Gisele Bündchen, Brazilian model, environmentalist, and mom of 2 is back in the public eye, sharing her balanced, mind-body approach to diet, fitness, and wellness with her new accessible and family-friendly cookbook, Nourish: Simple Recipes to Empower Your Body & Feed Your Soul.
The book offers a variety of gluten-free recipes, kid-friendly meals, and the supermodel’s best go-to ingredients like avocado oil, cashew cream, and psyllium husk powder. She also writes about eating regimens she has tried and abandoned, and shares how she stays centered despite the stress of a complicated personal and professional life. Gisele knows a thing or two about health and wellbeing, so here are her top 10 diet and fitness habits.
Gisele Bündchen Top 10 Wellness Hacks
1. Don’t underestimate warm lemon water
Being an early riser, Gisele reveals that she immediately hydrates with a glass of lukewarm lemon water and a pinch of high mineral salt, preferably Celtic salt. By opting for lukewarm water, Gisele ensures that the beverage doesn’t “give your system a shock”, according to Gisele’s mother.
Aiming for 10 glasses of water a day ensures proper hydration, which can affect everything from organ function to sleep quality, everyone’s hydration needs vary based on factors like body weight, activity level, and age. As part of her morning routine, Gisele also likes to meditate, followed by walking her dogs for a 30-minute walk.
2. A mostly plant-based diet is the way to go
About 80 percent of Gisele’s diet is plant-based, as expressed to Nourish. That said, there were a few years when she was either vegan or vegetarian to align her passion for animals and the environment with her diet.
Keri Gans, RDN, the owner of Keri Gans Nutrition in New York City and author of The Small Change Diet, expressed that a plant-based diet “is definitely a smart decision for being more environmentally conscious.”
Now, while Bündchen enjoyed this way of eating, she expressed that she developed anemia. This is a condition whereby a person doesn’t have enough healthy red blood cells or hemoglobin to carry oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. The condition left her feeling constantly without energy.
When iron supplements didn’t help, Gisele tried adding red meat and other forms of animal protein back into her diet and found that even a small amount was enough to alleviate the lack of energy.
In her cookbook, she shares a favorite recipe for grilled rib-eye steak with a zippy chimichurri sauce and crispy salmon served simply with lemon, olive oil, and herbs. Her desire to be vegan or vegetarian, but her physical inability to do so, was a humbling lesson,
“It taught me to be flexible, listen to my body, and do what felt best for it, even if that wasn’t what I wanted at first,” she writes.
3. Raw veggie prep is key
After following a raw food diet for some years, Gisele decided it wasn’t for her. Yet, “going raw” is still part of her current diet. She loves the taste and texture of raw vegetables and keeps carrots, cucumbers, celery, and radishes prepped and ready to eat,
“My kids will plow through a whole plate of these in the minutes before dinner,” she writes.
Keri Gans endorses eating more vegetables, raw or cooked. Raw vegetables are not always healthier than cooked, she notes, but you should always avoid overcooking,
“Many vegetables have higher antioxidant content when cooked, such as beta-carotene in carrots and lycopene in tomatoes,” she says.
4. Some foods are the exception, not the rule
While she admits that eating some foods don’t make her feel so good later on, Gisele still enjoys the occasional treat of truffle fries, gelato, or a baguette with French butter,
“I still sometimes have it. I’m human!” she writes. That said, these foods are the exception, not the rule. Following her ‘cheat day’, Gisele soon returns to eating foods that better support her health goals.
5. Stay flexible with your eating habits
Reflecting on how her diet has evolved throughout the years, Bündchen recommends staying flexible regarding your eating habits. “Never say never, life is too short,” she writes.
But in saying that, Gisele does have a few completely off-limits foods, one of which is junk food,
“No McDonald’s or shelf-stable cupcakes or candy for me. My body is my temple, and my temple is sacred. Eating processed food is not loving to myself.”
6. Drink Tea!
“I loooove teas because they always make me feel good,” Gisele shared on Instagram in October 2023 along with a display of favorites such as ginger and peppermint for digestion, chamomile, and lemon balm for relaxation, and lemongrass and green tea for an energy boost.
Tea is packed with nutrients and anti-inflammatory properties that maintain immune health.
7. Cut out coffee and alcohol
Although caffeine tends to make Gisele agitated and jittery, she has turned to coffee to help her survive traveling through time zones, and during her training for a half-Ironman race. Yet these days, she’s not drinking coffee and opting for a caffeine-free dandelion tea instead.
Gisele’s alcohol use was never problematic, but she reveals in her new book that she hasn’t had a drink in two years. She writes that she felt it was a social crutch that helped her make awkward situations bearable, but she didn’t like the headaches and brain fog the day after.
Without alcohol, she’s better able to “keep promises to myself to start each day strong.”
8. Gisele no longer does juice cleansers
For many years, Gisele would do juice cleanses, sometimes for days, and sometimes in silence as a way to clear her mind and her body to reset. Now, she admits that the practice of drinking only fruit and vegetable juice takes attention and commitment and is tough to do while balancing work and being a mom.
9. Experiment with smoothies
In her new cookbook, Gisele discusses a new diet experiment, replacing a single meal with a smoothie. She finds this “more gentle mentally and physically” than a juice cleanse.
Her pro tip: She juices fruit the night before and puts it in the fridge already in the blender jar. She prefers to use juice rather than water and ice because it makes the smoothie more nutritionally dense.
When it’s time to make the smoothie, she gets the blender out of the fridge and throws in frozen fruit (often bananas, pears, or papaya) and ingredients like protein powder or dates, then purées.
10. Indulge in yoga, surfing, and trampoline workouts
Bündchen notes that she has long practiced yoga to deal with stress or feeling overwhelmed. In her 2018 book, Lessons: My Path to a Meaningful Life, she elaborates:
“[Yoga is] so serene that I can be in a state of meditation while I practice. Whether it involves music or mantras or breath work or meditation, [yoga is] a powerful, beautiful spiritual practice. Yoga gave me back my life.”
In addition to yoga, Bündchen tries to do a few different types of physical activity each day. “Body movement is huge in my life,” she writes. In addition to weights and cardio in the gym, she loves to paddleboard, bike, horseback ride, surf, and bounce on the trampoline ideally along with her children.
References
Gisele Bündchen’s Diet and Exercise Habits: Tips From Her Cookbook and Life (everydayhealth.com)
Gisele Bündchen’s Diet and Exercise Habits: Tips From Her Cookbook and Life (everydayhealth.com)
