The Young and The Restless star Melissa Ordway spent plenty of time over the past couple of months at the beach just having fun with friends and family. The actress shared a picture of herself posing in a bright one-piece swimsuit next to husband Michael Gaston, looking serene and happy at the beach in beautiful sunny Santa Monica. Behind them was a background of blue sea and skies. "Sunday Funday! 🤍🎉" she captioned the post. Here's how Ordway is better than ever at 40.

Ordway absolutely loves food, especially southern cuisine. "I'm obsessed with food," she says. "I wake up in the morning and I'm like, what am I gonna eat today?" she says. "I grew up in Georgia, so food was always a very big thing for my family. We have such great food in the South, so I never really worried what I was eating as far as, like, I can only eat lettuce. So I pretty much eat whatever I want. Working out is really important. Going to the gym. Finding a balance between those two things, because I would be so miserable if I couldn't eat what I want. I get really angry.

Ordway doesn't believe in restrictive diets. "I tried going on diets, or saying, I'm only gonna eat healthy this week and eat salads, or I'm gonna go on a juice cleanse, and I last like half a day," she says. "I find it important to eat what I want and then go to the gym and run on the treadmill. I'm lucky that I can do that so I don't have to do some crazy diet. I just try and do outdoorsy things and keep active. My favorite food from the time I was born until this day is macaroni and cheese. I love mac and cheese, fried catfish, fried chicken, green beans and collard greens. Anything that is deep fried I will probably love. Cheeseburgers, baby back ribs. Chicken pot pie is one of my favorite foods. But macaroni and cheese tops the list. I love it so much."

Ordway says a healthy lifestyle is about consistency and staying active. "I think just finding things you love to do," she says. "I'm not a big workout class person but I love doing things with my family like hiking and just finding activities you enjoy, that you are going to be excited about going to do … Just being active and doing things you love."

Ordway works out to allow herself to eat whatever she likes. "It's all about balance," she says. "If there's a day that I eat a huge cheeseburger and French fries, maybe I'll stay on the treadmill for an extra 15 to 20 minutes. It's figuring out what works best for you. I've been very lucky to date some guys who knew how to cook very well. My ex-boyfriend was Italian, so he grew up in a big Italian family and he would cook the best pasta, chicken marsala, chicken parmesan. It was to die for. It would take him all day to make this spaghetti sauce he made. And it was delicious."

Ordway always knew she wanted to be an artist. "I wrote a lot of plays when I was little, and I made everyone in the neighborhood perform them with me," she says. "I was probably a really annoying friend to have when I was little. I was always the star of the play, which was the more annoying [part]. We had a big staircase, and so the drama in the plays would always be someone falling down the staircase, like some sort of tragedy would happen. But my character, in the end, would always be okay."df44d9eab23ea271ddde7545ae2c09ec