In a clip that has since gone viral, Paltrow said she eats dinner early in the evening and does does a “nice intermittent fast” which is essentially the pseudo-wellness way of saying “I skip breakfast”. Also, can we stop calling it intermittent fasting when, really, you’re just having a night’s sleep in between eating? Because if not, then we’re all out here intermittent fasting every night like absolute champs.
Anyway. Not content with that, she carried on: “I usually eat something about 12 and in the morning I have things that won’t spike my blood sugar so I have coffee.”
“I really like soup for lunch.” That’s fine, except by soup she actually means bone broth. She then does a bunch of exercise, because she can I guess. “I dry brush and I get in the sauna. So I do my infrared sauna for 30 minutes and then for dinner I try to eat according to paleo – so lots of vegetables. It’s really important for me to support my detox,” she added, perhaps momentarily forgetting she has a functioning liver that does all the detoxing for her.
I have no idea what dry brushing is and refuse to google it so you’re just going to have to figure that one out yourselves. But even without that knowledge, I can tell you one thing for sure: there is nothing healthy or even “well” about this “wellness routine”.
This is, as many actual doctors have pointed out in the last few days, a form of disordered eating. I have many jokes I could make here about her ridiculous routine and the fact that she talks about all of this in the podcast while hooked up to an IV drip, which is apparently something she loves doing (I too would need an IV drip if I lived off bone broth, coffee and some vegetables). But I won’t make those jokes because the reality is far too complex for it. Here we have someone who is a victim of the horrendous diet culture but who, by virtue of how she has built her wealth from this wellness influencing, is also simultaneously a perpetrator of that same diet culture.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s advice should not be listened to. Sadly, she has a massive platform and chooses to use it to spread this type of message, leading to many actual real-life doctors having to take time from their lives to come out and tell people not to listen to her.
There are many things we should be talking about in the wake of this viral interview - including whether the diet industry needs more regulation, or the way we take celebrities’ advice like it’s paracetamol when, really, so many of them hardly ever know what the hell they’re talking about.
This is the same woman who wanted us to steam our vaginas so I refuse to listen to her advice on what to eat. At best, her advice will do nothing for your health — but that really is the best-case scenario here.
The thing to remember through all this controversy is that Gwyneth Paltrow is not just an actress generously sharing advice on “what works for her”. She has built her empire on this and every time she tells you about her “wellness”, she has something to tell you because she’s something to sell you.
She has since responded to the backlash with the usual “this is what works for me” spiel, and adding that it helps her with her Long Covid, which still does not explain the years of pseudo-wellness she was promoting long before the pandemic began.
Please don’t take Gwyneth Paltrow’s advice. It’s 2023 and we do know better now. Life is short and beautiful and food is delicious.
In fact, I’m off to bake a cake.
