Gisele Bündchen is starting a new chapter in her life. Since the end of her 14-year marriage to retired football star Tom Brady in the fall of 2022, the Brazilian supermodel and environmental activist is back in the public eye with a new cookbook. Nourish: Simple Recipes to Strengthen Your Body and Nourish Your Soul.
Famous for her slim and lithe figure, the 43-year-old mother of two takes a balanced, mind-body approach to nutrition, fitness and wellness. While her lifestyle is aspirational for most of us, her new cookbook is accessible and family-friendly, filled with recipes for snacks, sweets, smoothies, bowls and kid-friendly meals like fried chicken meatballs (she uses gluten-free almond flour as the recipe). a map).
In her cookbook, Bündchen presents ingredients such as avocado oil, cashew cream and psyllium husk powder. She also writes about the eating habits she has given up and how she stays centered despite the stresses of a complicated personal and professional life.
Read on to learn more about Gisele’s diet and healthy mind-body habits.
1. She starts the day with lukewarm lemon water, meditation and a dog walk
Bündchen likes to wake up early and hydrate with a glass of lukewarm lemon water with a pinch of mineral salt (she prefers Celtic salt). She chooses lukewarm water, she explains, because her mother always told her it “doesn’t shock your system.”
Proper hydration can impact everything from organ function to sleep quality, with a person’s specific hydration needs varying based on factors such as body weight, activity level and age. Bündchen says she aims for 10 glasses of water a day.
After a few minutes of meditation, she takes her dogs for a 30-minute walk. (She also takes them for a walk after dinner.)
2. Her diet is mostly but not completely plant-based
About 80 percent of Bündchen’s diet is plant-based, she writes To feed. But there were a few years where she was vegan or vegetarian, which she saw as a way to align her passion for animals and the environment with her eating habits.
Keri Gans, RDN, the owner of Keri Gans Nutrition in New York City and author of The small change dietnotes that a plant-based diet is “definitely a smart decision to be more environmentally conscious.”
Although Bündchen loved this way of eating, she says she developed anemia, a condition in which a person does not 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 like she had no energy left.
When iron supplements didn’t help, Bündchen tried adding more animal protein to her diet and found that even a small amount per week was enough to alleviate the problem. In the cookbook she shares a favorite recipe for 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, to listen to my body and to do what felt best, even if it wasn’t what I wanted at first,” she writes.
3. She keeps raw vegetables prepared and ready to eat
Bündchen followed a raw food diet for a few years, but eventually decided it wasn’t for her. But “going raw” is still part of her current way of eating. 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 an entire plate of this in the minutes before dinner,” she writes.
Gans is in favor of eating more vegetables, raw or cooked. Raw vegetables aren’t always healthier than cooked, she notes, but you should always avoid overcooking them. “Many vegetables have higher antioxidant levels when cooked, such as beta-carotene in carrots and lycopene in tomatoes,” she says.
4. French fries and gelato are not off limits
Even though Bündchen knows some foods won’t make her feel so good later, she still gets the occasional treat of truffle fries, gelato or a baguette with French butter. “I still have it sometimes. I am human!” she writes. (Do we believe her?)
But these foods are the exception, not the rule. The next day, Bündchen gets back on track bright and early and gets back to eating foods that better support her health goals, she writes.
5. Never say never – except for ultra-processed foods
Looking back on how her diet has evolved over the years, Bündchen recommends flexibility in eating habits. “Never say never, life is too short,” she writes.
But she does have a few absolute demands, and one of them is a personal ban on junk food. “No McDonald’s or non-perishable cupcakes or candy for me. My body is my temple, and my temple is holy. Eating processed food is not loving myself,” she writes.
6. She likes tea
“I love tea because it always makes me feel good,” Bündchen shared on Instagram in October 2023, along with a series of favorites like ginger and peppermint for digestion, chamomile and lemon balm for relaxation, and lemongrass and green tea for an energy boost. (That tea post got almost half a million likes.)
Gans applauds Gisele’s passion for tea, “because it’s packed with nutrients with anti-inflammatory properties that can help prevent certain cancers, reduce heart disease and maintain immune health,” she says.
7. She’s out of coffee and alcohol
Bündchen has an on-again, off-again relationship with caffeine. Although it often makes her excited and nervous, she has turned to coffee to survive while traveling across time zones and training for a half-Ironman race. But these days she doesn’t drink coffee, opting for caffeine-free dandelion tea.
Although her alcohol consumption has never been problematic, Bündchen has not drunk in two years, according to her new book. She says she felt like it was a social crutch that helped her make difficult situations bearable, but she didn’t like the headache and brain fog the day after.
Without alcohol, she is better able to “keep the promises I made to myself to start every day strong,” she writes To feed.
8. Juice cleanses are no longer part of her life…
For years, Bündchen did juice cleanses, sometimes for days, and sometimes in silence, as a way to clear and reset her mind and body. But she admits that drinking only fruit and vegetable juice requires attention and dedication and is difficult when you combine work and motherhood.
“It’s not part of my life – at least not for a while,” she wrote.
9. …But she’s ‘experimenting’ with smoothies
In her new cookbook, Bündchen discusses a new diet experiment: replacing a single meal with a smoothie. She finds this “mentally and physically gentler” than a juice cleanse.
Her pro tips: she juices the fruit the night before and puts it in the blender jar in the refrigerator. She prefers to use juice rather than water and ice because it makes the smoothie nutritionally denser.
When it’s time to make a smoothie, she takes the blender out of the refrigerator and throws in frozen fruit (often bananas, pears, or papaya) and ingredients like protein powder or dates, then the puree.
10. She likes yoga, horse riding and bouncing on a trampoline
In To feedBündchen notes that she has long practiced yoga as a way to deal with stress or feeling overwhelmed.
In her 2018 book, Lessons: My path to a meaningful lifeshe explains: “[Yoga is] so serene that I can be in a state of meditation while practicing. Whether it’s music, mantras, breathwork or meditation, [yoga is] a powerful, beautiful spiritual practice. Yoga has given me my life back.”
In addition to yoga, Bündchen tries to do a few different types of physical activity every day. “Exercise is extremely important in my life,” she writes. In addition to weights and cardio at the gym, she enjoys paddle boarding, cycling, horse riding, surfing and bouncing on the trampoline – preferably with her children.
Additional reporting by Leah Groth.