Gwyneth Paltrow has been prescribing health fixes–some of them zany–through her website Goop, and a new diet plan is her latest obsession.
The plan, known as “Intuitive Fasting” is being pioneered by ” functional-medicine expert, Will Cole based in Pittsburgh.
Cole, who is actually a chiropractor, has just published a book titled “Intuitive Fasting.”
It’s the first book published by Paltrow’s new Goop Press, so caveat emptor, she has a financial interest in its success.
“Of all the different ways of eating I’ve tried on over the years – from macrobiotic to vegan to I’ll-spare-you-the-details cleanses – here is what has worked for me: eating intuitively,’ Paltrow, 48, wrote in the book’s forward.
‘When I eat what feels right to me, I feel my best,” she writes.
Intuitive fasting, combines intuitive eating and intermittent fasting in a four-week “‘Flexible Fasting Plan.” It meshes an intermittent fasting protocols with a customized food plan, designed to “reduce inflammation” and “reset the body.”
“Intuitive eating is about eliminating restrictions and leveling the playing field for all food,” says Rachel Scott is a writer and model based in New York City.
“It comes down to basic psychology as well. We want what we can’t have and making things ‘illegal’ only pushes them underground, strengthening illicit behavior and feelings like shame and guilt.
“Intuitive eating means unearthing those feelings and laying everything out on the table. It means listening to your body in the most intimate of ways and, on a broader scale, accepting your humanness for its strengths and its flaws,” she adds.
Both intuitive eating and intermittent have been around for awhile and combining them can be confusing, Paltrow writes in the book.
“If there’s anything difficult in these pages, it is Will’s request that you be willing to listen to yourself, to your own body, to your intuition,” she writes. ‘While this might seem simple, it is usually not easy, at least not at first.
Paltrow said she decided to try out the intuitive fasting program after spending much of her COVID-19 quarantine enjoying pasta and alcohol.
She’s been into the new diet regime for four weeks and says she can already feel results.
Intuitive eating has been described as the ‘opposite’ of a traditional diet. Followers are urged to eat whatever their body is craving, while avoiding strict habits like calorie counting.
Those who follow an intuitive eating plan are told to learn what their body wants; they should eat when they feel hungry, but learn to know when their body is full and satisfied.
A key principal of the practice is recognizing the difference between physical hunger – when the body needs food – and emotional hunger – the idea that you are eating to satiate an emotion.
Intermittent fasting means going without food for specific periods of time during the day; rather than focusing on what you eat, it places the emphasis on when you eat.
According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, intermittent fasting will encourage the body to ‘exhaust sugar stores and burn fat’ while helping to prevent unnecessary calorie intake.
Dietitians Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole actually pioneered the practice of intuitive eating in their book Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works,
Resch and Tribole rejected traditional weight-loss diets and encourage you to get in touch with how truly hungry or how satisfied you are in a given moment. Then use that information to inform how, what, and when you eat.
They lay out 10 “anti-diet” principles to intuitive eating:
- Reject the diet mentality and diet culture.
- Honor your hunger.
- Make peace with food.
- Challenge the food police.
- Discover the satisfaction factor.
- Respect your fullness.
- Cope with your emotions with kindness.
- Respect your body.
- Exercise — feel the difference.
- Honor your health.
Both Goop, and by extension Gwyneth, have drawn criticism over the years for some of their more fringe opinions like the benefits of vagina steaming and vagina eggs.
The fact that Cole is dishing dieting advice with only a chiropractic degree is also a little sketchy.
But the benefits of both intuitive dieting and intermittent fasting have drawn praise from the medical community. Combining them, probably won’t do much harm.
Intuitive eating, a website devoted to the practice, details a number of scientific studies.
The fact is, no diet will work without a steady exercise regime to lose weight and keep weight off.