Gisele Bundchen revealed how changing her diet helped her conquer her panic attacks when she was a young model.
The 43-year-old made a luminous appearance on The View this week, where hostess Joy Behar jokingly called her a ‘b****’ for looking as youthful as she did 20 years ago.
But over the course of her interview, Gisele revealed that her early years in the fashion industry were scarred by her anxiety.
She started modeling at 14 and quickly found herself on a ‘hamster wheel’ of a career, working constantly and neglecting to look after her health.
As a result she wound up suffering from ‘severe depression’ and panic attacks in her early 20s – until an ‘amazing naturopath’ helped her turn her life around.
Gisele Bundchen revealed on The View how changing her diet helped her conquer her panic attacks when she was a young model
She wound up suffering from ‘severe depression’ and panic attacks in her early 20s – until an ‘amazing naturopath’ helped her turn her life around; pictured aged 20 in 2000
‘I just, like, I felt very grateful that I had a job and I was traveling the world, and I wasn’t really paying attention, you know?’ she recalled.
‘I was just like going, like 100 miles an hour, and until like I start having severe panic attacks in my early 20s, and I didn’t know what to do, and it’s been over a year and a half, and I was going to all these specialists,’ she said.
Ultimately, she ‘found this amazing naturopath and he said to me: “Gisele, we have to change your diet,” and I said: “Diet? What does that have to do with my panic attacks?” and he’s like: “No, it has everything to do with it.”‘
The naturopath, who nicknamed her Adriana Lima after her fellow Brazilian supermodel, asked her to outline her daily eating habits for him.
Gisele told him about how she would drink and smoke and have coffee, until the naturopath said to her: ‘Stop right there.’
The man reminded her: ‘You’re not sleeping. You’re like in different time zones all the time. You’re eating, like, terrible all day.’
Gisele confessed that she was not, at that point, selective about what she ate and would chow down on anything she could scrounge in the supermarket.
She also indulged in a significant amount of ‘comfort food’ like chocolate and biscuits, on account of the fact she was ‘tired’ and ‘traveling.’
She started modeling at 14 and quickly found herself on a ‘hamster wheel’ of a career, working constantly and neglecting to look after her health; pictured aged 14 at the 1995 Met Gala
Gisele is pictured in a campaign for Oxygene by Lanvin in 2000, the year she turned 20
One of her earliest claims to fame was as a Victoria’s Secret Angel; she is pictured walking the brand’s iconic fashion show in 2005 at the age of 25
The naturopath redirected her onto the path of a healthy diet, daily exercise and a minimum of eight hours of sleep a night – and the panic attacks stopped.
‘After having a year and a half of like, I would say, one of the worst times of my life, everything changed. Like, I became a different person,’ Gisele marveled. ‘I start practicing meditation. I start practicing yoga. I start practicing breathwork.’
During a recent interview with WSJ Magazine, she dished that she never allows herself to eat white sugar, which she regards as ‘poison.’
The willowy clotheshorse argued: ‘There’s so many other ways you can sweeten your things that are delicious. Honey, maple syrup, dates.’
Gisele is currently co-parenting her two children – Benjamin, 14, Vivian, 11 – with her ex-husband, football superstar Tom Brady.
On Valentine’s Day, she finally went public with her romance with her steamy jiu-jitsu instructor Joaquim Valente after they were trailed by dating rumors for over a year.
