Hallmark Star Alicia Witt Shares Swimsuit Photo "Savoring the Last Days of Summer"

Hallmark star Alicia Witt spent the last days of summer getting out on the water with a friend and soaking up the sun in Nashville. Witt, 48, shared a picture of herself paddleboarding in a floral swimsuit on beautiful Percy Priest Lake. "A few-weeks-latergram … savoring the last few days of summer nonetheless. Highly recommend paddleboarding with a beloved best friend to center, to recalibrate, to reconnect to your breath and your being ✨ @elizaann360," she captioned the post. Here's why the actress and singer literally wrote the book on wellness, and what that means to her.

Witt is passionate about following a plant-based diet, and wrote her book Small Changes to help those working towards a healthier lifestyle. "My greatest prayer for this would be that it could reach — specifically — the people out there who definitely do not want to be vegan, who have no intention of giving up the meat and dairy and other things that they enjoy," she says. "But I believe through my own experiences that these things do not have to be all or nothing. And I would wish to help shift the notion that it does or that plant-based people lecture and judge and try to change everyone around them to eat exactly as they do."

df44d9eab23ea271ddde7545ae2c09ec

Witt's book also focuses on how exercise benefits mental health as well as physical. "I also want to impart the importance of daily exercise, even if it's only a tiny bit each day," she says. "That, too, doesn't need to be all or nothing. Meditation and mindfulness too. You don't need 20 minutes twice a day to make a very big difference. This is meant to be a guide, not a manifesto: Readers can take what resonates for them and create their own plan off of it. And I also include lots of my own unusual story in here so that hopefully it can help inspire and entertain too."

Witt says she was asked to lose weight since she was a teenager, and now refuses to keep scales in her house. "I only hear how much I weigh when I go for my annual physical goal," she says. "And I put that out of my head right away because I just don't care. I know when I feel healthy. And I know if I overdo it one day, I'm not going to beat myself up about it."

Witt no longer drinks alcohol, and is thriving. "I did not think I would have as much fun, and I honestly love being a non-drinker," she says. "I find that everything is better, and that includes dating and forming new relationships, whether romantic or not, having conversations, having nights out and coming home late but not feeling fuzzy, not having to get an Uber home and everything. To my surprise, here I am almost two years from having had my last drink."

Witt's relationship with food changed once she stopped trying to follow restrictive diets. "As someone who hasn't always had a healthy or balanced relationship with food, I found that rules didn't work for me," she says. "They only made me want to break them. Once I stopped beating myself up or imposing restrictions, I found that my weight, my cravings, and my appearance (as well as my inner peace) all improved drastically. And I think this philosophy I've experienced can help others to find the same sort of ease around food and body image too."