Gwyneth Paltrow: Covid made me gain weight
Gwyneth Paltrow opens up about lockdown woes and getting Covid
SILKY hair, long slim limbs, washboard stomach, perfect pores, serene smile – all this and then some belong to the goddess of wellness, Gwyneth Paltrow. Even those who love her sometimes have to agree she’s annoyingly perfect and ridiculously successful, having made a fortune peddling products as outlandish as candles that smell like her down-there bits and necklaces that double as sex toys.
So it’s safe to say there was a certain amount of Schadenfreude when she made the recent announcement that she’d put on weight in lockdown – and now that she’s in her late forties, she struggled to lose it too.
It wasn’t like the old days when you decided to drop a couple of kilos and – voila! – they’ve melted away, she said.
“I gained a lot of weight over Covid,” she admitted on the podcast The Art of Being Well, hosted by medical doctor and author Will Cole.
“I didn’t do my eating plan. I just was, like, having alcohol and pasta all the time and then I sort of hit a wall.”
Being in perimenopause didn’t help matters. “I’m 48 and I know that women tend to lose up to 30% of their metabolic speed once we enter this phase of life. So I know some of it is that.”
She put on around 5kg, she says – not a vast amount, of course, but enough for people to have a bit of an “ah, she’s just like us” moment.
But there was another confession Gwynnie made that would’ve garnered her only sympathy. She’s suffering from long Covid, she says, after contracting the virus last year and has been left with “serious brain fog” and fatigue.
Long Covid sees people experiencing lingering symptoms for months and Gwyneth has been working hard to get back on track, both physically and mentally.
And of course, Gwynnie being Gwynnie that can only mean one thing: it involves Goop, her much-followed, much-derided lifestyle and wellness brand.
INSPIRED by her own Covid-19 journey, Gwyneth has a new venture: book publishing – and her first book to be released is by her friend Dr Will Cole himself. Called Intuitive Fasting, it will be published under Goop Press, her partnership with Rodale Books, a division of Penguin Random House.
The star, who has most recently been seen in the TV series The Politician, has credited the book for helping her lose much of her lockdown flab – five kilos to be exact.
Intuitive fasting is a programme that combines two dieting practices: intermittent fasting, where you go without food for specific periods, encouraging the body to burn fat and sugar reserves; and intuitive eating,
‘The road to healing was going to be longer than usual’
which advocates eating only when you are physically hungry and not emotionally hungry.
At the heart of it all is getting devotees to listen to their bodies. According to Cole, the aim is to help the body “reset itself ” and “reduce inflammation”.
Users are encouraged to start with a bone-broth cleanse, which Gwynnie says was incredibly hard but helpful.
“It let my digestive system rest and the lining started to heal a little bit. I felt like I never could’ve found or started to listen to that intuitive voice about what I wanted to eat or not eat had I not done something a bit drastic.
“I think so much of coping with business and everything is food and mindless eating. And then when you’re not digesting, well, it affects all kinds of things.”
She also touched on her kids’ eating habits, saying her daughter, Apple (16) is “actually very healthy” while her son, Moses (14), is pretty much like any other teenager. “Right now, he’s powering through nuggets and French fries.”
GWYNETH first revealed her ordeal with long Covid in an article written for Goop recently. “I had Covid-19 early on and it left me with some long-tail fatigue and brain fog. In January, I had some tests done that showed really high levels of inflammation in my body.”
Shortly afterwards she sought guidance from Cole. “After he saw all my lab tests, he explained this was a case where the road to healing was going to be longer than usual.”
Gwyneth is no stranger to different kinds of diets. Over the years she’s tried her hand at just about anything from the master cleanse (aka the lemonade diet) in her twenties to the elimination diet (which cuts out processed foods and additives) and the keto diet (high-fat, low-carb).
She admits at Goop they “call me GP the guinea pig because I’ll try anything”.
In her podcast interview, she talks about how she grew up with “cans of spaghetti and fast food and super-processed flour and multiple-course antibiotics”.
“But then my mom [actress Blythe Danner] saw the error of her ways and got us on a health kick on the early side.”
Whatever she does, it’s working for her.
She and Apple look more like sisters – but make no mistake, Gwyneth is one fierce mama bear.
An outspoken advocate of the #MeToo movement, Gwyneth is determined her daughter won’t fall prey to misogyny when she enters the workforce and she’s proud of the feisty young woman Apple is becoming.
“When I see Apple with her friends, they are so empowered. They have – and I mean this in the best possible way – a sense of entitlement that is beautiful.”
Gwyneth continues to have an unusual family set-up. After a headline-making split from her kids’ father, Chris Martin (43), in 2014 where she coined the now infamous phrase “conscious uncoupling”, she found happiness with Glee co-producer Brad Falchuk (50).
Yet she remains on great terms with the Coldplay singer and in what she dubbed a “family honeymoon”, he even joined her and Brad on a holiday in the Maldives shortly after their wedding in September 2018.
“So my new husband and his children, my children, and my ex-husband and our best family friends all went. It was a very modern honeymoon!” she says.
“Chris is family and he and Brad, they’re like, totally friends,” she says. She’s also a fan of Chris’ girlfriend, actress Dakota Johnson (31). “She’s a fantastic woman – I adore her”. Chris and Dakota reportedly regularly enjoy Sunday dinners in Los Angeles with Gwyneth and Brad.
While the stars’ setup may not work for everyone, it’s clearly working for her. “It’s like you’re ending a marriage, but you’re still in a family. That’s how it’ll be forever,” she said on the Drew Barrymore Show last year.
“Some days it’s not as good as it looks. We also have good days and bad days but I think it’s driving towards the same purpose of unity and love and what’s best for the kids.”
She loves being in her forties, she says. “It’s funny, I remember when I turned 40, interviewers going, ‘Oh my God, you’re 40! What does that mean?’ as if I was ready for the old people’s home!
“And yet, these years have been the most profoundly awakening years of my life.”
One can only imagine what her fifties will bring.