Astronaut Beauty: Gravity-Defying Fitness, Hair and Makeup Secrets

Astronaut Beauty
Astronaut Beauty

You'd have to be living under a rock to not hear the Oscar buzz surrounding Alfonso Cuarón's film "Gravity" and Sandra Bullock's performance in it. To really nail the role (which she totally did), Bullock turned to astronaut Catherine "Cady" Coleman, who spent 180 days in outer space. A retired US Air Force colonel and 21-year NASA veteran, Coleman e-mailed and chatted with Bullock while on her third space mission, where she served as a flight engineer aboard the Russian Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft and spent 159 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as the lead robotics and science officer.

While Bullock spent all 91 stressful minutes of "Gravity" trying to get home in one piece, we were curious to know what else astronauts are up to on the ISS when they're not being separated from George Clooney and losing all connection with ground control. We chatted with Coleman to get an inside glimpse into what everyday activities we do down on earth are like up in space. Scroll to see why you should never take your pillow or clipping your toenails for granted.

Astronaut Beauty
Astronaut Beauty

You're a guinea pig in outer space 24/7

"We are all basically living breathing, experiments" in space, Coleman says. Astronauts are healthy, fit people with fairly normal medical histories, which makes them the perfect lab rats, er, subjects for testing new drugs. During her time aboard the ISS, Coleman volunteered to test a new osteoporosis medication because, in space, humans lose bone mass 10 times faster. "The amount of bone mass a 70-year-old woman with full-blown osteoporosis loses in one year, we can lose in one month," Coleman says.

Because osteoporosis settles in so quickly in space, researchers were able to test the drug's abilities and study the effects of going on a low salt diet, low animal fat diet, and zero in on how exercise maintains muscle and bone mass. While research is still being conducted on the different regions of bone where mass is lost and regained, we're happy to report that Coleman came back to our planet with the same amount of bone she left with.

Related: 7 Brand New Beauty Finds You Need Now

Astronaut Beauty
Astronaut Beauty

Astronauts veg out about 22 hours a day

"You really feel it if you don't exercise," says Coleman, and she's not referring to that sluggish feeling you get after spending a week on the couch. Spending days, weeks and months in a weightless environment causes astronauts to lose a significant amount of bone mineral density -- the same accelerated osteoporosis described earlier -- and according to Coleman, a few days without exercise actually hurts. "It's debilitating," she says. Exercising is one way to keep the pain at bay and maintain healthy bones.

If that's not motivation enough, having 100 scientists, engineers and doctors on earth monitoring your every move helps. That, and the fact that your gym is rigged with space Nautilus and its approximately 17 inches away from where you eat, sleep and work. "Let's just say your motivation is through the roof," Coleman adds. "We're exercising up there at least five days a week and it's not hard at all."

What does the ISS gym look like? There's a weightlifting machine that simulates gravity through cylinders within cylinders (in zero g, astronauts can adjust the weight from 6 to 600 lbs.), a treadmill (hovering in the air, just like the astronauts) and a mechanical bicycle strapped to the floor. "We also do squats, dead lifts, heel raises, bench presses, sit-ups ... anything you can do with a bar for leverage," says Coleman. We aim for one and half hours a day, because the other 22 and a half hours of the day, you're resting."

Astronaut Beauty
Astronaut Beauty

It's just you, your co-astronauts and a bunch of dead skin flying around up there

"It's a very, very dry environment. We do have certain moisturizers that are approved, just to not be so flaky ... [but] there are always flakes of dead skin floating around -- on the vents, on the screens," says Coleman. The biggest culprit? Feet. Because they're floating around 24/7, calluses disapppear. "We come back with super soft, baby feet," she says. On the flipside, the tops of their feet take a beating. "We're always using our feet on handrails to stay in place and kind of 'perch' when we're watching TV," says Coleman.

"We're allowed to bring makeup, and I've brought it on every [mission] ... but I rarely use it," says Coleman. Plus, the process of finding products that are compatible with the environmental system -- the one responsible for cleaning the air and removing carbon dioxide -- is enough of a hassle. "We have a sort of 'girl's club' in the program and we leave things for each other [on ISS] -- things that are nicer to have: a nice comb, a belt, makeup, a moisturizer we really loved that didn't throw off the environment. It's so hard getting something up into space, it's not really worth it to bring your own."

Related: The Amazing Beauty Breakthroughs You Haven't Heard About ... Yet

Astronaut Beauty
Astronaut Beauty

Your hair develops super powers

Floating in the ISS gives your hair super strength that puts Biotin to shame: Coleman recalls being able to use a floating, single strand of hair propel herself off a wall. Coleman didn't notice any difference in growth rate, but purposefully grew her hair out for her mission. "I really wanted to have my hair be a little bit long, because I wanted it to be clear that I was a woman in space -- not just an astronaut in a picture taken on the ground," says Coleman, who let her big, curly head of hair loose in space. "It was nice letting it have a little life of its own."

Also, pulling her hair back into a ponytail -- Coleman's preferred and practical style -- is a big no-no. In a weightless environment, hair elastics crank those annoying dents up 10 levels. "Your hair will be perpetually bent in one place," she says.

Astronaut Beauty
Astronaut Beauty

Your nail clippings come back to haunt you

Considering the importance of the missions at hand, manis and pedis aren't on the itinerary -- oh, and the chemicals in nail polish, such as alcohol, poison the environment that circulates the ISS's air. That, too. But Coleman notes that both female and male astronauts pay extra attention to their nails in space. "Some of us, including the guys, paint our nails with Hard As Nails products to give them extra strength, because the space suit's gloves and the environment are pretty hard on your nails," says Coleman. In space, outside ISS, Coleman says the air pressure that pushes down is like a hammer on your nails.

To avoid the pain, keeping your nails extremely short is key, but clipping is no ordinary task in space. "Every little nail clipping will fly off and float around until it lands on a filter," says Coleman. To keep her trims discreet, Coleman's clips her nails next to vents that suck in air and filter it out. ("I do the same when I eat something with a lot crumbs," she says.) Easy enough, although Coleman says getting to your toenails is it's own beast. "Imagine trying to clip your toenails in a swimming pool," she says. "It's less about balance, like on earth, and more about keeping your foot up to your chest. I have to enlist someone to volunteer their back so I have somewhere to keep my foot somewhat still," says Coleman.

Astronaut Beauty
Astronaut Beauty

You're at peace with being furry

"Shaving really depends who you're with ..." Coleman begins cautiously. Imagine what a mission simply clipping your toenails is and try to factor in all the moving parts that come with shaving your legs (flying suds and hair, anyone?). "I pretty much wore pants the entire time, so I didn't even bother." She also admits that down on earth, she usually turned to waxing to skip the constant shaving.

"Whenever there's a spacewalk, anyone who isn't doing the actual spacewalk has to be in the rescue ship for the entire day. Whenever my friend Sandy [astronaut Sandra Magnus] was up there all by herself while her two crewmates were out, she'd refer to those shifts as her own little spa day -- that's when she'd take the time to shave," says Coleman.

Related: Shaving vs. Waxing vs. Laser: How Much Does Each Cost Over a Lifetime?

Astronaut Beauty
Astronaut Beauty

Two words: Space. Snuggies.

While an earthling's sleep enemy might be tossing and turning at night or the appearance of sunlight, astronauts are more concerned about floating around the cabin as they snooze -- the zero-g equivalent of sleepwalking.

"Everyone has their own little cabin for sleeping, where you can doze off with your back tacked to the wall. Or you can slither into a blanket with arm holes, so you can type on your computer or read while you're "in bed"." (Snuggies in space!)

The most basic element of sleeping -- horizontal -- is one of the simple pleasures astronauts miss most, says Coleman. "Some people miss having their heads on a pillow -- just the feeling of having something there," she says. Those who pine for pillows have to settle for straps that dock their head to a wall, but the one thing that's relatively the same down on earth? Astronauts are given eight hours to sleep -- although they rarely log in the full eight thanks to, well, everything happening up there.

Astronaut Beauty
Astronaut Beauty

The space travel makeover: sprout a few inches, lose weight and saggy skin fast!

You're familiar with the vacuum-dried, dehydrated space food that you can pick up at REI to live out your astronaut fantasies ... aaand if you've actually eaten it, you probably understand why astronauts actually lose weight in space.

"I like to refer to our diet up there as the The Busy Diet," says Coleman, explaining the weightloss-friendly combo of a jam-packed work schedule in the name of science and the lack of 5-star restaurants. "The food isn't great enough that you'd gain weight. I lost 10 percent of my body weight while I was up there."

The lack of gravity has other perks in the vanity department: "You have a water weight shift right away, so that means anything that sags down here on earth looks really great up there in space," Coleman jokes. Plus, the lack of gravity pressing down on your spine causes you to sprout a few inches (Coleman came home 1.25 inches taller).

The downside? "The water weight gain also tends to settle in the lower half of the body," says Coleman. "We like to give the guys a hard time when they're complaining about the belly bloat." Welcome to our world, gentlemen.

Astronaut Beauty
Astronaut Beauty

They watch dorky sitcoms in space, too

So what do astronauts do when they're not conducting space walks, working out, repairing robotic arms, or in Coleman's case, talking to Sandra Bullock or playing the flute? "I talk to my family -- during my last mission, I talked to my family every day but three through Internet protocol on the phone or video conferences."

Coleman also took advantage of the time to relax and bond with fellow crewmembers. "Friday night after all the work is done, we're all pretty tired, so we'll sit around ... float around. Sometimes we'll get a chance to eat dinner together, which we don't get to do often, or we'll watch some TV. It was three Russians, two Italians and two Americans, so we usually revert to something easy to understand, and something physically comical. In most cases "The Big Bang Theory."

Astronaut Beauty
Astronaut Beauty

You miss space like peanut butter misses jelly

Although crewmembers miss their families during missions, Coleman says she'd go back in a heartbeat. "If I could've brought my family, there'd be no reason to come home. You're in this magical place, the mission is so clear every minute, how much good work there is to do. You're flying from place to place, you're living the life of Peter Pan. I love it," she says. Will Coleman be Skyping from space with other Hollywood A-listers any time soon? "I am in line to go back ... but the line is long, so we'll see."