One of Gwyneth Paltrow’s greatest passions is “diets.” She loves a diet. She loves trying new diets. She loves mixing and matching different crazy diets. I remember in the early days of her Goop newsletter, every other week she was on some kind of “juice cleanse” or starvation diet (“fasting” for elites). Over the years, she’s promoted strict elimination diets, macrobiotic diets and Paleo diets. At one point, she even admitted that her doctors basically told her that she was making herself really sick with all of the dieting, and that her bones were really fragile (because she hasn’t ingested vital nutrients in thirty years). Oh, and don’t forget that she’s a regular IV user too, because she’s literally so food-disordered, she can’t just eat like a peasant or swallow vitamin supplements. Well, big news! Gwyneth has given up her Paleo diet.
Gwyneth Paltrow has revealed she’s ditching her ultra-strict Paleo diet after years of being ‘obsessed with eating healthily’ and restricting bread, cheese and pasta. The actress turned wellness guru, 52, who founded her wellness company GOOP in 2008, admitted she’s ‘sick’ of the caveman diet.
In recent years, Gwyneth’s diet involves drinking coffee for breakfast, bone broth for lunch and vegetables for dinner. The idea of the Paleo diet, also known as the Paleolithic or caveman diet, is to eliminate modern foods and eat what our ancestors would have. It advocates eating meat, vegetables, nuts and limited fruit, and excluding grains, legumes, dairy, salt, refined sugar and processed oils. Although its followers boast of benefits including weight loss, a smaller appetite, and more energy, there has been little research into its effects.
The Hollywood star turned to the Paleo diet a few years ago alongside her TV producer husband Brad Falchuk, 54. Speaking on her Goop podcast, she said: ‘I went into hardcore macrobiotic for a certain time, that was an interesting chapter where I got obsessed with eating very very healthily. I really deepened my connection with food and the whole philosophy around macrobiotics which is essentially just how they eat in the mountains of Japan, so very local and seasonal. Lots of fish, vegetables, rice, no diary, no sugar etc. I think that period of time I might have got a little didactical about it.’
‘I was just so amazed that we had this power in our hands that if we treated ourselves well and hydrated and ate whole foods that we could just feel so much better. I was sort of intoxicated by that idea and I still feel that way to this day. Things have gotten a little more complicated with me and longer term with inflammation and stuff. It’s the reason Brad and I became Paleo a few years ago now. Although I’m a little bit sick of it, if I’m honest. I’m getting back into eating sourdough bread, cheese – there I said it. A little pasta after being strict with it for so long. But again I think it’s a good template, eating foods that are as whole and fresh as possible. I don’t think there are any doctor or nutritionist that would refute that.’
“Things have gotten a little more complicated with me and longer term with inflammation and stuff.” “And stuff” is doing such heavy lifting. Like… she has consistently refused to put it together that she’s made herself sick over the years by adhering to these extreme diets, in between starving herself and using IV drips. I can’t even imagine being this food-disordered for so many years and creating a whole “wellness” company around it too. Gwyneth is in her 50s and she’s still got all of these hang-ups over food and it’s just, like… leave us out of your disorder, you know?
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
