Martha Stewart has shared with her audience an exclusive look into the demanding daily routine that has allowed her to maintain her youthful appearance well into her 80s.

The well-known TV personality and business mogul, recognized as America’s first self-made female billionaire, has become an icon of entrepreneurial spirit, multifaceted skills, and hard work since launching her career as a model in the 1950s.

However, these qualities are overshadowed by her knack for staying energetic, engaged, and youthful at age 84, a stage when many are comfortably retired.

During her appearance on the US podcast Lipstick On The Rim, Stewart revealed that her secret to maintaining her mental and physical vitality begins at an unusually early hour.

She explained, ‘A typical day for me starts early; I wake up at 4:00am or 4:30am. I read the entire New York Times, complete all the puzzles, Letter Box, Tiles, and engage in all sorts of mental games to keep my brain sharp.’

‘Following that, I head to Pilates or the gym. Although I have a fantastic gym at home, I believe it’s better to leave the property, and it’s conveniently just a five-minute drive away.’

‘So I go to my Pilates teacher, and I go to Shaun the personal trainer, and then I come home and I have my green juice.’

Predominantly based in New York hamlet Katonah, Stewart also owns a sprawling 35,000-square-foot residence on rugged Mount Desert Island in coastal Maine – the former summer estate of tycoon Edsel Ford. 

‘I grow all my vegetables,’ she told host Molly Sims of the juice she creates from her own natural ingredients. 

‘So it’s my spinach, my parsley, my cucumbers, not the ginger – I don’t grow the ginger, but ginger’s in it – half an orange, with the peel, and lots of celery and celery leaves, and that’s the green juice. 

‘It’s a fragrant, delicious juice, and it’s in a juicer, not an extractor, everything goes through.’ 

She added: ‘I also make my own yoghurt every week, and I have that with wheat germ, or I’ll have one egg, scrambled egg, and that’s breakfast.’ 

Stewart also admitted to cutting meat out of her diet after her daughter Alexis opted to become a vegetarian.  

‘I eat fish, but not much meat. I don’t remember the last time I had meat,’ she said. ‘My daughter’s a vegetarian, my grandchildren are pescatarian, although the boys are now asking for steak when we go out. 

Remarkably, Stewart has shied away from most cosmetic surgery, including Botox – although she admits to having the skin freezing injections in her neck. 

She said: ‘I like certain fillers, and I get Botox right here (points to her throat). But the main thing about skin, and the reason my skin is so good, is cleanliness. 

‘I’m a fanatic about keeping my face clean. I clean it with an oil, at night, and a hot wash rag. I make sure every speck of makeup is taken off, and then my serum.’ 

Some five years in the making, Stewart recently launched a new beauty treatment with Elm Biosciences, and she insists it has been part of her daily routine since the day it was completed. 

‘This is a beautiful serum. We worked five years on this. It’s beautifully packaged and I wanted something that would look nice in your bathroom. 

‘Everybody says why is your skin so moist looking and nice. It’s because of stull like this, that we’ve been working so hard on.’  

She added: ‘Of the ten things you can do to age gracefully, nature probably one, communing with nature in every single way.

‘I hate the word reinvention, I call it evolution. I mean, I’m not changing. I’m still that same person, I just evolve. 

‘The people I admire the most are the ones they’re now calling the super-agers, who are not retiring, who continue doing good things, who continue to evolve – not reinvent, but evolve, and that’s what I’m going after.’