Gisele Bündchen could talk about food all day. The international supermodel, mother, author, and current wellness ambassador is deeply passionate about natural, organic foods and supplements. And in March, the Brazilian debuted her cookbook Nourish: Simple Recipes to Empower Your Body and Feed Your Soul, which features 100 nutrient-rich recipes for families like hers. (Gisele shares her two children, Benjamin, 14, and Vivian, 11, with ex-husband Tom Brady.)
“I’m not a chef, I’m the farthest thing from a chef,” she tells WSJ Magazine. “But I’m like, how do I make things that are easy and nutritious?”
Her recipes include a gluten-free vegetable pizza, pesto chicken lettuce wraps and a nut and seed bread.
But the model wasn’t always so keyed into her health and wellness. In her teens and early twenties, Gisele says she didn’t take care of her body as much. She’d start each day with two cigarettes and a Mocha Frappuccino, and end it with red wine. The frenetic lifestyle eventually led to a health condition, and she says her adrenal glands shut down.
But luckily, Gisele was able to get her health back on track by changing her diet, quitting her bad habits (like smoking), and taking herbal supplements. As of September, she hasn’t had a sip of alcohol in more than two years.
“I’m feeling so much better at 43 than at 23,” she said at a panel before our interview.
Ahead, learn how the supermodel fuels up each day so that she can work, be with her kids, and still have energy for her own “me time.”
Gisele is an herbal supplement superfan.
Gisele grew up with a grandmother who loved using herbs to bolster her health.
“I was raised in a different way where plants are my pharmacy in a way,” Gisele told Women’s Health at a Sept. 2023 Gaia Herbs event in New York City. So, in her early twenties, when her doc suggested she take adrenal herbal supplements to help heal her body, it was a familiar concept.
Now, Gisele prioritizes the quality of her food and supplements, keying in on where they’re coming from, and she makes sure the ingredients she consumes are organic and pesticide-free.
“Everything starts on the soil,” she tells WH.
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Specifically, she loves taking her Gaia Herbs supplements, which include ashwagandha and turmeric, each morning. She’s been taking these exact supps for more than 20 years!
After waking up around 5:00 a.m. and meditating, Gisele drinks lukewarm water with lemon and Celtic salt to kickstart the day. Afterward, she hits her workout. “The most important thing for me is to have enough time to move my body every day to meditate,” she says.
Gisele doesn’t usually eat breakfast until after, and she picks her meal based on the type of exercise she did that day. “If I did more weight training, then I’ll definitely have scrambled eggs or hardboiled eggs because I want to have that protein,” Gisele says.
Other times, she might opt for a fruit smoothie, which Gisele says give her lots of energy. She’ll even add in some almonds for a little protein boost.
“I always make an almond paste to have some protein in there,” she told WSJ Magazine in March.
Her meals consist of plants, fruit, and animal protein.
Gisele eats lots of greens, plus, “small amounts” of animal protein. (FYI, the model doesn’t eat shellfish.) In fact, her lunch and dinner plates are about 80 percent vegetables and 20 percent animal protein.
In Nourish, Gisele writes about trying to go vegan and vegetarian, but ultimately not getting enough nutrients. “I became anemic,” she told WSJ. “Then I was raw, and I was freezing the whole time. I was blue, my lips were purple in the summer.”
Now, she focuses on “simple foods” like roasted vegetables. You name it—green beans, broccoli, sugar snap peas, carrots—and it’s probably on her plate.
“For me, the whole thing about food has become, where is it coming from? How is it grown?” she says, per WSJ. “I see my body as a temple. I don’t want to feel sluggish after I eat. I don’t want to have a stomachache or be constipated. My whole goal is to live the longest I can living the best life that I can.”
Sweet potatoes are one of her favorites. “They’re good with everything. I put them in soups, I put them in salads. I just love them,” she told WH.
One thing she won’t eat? Refined sugars. “To me, white sugar means poison,” she says, per WSJ. “There’s so many other ways you can sweeten your things that are delicious. Honey, maple syrup, dates.”
“No McDonald’s or shelf-stable cupcakes or candy for me,” she adds in Nourish. “My body is my temple, and my temple is sacred. Eating processed food is not being loving to myself.”
When she does want to indulge, Gisele will snack on truffle fries, gelato, or a baguette with French butter, she says in the book. “I still sometimes have it. I’m human!”
She’s focused on three square meals—and no snacks.
On a day-to-day basis, Gisele focuses on fueling up with three square meals a day. “I used to be a huge snacker—I don’t do that anymore,” she says.
She’s cut out alcohol entirely.
Gisele hasn’t had a drink in about two years, citing the hungover headaches and brain fog as the main reasons why she quit, according to her book.
Now, she’s able to “keep promises to myself to start each day strong,” she writes.
Gisele listens to her body.
Sometimes, Gisele’s body wants soup or a smoothie, and other times it’s a bigger meal, like fish and vegetables. “It’s really connecting with yourself and feeling, what’s going to give me the most support right now? What’s going to give me the most energy?” she explains.
In fact, her foray into vegetarianism showed her she needs to adapt sometimes. “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 in Nourish.
Gisele used to turn to juicing during an equinox or solstice, telling WH that “when you go back to eating food, to eating solids, you really appreciate the taste of everything.” But in her cookbook, she said they’re no longer a part of her life, finding it difficult to balance a cleanse with the responsibilities of work and being a mom.
(FYI, liquid diets aren’t generally recommended—unless there’s a medical reason, like after a surgery. For the most part, they’re not considered “sustainable or healthy,” per Erin Rossi, RD, LD, with Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Human Nutrition, who previously spoke with WH. “They lack essential nutrients such as fiber and protein, which are crucial for overall health and well-being.”)
Now, Gisele drinks smoothies as a meal replacement, which she finds to be “more gentle mentally and physically” than a juice cleanse.
Gisele cooks simple meals for her kids.
Gisele really enjoys “simple food, because all the sauces and stuff actually make it really hard for your body to digest.” In fact, her goal while writing Nourish was to put together simple meals for moms to cook at home.
“Our gut is really our second brain—the most important thing,” she says. If our gut is not working well, our health is not. We’re not really living a healthy life.”
The menu for Gisele and her kids includes everything from salmon, spring rolls, and fish tacos, to chicken, soup, and veggies. Sometimes she also makes chicken and veggie lettuce wraps, marinating the chicken breast in a pesto sauce. Other times she makes homemade broth, and keeps it in her freezer. “If you’re going to make anything, broth makes it taste better,” Gisele says.
BTW, Gisele totally has mealtimes down to a science: When she comes home and the kids are hungry, she’ll make a big plate of raw veggies for them to snack on, like carrots, cucumbers, sugar snap peas, and green beans. While the kids munch on the veggies, she has time to make them dinner.
She meal-preps ahead of time.
Gisele usually plans ahead each week, creating a general menu and buying the necessary ingredients for her family’s meals. That way, if the kids aren’t in the mood for the meal she’s brainstormed, she can easily adjust. “Planning for food is really important, especially when you buy, so you don’t have any food waste,” she says.
She’ll even keep raw veggies in her fridge as snacks for the kids. “My kids will plow through a whole plate of these in the minutes before dinner,” she says in Nourish.
Well, Gisele’s transformed relationship with health and wellness is truly something to be admired. And I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely going to be investing in my herbal supplements from now on.
Addison Aloian (she/her) is the assistant love & life editor at Women’s Health. Outside of topics related to lifestyle, relationships, and dating, she also loves covering fitness and style. In her free time, she enjoys lifting weights at the gym, reading mystery and romance novels, watching (and critiquing!) the latest movies that have garnered Oscars buzz, and wandering around the West Village in New York City. In addition to Women’s Health, her work has also appeared in Allure, StyleCaster, L’Officiel USA, V Magazine, VMAN, and more.
