While Cooper isn’t a rookie at training her body and eating healthy foods, trying a vegan diet was fairly new to her.

“I recently just tried going vegan for a few months and it was great,” Cooper told Blavity. “I felt great. My body felt great. I had a lot of energy. It’s just refreshing.”

She said that being an athlete allowed for an easy transition to vegan foods, but it’s all still very different for her, especially being a new cook.

“This past year, I just started cooking regularly,” Cooper said. “I cook breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, so I’m just now getting into that. I guess you can really tell the difference more if you aren’t an athlete, but I really did feel the effect of eating vegan foods in the off-season. Energy-wise, during the day, when I’m not doing anything and I’m not sleepy without practicing stuff, I think that’s when I felt the difference more. It’s a huge difference, honestly.”

Being involved in ZENB’s cooking competition as someone who’s just begun experimenting with recipes has been a great experience for her.

“Having more ideas and more recipes is fun and meeting new chefs that own businesses and stuff has been fun,” Cooper said.

Cooper said she was excited about the program once she saw ZENB’s pasta recipes. The brand’s pasta products are made from yellow peas and have nearly the exact taste of regular pasta products.

“I think the fact that the noodles are yellow peas is the most interesting thing to me because it tastes just like the noodles that I use that are not yellow peas,” Cooper said. “It’s way healthier and I love pasta. They had mac and cheese, stuff that I normally eat that I would love to have made plant-based or healthy.”

2020 was a rollercoaster ride for lots of people and Cooper is no different. It’s the year, she truly learned resilience and grit.

“Everything’s not always gonna be up — it’s a roller coaster,” Cooper said. “Sports teaches you the beauty of the ups and downs.”

Cooper said she prefers to just enjoy the ride.

“I think for mental health purposes, enjoy that roller coaster,” she said. “So, you know, things happen, but it always has a way of working out. So no matter where I am in life, I just feel like it’s gonna work out. Unfortunate things happen, but it’s like I’ve been there before, been down before, so I’m gonna be up soon, and I just kind of stay humble and stay in the middle and just stay steady, honestly.”

She said that it’s important for her to feel good and take care of herself.

“For me, that looks like working out, taking care of my body, eating healthy, getting my hair done, getting my nails done — looking cute,” she said. “Taking pictures of myself, just doing stuff that makes me feel good.”

The internet was blown away when Cooper joined Sue Bird, Nneka Ogwumike, DiDi Richards and Breanna Stewart as the WNBA quintet to grace the cover of this year’s SI Swimsuit Issue.

While Cooper said she loves taking pictures, this was quite a different experience for the baller.

“I’ve never taken a bikini picture,” she said. “I don’t really take pictures in bathing suits. I kind of just wear ’em for the pool, so that was very different to have all those cameras on you, you in a bathing suit, you kinda gotta be sexy. I never really was into the sexy thing. Like, that’s a really different lane.”

She said the team of people she worked with was empowering and she was honored to share the cover with other women ballers of all different body types.

“They kind of just give you confidence that you can’t really deny in that moment ’cause you’re in front of the camera,” she said. “So you got the water, the weather, the scenery, the bathing suit. You got people encouraging you. It was a great time for me. The group of women that I did it with were so amazing and we all had different stories, so I think SI highlighting each person and their story made it even more powerful. The group really made it even better. And the team, I think they really had a lot to do with the success of the photo shoot and how it went out, and the media behind it and what it stood for, and all that stuff. And it was different races. It was everything. It was all inclusive of everything that you could think of.”

Copper said that one thing she’s learned along the way is how much everything seems to start with your mind, especially your eating habits.

“I think really, a lot of things are mental,” she said. “People think eating healthy is like you’re on a diet or you’re trying to lose weight when really it can be a lifestyle. Like you just wanna be cleaner, you just wanna be healthier mentally, physically, emotionally, and some of that has to do with your food.”

Outside of eating healthy for good mental health, Cooper is an avid reader.

“I think books are fundamental for life,” she said. “There’s a lot you can learn in books. I also think books are great for getting different outlooks and perspectives on life, especially if you’re in a time in your life when you’re not so positive or not so optimistic.”

The biggest lesson, though, is that she’s learned to focus on herself.

“I think just focusing on yourself and making sure you feel good is the best advice I can give,” Cooper said. “Everybody’s story is different and everybody’s emotions are different, so my advice won’t help somebody who’s not me —  but just taking care of yourself could help everybody.”

Aside from preparing for the upcoming season, Cooper has a lot coming up, including modeling and movies.

“I’m venturing off into a lot of things,” she said.

Details on ZENB’s cooking program that features Cooper and Caruso are forthcoming.