Fitness
Kate Hudson says her parents are why she's so dedicated to fitness: 'It’s how I was raised'
For some people, exercise is a means to an end. But for Kate Hudson, it’s a way of life.
“I need to be moving to feel good,” she previously told People. “Even just making time for a little movement every day — going for a walk, doing a few minutes on the treadmill, some Pilates, or if I have more time for it, I love hot yoga.”
The actor has always lived an active lifestyle and has touted both the physical and mental benefits of working out.
“I really enjoy sweating it out, and it helps me clear my mind,” the 45-year-old previously told People. “It’s not just about trying to look good physically, it’s important to get oxygen to my brain and feel like my blood is really circulating. I love skiing, walking, hiking and especially riding my bike. It makes me feel like a kid again!”
Hudson has a similarly balanced attitude when it comes to eating, previously telling Shape that she “hate(s) the idea” of dieting.
“It puts so much pressure on people to lose weight quickly. Getting healthy is not a two-week process, it’s a change of life-style,” she told the magazine, per People.
We could all learn a thing or two from Hudson’s balanced approach to health and wellness. Eager to hear the secrets to her success? Read on.
She prioritizes strength training
Before she started working out with personal trainer Brian Nguyen, Hudson never really emphasized strength training in her workouts. Then she realized it was the missing piece to a balanced routine.
“One day, I tuned in and I was like … I don’t feel strong, I feel long and I love my Pilates but as I get older… am I doing enough (strength) exercises?,” she told TODAY.com earlier this year.
In a typical workout, Hudson and Nguyen incorporate a range of strength training resources, including planks, lunges, bodyweight squats and hip and glute bridges.
While chatting with Shape, Nguyen explained that Hudson was initially hesitant to start strength training, especially heavy weight lifting.
“She used to think she couldn’t do it, but now that we’re implementing heavier loads, we’re having fun pushing past the edge of chaos,” he said. “Kate’s not afraid of heavy weights — the weight needs to be heavy enough where her integrity does fall and she has to regain that control. I don’t think we do anything so special, but mastering the basics allows her to play with speed, a heavier load, and instability.”
She loves pilates
After discovering Pilates at 19 years old, Hudson is still a fan of the practice.
“It’s the workout my body really responds to. It’s all about alignment, elongating your spine and strengthening your core. It makes me feel my strongest,” she previously told Shape, per PopSugar.
While talking with Self about her love for Pilates, Hudson said nothing else “makes me feel like I’m back to my body” in quite the same way.
She doesn’t believe there’s a one size fits all workout
We all have different body types and fitness goals, so the workout that works for one person might not necessarily work for another. But Hudson believes that everyone can find a workout that suits their lifestyle.
“We are all individual people with individual needs, desires, and likes — and we have to find what makes us happy and what moves us,” she told Women’s Health. “If you like to ride your bike, go for a bike ride. If you like to hike, go for a hike. If you like to swim, (swim).”
She knows a lot about nutrition
Hudson has access to the best personal trainers and nutritionists, but she doesn’t rest on her laurels and let them do all the work. Instead, the star is “super passionate” about food and nutrition and encourages everyone to follow her lead.
“The truth is you have to be passionate about what you’re putting in your body, and why you’re putting it in your body, when you’re putting it in your body, learning about it,” she told E! News earlier this year. “You have to want to love to learn.”
Yoga was a ‘huge part’ of her last pregnancy
In 2019, Hudson took to Instagram to share a photo of herself practicing yoga, calling it a “huge part of supporting my pregnancy” and touting its “wonderful connective benefits.”
“I loved my practice with my growing belly and connecting to (my daughter’s) beautiful spirit,” she wrote.
She uses trackers to make sure she’s eating enough nutrients
Keeping track of how many fruits and vegetables you’re eating or how much calcium you’re taking in can be time consuming if you’re doing it on your own. That’s why Hudson prefers to use an app like MyFitnessPal to keep track of her meals and nutrients.
“Food is 80% of the challenge … and tracking it, knowing it, understanding it, and having the knowledge is something I’m passionate about,” she told TODAY.com earlier this year.
While filming the 2011 movie “Something Borrowed,” Hudson said she gained 10-15 pounds then decided to start tracking her food intake to understand why.
“I started tracking, and (realized) I was eating about 3,000 calories of just nuts … If I didn’t have access to understand (that), I would have never known,” she said.
She views living an active lifestyle as a ‘privilege’
Workouts can sometimes feel like a chore, but Hudson prefers to look at them in a more positive light.
“When people are like, ‘What’s your best day?’ It always includes something active because I actually have time to enjoy it,” she previously told Shape. “I have to move…Sitting on my a– is not, to me, a luxury. Sitting on my a–, to me, is get me off my a–. And I think that’s a privilege to be able to be living and feeling strong and healthy. And so I don’t ever want to take that for granted.”
She isn’t afraid of trying different workouts
Hudson’s fitness resume is filled with a plethora of different workouts ranging from boxing and hiking to Barry’s Bootcamp classes and pole dancing.
While talking about pole dancing with Shape, she explained why it’s such an effective workout.
“For me, that’s like the strongest body, and I enjoy that because I can just play music and dance,” she said. “When I feel really strong, I’m usually doing more tricks (on the pole).”
Dancing is also one of her go-to ways to work up a sweat.
“Dance is one of my favorite ways to express myself. But the very discipline of it — continuously pushing to be better — is what I love about it,” she told People.
She’s increased the amount of protein she eats
You can’t achieve your fitness goals if you don’t feed your body with the nutrients it needs to perform.
“Food is everything,” Hudson told TODAY.com earlier this year. “The food we eat is fuel for our body.”
While visiting TODAY in Studio 1A, Hudson revealed the one nutrient she’s trying to consume more of these days.
“We, especially women, should really be eating more protein, especially in the morning,” she said.
She’s passing her love for fitness on to her children
In 2021, Hudson shared a photo of herself with her daughter Rani post-workout and penned the following caption.
“I grew up witnessing my parents take care of their bodies. People always ask me how I get motivated to stay in shape. The answer is, it’s what I know. It’s how I was raised. It’s engrained in my brain that honoring and working our body is a gift and so I don’t take it for granted,” she wrote.
“I loooove moving. I love when it’s challenging. I love being in charge of my results. And I looooove seeing my daughter have fun doing it with me. They watch everything we do! Gotta make some good moves for kids 💃🏋️♀️🧘♀️,” she continued.
She’s never been an ‘extremist’ with her diet
Life is too short to eliminate foods from your diet entirely. That’s a lesson Hudson has learned and she’s eager to pass it on to others.
“I have never been an extremist. I love food. And I love a good cocktail,” she previously told People. “For me, it’s really about everything in moderation. I stay mindful of what I put in my body and remember that it’s OK to enjoy yourself.”
While serving as an ambassador for Weight Watchers, Hudson spoke with TODAY.com about her balanced approach to eating.
“I love food so much that I could never live any sort of kind of lifestyle that’s not open to anything and everything. If someone said I can’t have bread I’d be like ‘Wrong, girl!’” she said.
Instead of restricting entire food groups, Hudson has learned to “eat accordingly during the day” when she wants to splurge on one of her favorite foods or drinks.
“The goal is that we can live our life and we can enjoy everything,” she explained.
She understands the importance of a support system
It can take a village to take control of your health and wellness routine, and Hudson previously told TODAY.com she’s blessed to have a strong network to help her achieve her goals.
“What’s really important is to have access to support … we can’t do it alone … I guess some people can but for most of us like myself, I need a support system,” she said.
Fitness
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While exercise is known to improve memory, scientists have mostly studied this effect by using behavioral tests or brain imaging methods like MRIs, says Michelle Voss, PhD, one of the study’s authors, a professor, and the director of the Health, Brain, and Cognitive Lab at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
But she says these approaches can’t precisely identify where “ripples” originate, particularly in the deep brain structures like the hippocampus, a part of the brain strongly connected to memory and learning, she says.
The current study, published in Brain Communications, recorded electrical activity directly, using surgically implanted (intracranial) electrodes. “This allowed us to observe how exercise changes the brain’s memory circuits in real time,” Dr. Voss says.
20-Minute Bursts of Exercise Increase Brain Ripples
The participants performed a 5-minute warm-up and then rode a stationary bike for 20 minutes at a pace they could maintain. Researchers recorded their brain activity before and after the biking session.
The electrodes showed an increased rate of so-called sharp-wave ripples from the hippocampus and connections with cortical regions of the brain, which are involved in learning and memory.
“Sharp-wave ripples have long been known from animal studies to play a central role in memory,” Voss says, adding that recent studies using intracranial recordings in humans also support the importance of ripples for human memory.
“Our findings are the first to show that exercise can modulate these ripple signals in the human brain,” she says.
Researchers also observed that larger increases in heart rate during exercise were associated with larger changes in ripple activity in cortical networks, Voss adds.
What’s Already Known About Exercise, Memory, and Learning
Exercise helps build connections between neurons, which deepens and strengthens brain networks, Franssen says.
Physical activity also improves metabolism, which improves insulin sensitivity, helping blood sugar regulation and giving the brain a “more stable and reliable supply of fuel,” Dr. Perlmutter says.
“This is critically important because the brain is an energy-intensive organ, consuming roughly 20 percent of the body’s energy despite representing only a small fraction of body weight,” he adds.
The Research Has Limitations
Voss says researchers were careful to “exclude signals that contained epileptic activity. However, of course, we can’t statistically control for the accumulated effects of having epilepsy on the brain.”
The exercise-brain ripple patterns observed in the current study also closely match those observed in healthy adults using noninvasive brain imaging, such as MRI, she added.
“That convergence across very different methods is one of the strongest indicators that the effects are not specific to epilepsy, but reflect a more general human brain response to exercise,” Voss said.
Researchers also didn’t directly test memory performance, Voss notes. “While hippocampal ripples are strongly linked to memory processing in decades of neuroscience research, the next step will be to measure how exercise-related changes in ripples relate to memory performance in the same individuals.”
Future studies should also compare exercise with other everyday activities, such as sitting quietly or light movement, to determine how specific these effects are to aerobic exercise at the intensity that was studied, she says.
Satisfy Your Brain’s Exercise Craving
It’s never too early or too late to start exercising for brain health, Franssen says.
People of any age, from grade-school children to people in their nineties, can benefit from increased physical activity, Perlmutter says. “My recommendation is to consider taking advantage of the connection between physical activity and brain health across the entire range of human aging.”
Any type of exercise is great, Franssen says, but especially “repetitive behaviors,” like swimming, jogging, and walking.
“Sometimes we let the hugeness of putting in a huge fitness routine get in our way,” she says. “Having a little exercise snack every so often is also very important to improving cognition.”
Increasing our level of physical fitness leads to a bigger release of brain-boosting proteins following one session of exercise, a new study led by a UCL researcher has found.
The study, published in Brain Research, took a group of inactive unfit participants through a 12-week training programme of cycling three times per week and made them fitter. Researchers found as their fitness increased, so did the amount of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) released following exercise, resulting in improved brain function.
Just 15 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise releases BDNF, a brain protein which is known to support the formation of new neurons and new synapses (connections between brain cells), and maintains the health of existing neurons. This is the first study to show that for unfit people, just 12 weeks of consistent training can boost the brain’s response to a single 15-minute workout.
The study, led by Dr Flaminia Ronca (UCL Surgery & Interventional Science, and the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health), involved 30 participants – 23 male and seven female – taking part in the 12-week programme. To assess fitness levels throughout the programme, participants completed VO2max tests every six weeks, which measures the maximum rate of oxygen your body can consume and use during intense exercise.
BDNF levels were measured pre- and post-VO2max testing, alongside a series of cognitive and memory tests, while also measuring changes in brain activity in the prefrontal cortex – where executive functions such as decision-making, emotion regulation, attention and impulsivity are controlled.
By the final week of the trial, results showed that baseline levels of BDNF did not change, but participants did show a larger spike of BDNF following intense exercise, compared to how their brains responded to intense exercise before the 12-week programme. This was linked to improvements in VO2max (aerobic fitness).
Higher overall BDNF levels and stronger exercise-induced increases were also associated with changes in activity across key areas of the prefrontal cortex during attention and inhibition tasks, though not during memory tasks.
Overall, the results showed that increasing physical fitness can enhance the brain’s ability to produce BDNF in response to acute bouts of exercise, which can have a strong positive influence on neural activity.
Lead author Dr Flaminia Ronca said: “We’ve known for a while that exercise is good for our brain, but the mechanisms through which this occurs are still being disentangled. The most exciting finding from our study is that if we become fitter, our brains benefit even more from a single session of exercise, and this can change in only six weeks.”
Notes to editors:
For more information or to speak to the researchers involved, please contact: Tom Cramp, UCL Media Relations , T: +447586 711698, E: [email protected]
The research paper: ‘BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise’, Flaminia Ronca, Cian Xu, Ellen Kong, Dennis Chan, Antonia Hamilton, Giampietro Schiavo, Ilias Tachtsidis, Paola Pinti, Benjamin Tari, Tom Gurney, Paul W. Burgess, is published in Brain Research, March 2026,
About UCL (University College London)
UCL is a diverse global community of world-class academics, students, industry links, external partners, and alumni. Our powerful collective of individuals and institutions work together to explore new possibilities.
Since 1826, we have championed independent thought by attracting and nurturing the world’s best minds. Our community of more than 50,000 students from 150 countries and over 16,000 staff pursues academic excellence, breaks boundaries and makes a positive impact on real world problems.
We are consistently ranked among the top 10 universities in the world and are one of only a handful of institutions rated as having the strongest academic reputation and the broadest research impact.
We have a progressive and integrated approach to our teaching and research – championing innovation, creativity and cross-disciplinary working. We teach our students how to think, not what to think, and see them as partners, collaborators and contributors.
For 200 years, we are proud to have opened higher education to students from a wide range of backgrounds and to change the way we create and share knowledge.
We were the first in England to welcome women to university education and that courageous attitude and disruptive spirit is still alive today. We are UCL.
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Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise
Article Publication Date
4-Mar-2026
Media Contact
Tom Cramp
University College London
[email protected]
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise
Article Publication Date
4-Mar-2026
Tags
/Health and medicine/Human health/Physical exercise
bu içeriği en az 2000 kelime olacak şekilde ve alt başlıklar ve madde içermiyecek şekilde ünlü bir science magazine için İngilizce olarak yeniden yaz. Teknik açıklamalar içersin ve viral olacak şekilde İngilizce yaz. Haber dışında başka bir şey içermesin. Haber içerisinde en az 12 paragraf ve her bir paragrafta da en az 50 kelime olsun. Cevapta sadece haber olsun. Ayrıca haberi yazdıktan sonra içerikten yararlanarak aşağıdaki başlıkların bilgisi var ise haberin altında doldur. Eğer yoksa bilgisi ilgili kısmı yazma.:
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Keywords
Tags: 12-week cycling training program benefitsbrain plasticity and physical fitnessbrain-derived neurotrophic factor after exerciseeffects of aerobic exercise on BDNFexercise and neuron healthexercise-induced neurogenesisfitness level impact on brain proteinsfitness training for cognitive improvementimproving brain function through fitnessmoderate to vigorous aerobic exercise effectsphysical fitness and brain healthVO2max and brain function correlation
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