Giada de Laurentiis and how she stays so skinny
I love to watch Giada on the Food Network and I hate how she cooks all this food and stays so skinny. I went to one of her book signings, and she said she does does eat her own food, but she only eats if off a salad plate and she works out three times a week.
But I found this interesting article about her and another skinny chef. I'll cut and paste some of it here and post the link for the whole thing at the end:
"De Laurentiis does eat her own food when she's taping her show; she doesn't
spit it out after a take or force herself to vomit, as several fans have asked. But she's not often having stuffed shells and mopped-up sauce.
The day we spent together, De Laurentiis had a little bit of oatmeal with maple syrup for breakfast and a Caesar salad with chicken for lunch, followed by several small sweets from a cake shop.
At dinner, she ordered three more salads--although, to be fair, one was served with a tuna fillet and another was shared with the table. And she did scoop up every bite of her dessert, an espresso granita with whipped cream.
Still, De Laurentiis turned down nearly all the many alimentary offerings routinely presented to famous chefs by fans and job seekers. Except for two bites of chocolate someone made for her, De Laurentiis ate nothing from the many gift platters.
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Another excerpt:
As a student at Le Cordon Bleu Paris, she often ate only what she cooked. "Some days were just pastry days," she says. "So Giada made about 50 croissants. Well, Giada ate 50 croissants." Eventually she gained 15 lbs. "It's taken me some time to learn to control myself," she says. But she did learn; her weight has been stable, at 117 lbs., for several years. (Goin thinks she weighs 135 but says she doesn't regularly weigh herself.)
In some of his experiments, Mischel suggested to kids that they pretend the cookie is just a picture of a cookie, not the real thing. Those kids were able to wait longer than the kids in control groups. (As one child said, "You can't eat a picture.") But De Laurentiis' and Goin's experiences suggest that we might try another strategy, one whose short-term risks may impart a long-term lesson: let your lizard brain eat all the cookies you want until you realize how awful you feel. De Laurentiis says she was "constantly sick" in Paris. Goin, who is often recognized by fellow chefs at top restaurants and then bombarded with extra food, describes the experience of gorging herself at some of those restaurants as "the worst feeling in the world ... If you go to the French Laundry"--the Napa Valley restaurant considered by some to be America's best--"it's like you want to stop a third of the way through because it's so amazing ... By the end, you're like, 'Uncle. Stop.'" Not surprisingly, both De Laurentiis' and Goin's portions are somewhat smaller than what most chefs serve. Their books offer chicken recipes that specify tiny 3-oz. (De Laurentiis) and 5-oz. (Goin) morsels of fowl per guest.
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