R+Co's Death Valley Dry Shampoo ($29; nordstrom.com), however, has become my long-term steady after the brand's initial launch years ago. I haven't looked back since.

I'm very discriminating when it comes to dry shampoos—I don't want to feel like I actually have anything in my hair, but I want it to restore volume and soak up any of the dirt and oil weighing it down on contact. I have to be able to run my fingers through my hair without resistance, and I don't want to have to reapply later in the day. I also have dark hair, so anything that leaves behind a chalky film gets a no from me. Additionally, the scent can't clash with whatever I'm already wearing. I'm really high maintenance, y'all.

RELATED: 10 Reasons We Love Dry Shampoo

R+Co's dry shampoo won me over in every category. A few blasts at my root area brings my strands back to the clean texture it held two days ago, and it doesn't add any additional weight or make any areas too stringy, as some formulas tend to do. It's easy to blend out and adds just enough texture, but not so much that my hair gets sticky or stiff. Additionally, the scent is fresh enough to make me feel less gross about the choice I made not to wash my hair the night before, but doesn't overpower or clash with the fragrance I wear daily. The cool, photo-adorned bottle also doesn't hurt.

Now, I'm stashing bottles of R+Co's formula everywhere, and I mean everywhere. I have one in my desk for when I roll into work and realize my hair is disgusting, one in my bathroom, one underneath my boyfriend's bathroom sink that probably needs to be replenished, and at least five travel sizes stuffed into overnight duffels, gym bags, and suitcases stacked in my closet. I mean, I'm basically like a Boy Scout and stay prepared with this stuff.

This article originally appeared on People.com. 

For years, America Ferrera used to focus on the limitations of what her body could do, and how it looked. But becoming a triathlete helped Ferrera rethink her strength.

“This relationship of being disappointed in our bodies is a relationship that I started at a very young age, whether that’s because of the culture around me or the points of views that I was exposed to,” Ferrera, 33, tells Triathlete magazine for their July cover. “I didn’t see a lot of examples — or nobody taught me to appreciate and love my body for what it’s capable of. It was always about what it wasn’t and couldn’t do, and what it could be.”

RELATED: Olympic Triathlete Gwen Jorgensen Runs Up to 100 Miles Per Week — While 7 Months Pregnant

So the Superstore star set out to challenge herself, and signed up for the Olympic-distance Nautica Malibu Triathlon with Team in Training to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, in honor of a friend who had just lost her mom.

“I think recently in the past few years of my life I’ve started noticing a pattern of when something scares me, that’s an indication that I should do it,” Ferrera says. “There were absolutely times where I doubted whether I could do it. When we started, I was not a swimmer at all and I remember one night at swim practice where I was just literally weeping in the pool. I just started crying because I had to swim 600 meters in a row, and for someone who started like, ‘I don’t even know if I can do a 50! How am I gonna do this?’ ”

But she persevered; finishing the race with her husband, Ryan Piers Williams, the day before the 2016 Emmys, and even wore her number to a pre-Emmys party. The accomplishment completely changed her mindset.

“Why I think triathlons have changed my relationship to myself is because the whole sport is about going further than you think you can go, living at the threshold and pushing yourself to the place where you feel like, ‘I never thought I could be here and I certainly thought I couldn’t go further,’ ” Ferrera says. “It’s at that threshold that you have the opportunity to choose something new which could just be to be nice to yourself in that moment, to acknowledge yourself in that moment.”

RELATED: The Hidden Risk of Running a Marathon

Ferrera — who finished her second triathlon in April — says the sport and its challenges gave her a greater appreciation for her body.

“Our little bodies — the small little space that we inhabit for the entirety of our lives — everything we feel, everything we experience, everything we do is contained inside of our bodies. And to be challenged physically is to have to meet all of your experiences,” she says. “That’s why, personally, working out has always been an emotional experience for me…