Actress Vella Lovell Shares How the Pandemic Made Her Grateful for Something She Used to Resent

Welcome to Deep Dives, a Health video series where inspiring people talk about a health topic that's meaningful to them and share relatable stories around health and wellness. Watch Vella Lovell's Deep Dive above!

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught actress Vella Lovell, 35, a valuable lesson: to appreciate the healthy habits she was raised with, even though she hasn't always been grateful for them. "I grew up with a super hippie single mom, and it was just implemented at a young age," Lovell, who stars in Mr. Mayor on NBC, tells Health. "I was eating tofu and doing yoga at a really young age."

Though she resented these and other habits when she was younger, she's full of appreciation now. "I've become an adult, and especially the time we're in...it's proven really invaluable to just my overall happiness," Lovell says.

Her upbringing also taught her to keep focusing on her well-being, both physical and mental, and to view health as a continuous journey. "I think it's a myth that you arrive at this place where, all of a sudden, you're enlightened and everything is perfect and you have everything figured out," she explains.

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What helps her stay balanced? Workouts. Lovell knows herself well enough to understand that if she stops exercising, she'll start seeing negative consequences. "I try to move my body every single day," she says, and if she doesn't, "I get really mad at people around me and myself," she says. She also prioritizes her mental health by blocking out time in her calendar to tend to it, and she won't make excuses to schedule something else for that time instead.

Another move that keeps Lovell healthy is squeezing in a walk every day, even if she only has time for a short one. "Something I've been doing since the pandemic started is going for daily walks, and it sounds silly to recommend walking because we do it every day, [but] I've found that taking even just 10 minutes or up to an hour of a walk every day can totally reset my body and also my mind."

Watch the rest of Lovell's deep dive in the video above.