Gwyneth Paltrow covers Self
That up there is allegedly Gwyneth Paltrow. According to SELF magazine, the actress covers their April issue… but we’re a little dubious.
Or, we were, until we read the accompanying interview and learned all about things she’s currently not eating.
The actress spoke at great length with SELF about her “clean diet” and how it changed her marriage to Coldplay singer Chris Martin. In Paltrow’s defense, she’s in the process of promoting her new “clean eating” cookbook, It’s All Good, which features recipes that omit… most edible things.
Paltrow begins the conversation by discussing the mood problems she suffered while eating… dirty? Per Us:
Adding that she often felt “run-down” before changing her eating habits, Paltrow says she “had a lot of unexpressed anger. I made everyone else’s feelings more important than my own. I’d suck it up and then be alone in my car yelling at traffic or fighting with hangers in my closet when they got stuck together.”
The Oscar winner continues, “You’re not learning anything unless you’re having the difficult conversations. Dealing with things directly changed my relationships. Sometimes when you get clear about who you are, others get less comfortable because they liked who you were. It’s changed my marriage, too, but he’s up for the challenge.”
Okay, so far so reasonable, right? We find it overwhelmingly clear that our mood improves when our junk food consumption decreases. Nothing to hate on here.
Paltrow then admits to some unhealthy habits–drinking a Guinness for stage fright, popping sleeping pills on long flights, intense exercise regimes to balance them out–which resulted in a panic attack. So, then:
“My doctor, Alejandro Junger, recommended that I cut out basically everything: dairy, sugar, gluten, anything processed. I was like, ‘What the f-ck am I going to eat now?’” the Country Strong star remembers. “That’s why I made the book: to stop eating brown rice out of the fridge because I didn’t know what else to eat — it was demoralizing.”
“You feel lighter and your emotions get smoother,” the It’s All Good cookbook author says of her healthy diet.
And thus the world was gifted It’s All Good.
Again, we actually have no objection to anything she’s saying here–one’s mood does tend to get better when one eats well!–but what’s surprising is her attempt to rebrand as a more warm and accessible figure while simultaneously peddling a cookbook for extremely restrictive diets (even the cover boasts her makeup-free with a toothy grin and unfussy hair). Note her casual use of the f-word! Note how she copped to drinking and drugging (albiet in the most socially acceptable ways possible)!
Better yet, note how she didn’t say she got the idea for the cookbook when Dame Margaret Smith, William Joel and Mario Batali were over for a quiet dinner party and Paltrow found herself a little loaded from the ’78 Montrachet–then accidentally stuffed the poulet de bresse with caviar instead of arranging it on the caviar plate where it belonged HA! HA! And that’s when she realized she should eat more brown rice and less everything else.
