Gwyneth Paltrow has claimed that Dr Will Cole's 'intuitive fasting' system cured her of long Covid. Then again, Paltrow once thought it was a good idea to sell vagina-scented candles. So is this just another fad diet – or might it be beneficial?
It's 8.15am in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Dr Will Cole, wellness practitioner to Gwyneth Paltrow, is talking to me from his clinic for natural medicine. Cole has been up since 6.30am. "Often I get up at 5am, but I've just back from my book launch in Los Angeles and I'm jetlagged," he explains. He's already worked out, drunk some black coffee and water and is looking forward to a cup of Earl Grey.
Cole won't touch food until around 1pm when he finishes his morning's work seeing patients in person and online, when he plans a salad with nuts, seeds, avocado and wild salmon. Dinner will be a veggie frittata.
Much as the idea of skipping breakfast appals me, I can't see a problem in any healthy person choosing to do so occasionally. Yet in the past few weeks an expanded version of this seemingly uncontroversial philosophy, which Cole calls "intuitive fasting", has set the internet on fire, with debate raging about whether this is the answer to all our malaises or whether Cole and his ilk are responsible for eating disorders and personify everything wrong with our narcissistic society.
At the heart of it all, as so often in these "wellness" controversies, is Gwyneth "rose quartz vaginal eggs" Paltrow, who wrote the foreword to Cole's new book, Intuitive Fasting: The Flexible Four-Week Intermittent Fasting Plan to Recharge Your Metabolism and Renew Your Health, the first book published – unsurprisingly – by Goop's new publishing imprint, another offshoot of Paltrow's wellness brand.
Intuitive fasting, it transpires, has cured Paltrow of long Covid. "I had Covid-19 early on, and it left me with some long-tail fatigue and brain fog," she wrote on her Goop blog. "In January, I had some tests done that showed really high levels of inflammation in my body. So I turned to one of the smartest experts I know in this space, the functional medicine practitioner Dr Will Cole."
Paltrow, 48, went on to explain she'd been following a version of a diet planned by Cole, who's long been a regular on her Goop website and podcast. "It's keto and plant-based but flexible (I've been having fish and a few other meats), and I fast until 11am every day...Everything I'm doing feels good, like a gift to my body," she concluded. "I have energy, I'm working out, and I'm doing an infrared sauna, all in service of healing."
From the woman who's successfully sold a "This smells like my vagina" Goop candle, you'd expect no less. You perhaps wouldn't expect a retort from the already quite busy Professor Stephen Powis, national medical director for NHS England. Nonetheless, one came. "We wish her well, but some of the solutions she's recommending are really not the solutions we'd recommend in the NHS."
Other reactions were less diplomatic. "The doctors also discovered potentially fatal levels of expensive-sounding and dangerous bullshit," was one internet response. Emily Clarkson, the writer daughter of Jeremy, who shared this on her Instagram, was accused of "shaming" Paltrow. She retorted, "I think it's really dangerous when celebrities endorse fad diets... I had a very unhealthy relationship with food when I was younger and fell into the traps that people like Gwyneth laid out."
When Cole's book was published a few days later with Paltrow thanking him on her Instagram "for guiding me and helping me feel my best for a long time", the haters piled in. "Do not be fooled by pretty packaging… the people behind this book want you to destroy yourself for their bottom line," was a typical one-star review on Amazon's US site.
"It's one thing if somebody read the book and didn't like it, that's a legitimate opinion. I'm not going to please everybody," says Cole, 36. "But this is a concerted effort from people who are not verified purchasers, who are triggered for multiple reasons. Some people in the intuitive eating community thought this book was about them, but it was never intended for them. It's really a measured book. Is it for everybody? No. It is a warrant for this vitriol? Absolutely not.
"I live in a weird little bubble in Pittsburgh where it's not about insulting people online," he continues. "It's about helping people. It's not always easy but it's so positive when you get someone to be healthy. For people to twist that is completely baseless. It feels like a weird hangover to be so misunderstood."
Did Paltrow, to whom he was introduced four years ago, counsel him on how to deal with the monsterings? Cole nods. "She said, 'You're 100 per cent in integrity. When we are having a discussion that's so great, sometimes it can be spun and used for negativity, but at the end the truth will be evident. It's about riding through the storm.' "
Out of context, you might think Paltrow was talking about Martin Luther King, rather than the author of a diet tome, though Cole assures me his book is much more than that. "Diet as in the actual definition of food? Partly, yes. Diet as in fad, crash, restrictive diet, which is the more modern connotation of the word? No. It's a lifestyle book, a health educational book."
Whatever the semantics, as so often with Twitterstorms right now, Cole's crime seems disproportionate to the backlash. He makes it clear that this is not a plan for anyone with an eating disorder. And while I don't agree the book is "measured" – after all, it suggests following a plan where at one point you're only allowed to eat within a two-hour window – it's no less measured than the cabbage soup diet, the pineapple diet, Atkins, or the grapefruit diet, all of which made their creators and publishers fortunes.
But when those diets were all the rage there was no (or little) social media. Cole's become the whipping boy for people with potentially decades of stored-up fury about the diet industry generally. "As a nutrition therapist who sees an awful lot of people with problems around eating, I can see this plan might be a hiding place for them, albeit unwittingly," says London-based nutrition therapist Ian Marber. "But are diet books really the gateway to eating disorders? If someone had issues with overspending, we wouldn't say that a book about how to manage your finances was offensive. But there's a different level of emotion when it comes to food and diet."
In his defence, Cole's been posting memes on Instagram such as, "Kindness, compassion and empathy are nothing more than empty words until you can show them to people you disagree with or don't understand."
He's also pointing out that – like it or not – a lot of us need to lose weight to save our lives. "It's cute when a system that has the most disease [and] shortest lifespan… calls intermittent fasting + eating healthy foods 'dangerous'," he wrote. The World Health Organisation statistics show worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975. In 2016, 39 per cent of adults were overweight in 2016, and 13 per cent were obese. Most of the world's population live in countries where being overweight and obese kills more people than being underweight.
"The eating disorder community needs to have a voice," Cole says. "But there's a massive chronic health problem epidemic that goes beyond the diagnosable – there's a whole spectrum of issues with people who are struggling with fatigue, food cravings – things that are not bad enough for mainstream medicine to diagnose them, but they are being impacted in their quality of life, they don't feel good in their body."
That's undeniable: the question is can Cole's programme really help change this? As mentioned, intuitive eating has been around for a while. Even older is the idea of intermittent fasting, which in the past few years has emerged as the diet buzz phrase with many claiming that by only eating within a specific certain window (say noon to 7pm), you can lose weight, have a healthier heart and reduce your risk of diabetes and other chronic conditions, including even brain diseases such as Alzheimer's.
The science – loosely speaking – is based on the idea that long breaks from food will give our bodies the space to divert their resources from digestion to "healing" and stopping the pancreas from becoming overloaded and producing even more insulin, which can lead to increased sugar cravings. "Fasting's nothing new," says Marber. "We can all remember someone we used to work with who never had breakfast and you'd think, 'That's not healthy.' But then in 2012 Dr Michael Mosley reinvented it [as the 5:2 diet, where five days of the week you eat normally and on two days consume only 500-600 calories] and ever since it's been in fashion. And, without doubt, fasting has some potential benefits, such as longevity and possibly improving metabolic health. But at what cost?"
To the fasting, Cole's added the "intuitive" tag – which, translated, means not eating should be made easier by the fact we will only eat when we are actually hungry. So if, for example, you always eat breakfast, perhaps consider if you're doing so out of habit.
It doesn't sound as if you need to read a whole book to understand this principle, but as Paltrow explains in her foreword, "Of all the different ways of eating I've tried over the years – from macrobiotic to vegan to I'll-spare-you-the-details cleanses – here is what has worked for me: eating intuitively. When I eat what feels right to me, I feel my best.
"That type of advice, though, is typically delivered with no road map for getting there. As if something that is intuitive doesn't require further discussion."
But surely "no further discussion" is exactly what intuitive means? "Well, this is the paradox," Cole explains patiently. "How can someone intuitively say, 'I don't want food'? People need to have guidance until they have metabolic flexibility. Because when you have blood sugar imbalances, you are going to crave things that will perpetuate you feeling horrible – that's not your intuition talking, it's a metabolic disorder.
"But once you've grounded your metabolism, then you can truly eat intuitively, because you have a discernment about what makes you feel great." Cole's regime will lead to this grounding, apparently. In the first and fourth week, you eat within an unchallenging 12-hour window. In the second, it's six hours. The third's where it gets challenging, with two to four hours.
Disappointingly but crucially, the "ample amount" of food we're told we can consume during eating windows isn't what I would choose intuitively, which would be a family-size bag of Skittles, but from Cole's "ketotarian eating" plan, a mainly plant-based Mediterranean diet that encourages the body to go into "ketosis", where it burns fat rather than sugar for fuel. "I would not recommend you fasting combined with a junk food diet," Cole confirms.
On a recent podcast, Paltrow teased him about making her eat fish tacos "with nothing f***ing on them", before adding that they were delicious. His recipes – spinach and escarole soup; kale, Brussel sprouts and blueberry salad and tempeh-walnut bowls – certainly sound yummy, but a pre-Covid, all-you-can-eat hotel buffet this most definitely is not.
Nor are these dishes for anyone who wants to eat the same food at the same time as the rest of their family and/or can't afford ingredients such as 12oz of scallops, which Paltrow tells us she recently cooked.
Would Cole agree the book is only for a select minority? "You might just pick up two or three of the tools in the book and say, 'In this season of my life, I can't do everything.' But it's not all or nothing. It's like, 'OK, let's do the best we can and lean into that.' That's what Gwyneth did."
What puzzles me is why such a perfect specimen as Paltrow needed this book in the first place. She had long Covid and confessed that she ate far too much pasta and drunk far too much wine in lockdown (though presumably "too much" is relative), but surely she already had a thousand tried-and-tested regimes at her fingertips. "Covid is unprecedented," Cole replies. "I've known Gwyneth for years – she came to me and said, 'I'm still tired months later.' She just hadn't bounced back the way she would want to. But she wasn't advocating these things for post-Covid symptoms, she was just trying to improve her health. She got out of her rhythm, and now she's regained energy and feels better than she did in a long time."
I can see why Paltrow likes Cole. He's boyish and unassuming in manner; he also embodies all her most outlandish regimes, admitting good-naturedly when asked what the "Goopiest thing he'd ever done" was, "My job is talking about poop transplants and parasite therapies… I live Goop."
Cole grew up in Pittsburgh, where his father too ran a health clinic and was a fervent bodybuilder. "I thought it was normal to have a dad who was lubed up with baby oil and my mom would film him in poses by the pool," he recalls. "I was a weird kid. I remember as a teenager having these baggies of snacks like carrots and peppers and my friends were like, 'What the heck are you eating?' " Around 14, he read a book about how fasting had healed the author's irritable bowel syndrome and started aping him. He splurged his pay cheque from his first job in a health food shop. "I bought random things and saw how they impacted on my health."
Cole's detractors like to yelp that he's not a medical doctor, but he's at pains to stress this on his website, explaining he uses the title because he is a doctor in chiropractic, a title obtained at the Southern California University of Health Sciences. Soon after graduating, he returned to Pennsylvania, to live in the countryside with his wife, two children and two dogs, with his clinic based nearby. Many clients are local, but he also became an early adopter of video consultations, talking to clients all over the country (and the world – there are even a handful in the UK) on screens for the past decade, meaning Paltrow can chat to him whenever she wants.
Nonetheless, he insists, "99 per cent" of his clientele isn't starry, consisting – he says – primarily of women aged 40 to 60, who mainly complain of fatigue and digestive problems. Most are teachers, nurses and engineers, though they must all be well-paid, since a one-hour consultation costs £565 or £360 ($1,090 or $670) with one of his colleagues.
Ian Marber is sceptical that most people who try intuitive fasting will be doing it purely for the sake of their health. "In 22 years of practice, I have never seen so many people who seek advice after undertaking extreme diets. When I ask about their reasons only one or two cite worries about inflammation or fatty liver disease; instead, it's about weight loss. But I have noticed that people who like to take on these so-called hacks rarely stick to them, as there is always another hack in the offing that they will follow instead."
Cole hopes that isn't the case. But as we talk, he becomes more philosophical about his online mauling. "Ultimately, the truth is when people are talking about the book – good or bad – it's helping the algorithm on social media. It's helping people talk about it and people who are informed, who actually do have ears to hear, will see this hatred for what it is. I mean, this is actually helping sell books and the benefit of that is, when people read the book, more people will be helped."
Sure enough, next time I check Cole's Instagram, he's telling us that his book is now a New York Times bestseller.
What's for dinner? Very little!
Who's who in the fasting diet phenomenon.
Professor Valter Longo, The Longevity Diet
The Italian biologist was dubbed "The Fasting Evangelist". He is seen as the pioneer of the restricted diet, after his 30 years of research. He says fasting can cause the body's cells to regenerate. He translated his years in the lab into the Longevity Diet. The diet, he says, tricks your body into thinking it's fasting, and enhances the power of cells to help protect against chronic disease.
Fast rules: Consume 800-1,100 daily calories. Eat low-protein and mostly plant-based.
Dr Michael Mosely, 5:2
The 5:2 phenomenon was set in motion in 2012, with a BBC Horizon episode called 'Eat, Fast and Live Longer'. The documentary was presented by British doctor Michael Mosley, who experimented with fasting scientific. His book The Fast Diet sold more than 2 million copies.
Fast rules: Eat whatever you like five days a week. For two "fasting days", consume 500-600 calories.
James B Johnson & Donald R Laub, The Alternate-Day diet
"Diet only half the time! Turn on your skinny gene!" says the cover of these American surgeons' book. Their Alternate-Day Diet claims restricting calories every other day activates the SIRT1 gene, which releases fat cells to promote weight loss.
Fast rules: One day, eat normal portions of your favourite foods, even if that's bacon butties. The following day, eat no more than 500 calories. Keep alternating.
David Zinczenko, The 8-Hour Diet
It's not what you eat, but when you eat it, according to the former editor of Men's Health. Silicon Valley hailed this American's method of fasting as a focus-sharpener. He says the 8-Hour Diet kickstarts your metabolism to burn body fat for energy – losing up to 10lbs a week – and normalises hunger hormones.
Fast rules: Only eat during an 8-hour window. So if breakfast is at 10am and lunch at 1pm, dinner must be no later than 6pm.
Dr Will Cole, Intuitive Fasting
Intuitive fasting means knowing what and how much to eat.
Fast rules: Eat within a 12-hour window in the first and fourth week. Week 2, it's a six-hour window and a four-hour window in week 3. Eat only when hungry, and until you feel satisfied.
Françoise Wilhelmi de Toledo, The Buchinger-Wilhelmi Programme
There is a holistic fasting clinic on the German shores of Lake Constance and another in Marbella, overseen by this Swiss-born physician. Her studies showed long-term fasting can lower high blood pressure and cholesterol and aid weight loss.
Fast rules: Eight days on 250 calories a day is the standard fasting programme you take at the Buchinger-Wilhelmi. That's a small bowl of vegetable soup, twice a day.
Dr Xand Van Tulleken, One Meal a Day
The TV doctor best known for shedding six stone on Channel 4's How to Lose Weight Well. In his book, he says the quickest way to lose up to a stone in two weeks is eating one meal a day. This method puts "good stress" on your body like exercise does.
Fast rules: Eat one meal a day, preferably dinner. This should be under 800 calories.
Ori Hofmekler, The Warrior Diet
The former Israeli Special Forces soldier's 2001 fasting manifesto has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity two decades after publication. Warriors of yore would eat very little during their active days, then gorge themselves on a night-time blowout.
Fast rules: Only eat within a four-hour window, usually limited to one big feast.
Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Body
Ferriss holds the world record for the most consecutive tango spins in one minute. His The 4-Hour Body is billed as "An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex and Becoming Superhuman". Ferriss says fasting helps to alleviate the symptoms of his Lyme disease, as well as providing energy and focus.
Fast rules: Every month, do a three-day fast – only consume unsweetened drinks such as tea and black coffee, ketone supplements and a small amount of coconut oil.
Brad Pilon, Eat Stop Eat
The idea which came to the Canadian Pilon when doing graduate research on short-term fasting would later snowball into the successful Eat Stop Eat book.
Fast rules: Abstain from food for 24 hours, once or twice a week. If on Wednesday, the fast day, you eat banana porridge at 7am, you can break your fast at 8am on Thursday. On a fast day you can have water, black coffee or unsweetened tea.
Intuitive Fasting by Dr Will Cole is available from March 18.
Written by: Julia Llewellyn Smith
© The Times of London