On Daily Routines, we profile successful leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, executives and athletes to explore their routines, schedules, habits and day in the life.
Meghan Markle has had a busy past few years. Ever since landing the role in the hit TV show Suits in 2011, the former American actress has been moving around in the spotlight. The glare of the spotlight only intensified when, in 2016, she began dating Prince Harry.
Since then, the couple got married in 2018; Meghan Markle became Meghan, Duchess of Sussex; welcomed two kids (Archie and Lilibet) born 2019 and 2021; moved back to the U.S.; launched a non-profit organisation called Archewell Inc.; and started a Spotify-exclusive podcast, Archetypes. In between all this, Markle found time to create a picture book, The Bench, and start production on a docuseries to be aired on Netflix in the near future.
Whether we care to admit it or not, we all have a finite amount of time to honour the days we have on earth and really push to achieve our potential and accomplish things we feel truly proud of.
7 Health and Fitness Secrets from Meghan Markle | Women’s Health
To stay on top of her wide-ranging ventures, while raising two kids, while juggling the usual, intense demands of the media, Markle prioritises living a mindful and healthy lifestyle. She also wakes up really early. According to a 2018 Vanity Fair profile piece, the Duchess of Sussex regularly wakes up at 4.30am to do some yoga, after which she’ll start sending emails off to her staff at 5am.
Markle’s daily yoga sessions form the basis of her wellness routine. “Yoga is my thing,” she told Best Health. “My mom is a yoga instructor, and I started doing mommy-and-me yoga with her when I was seven. I was very resistant as a kid, but she said, ‘Flower, you will find your practice – just give it time.’ In college, I started doing it more regularly.”
In addition to yoga, the former Suits actress also loves to run. “Running has always been my form of moving meditation, which I relish because it allows me to get out of my head,” she told Women’s Health. However, during her acting days on Suits she had to cut back on jogging because of the brutal 4.15am pickups for work — she told Body & Soul that she traded it in for an extra hour of sleep, something she doesn’t have to do anymore.
When it comes to her approach to nutrition, Markle is all about balance. “I try to eat vegan during the week and then have a little bit more flexibility with what I dig into on the weekends,” she said in 2016. While her staples throughout the week might include food like steel-cut oats, green juices, and salads, she also lets herself indulge in French fries, pasta and red wine.
“Because I work out the way I do, I don’t ever want to feel deprived,” she explained. “I feel that the second you do that is when you start to binge on things. It’s not a diet; it’s lifestyle eating.”
In a 2022 profile piece, Markle spoke to Variety about an assortment of topics, including the recent passing of Queen Elizabeth, working with her husband on Archewell, and whether or not she’d ever return to acting. In between all that, she also described a typical day in her life working with Harry.
We share an office. We work from home, as most people started to do during lockdown. It allows us to have significant time with our kids at this really special moment in their lives. We’ll never get this time back. I make breakfast, and we get the kids set for the day. We do a lot of joint calls and Zooms, but also try to divide what we can focus our energies on so we can accomplish even more. My husband is on a 24-hour time zone, where half of your life is waking up as the other half is going to sleep. It’s kind of the reverse of what I went through living in the U.K. He’s very good at responding on text. Me, I try to be as fast as possible on email. I’ve always said, if it takes less than five minutes, do it now.
Meghan Markle Lets Her Guard Down: On Grieving Queen Elizabeth, Producing With Harry and Returning to Hollywood | Variety
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Check out more daily routines from Barack Obama, Arianna Huffington, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Michelle Obama, Sheryl Sandberg, Richard Branson, Warren Buffet and plenty others.
