Former supermodel Linda Evangelista reveals the punishing starvation diets she put herself through to keep her weight down as she hit 30
In her heyday as one of the world’s groundbreaking supermodels, she famously declared that she wouldn’t get out of bed on less than $10,000 a day.
But what Linda Evangelista didn’t mention was the lengths she went to to stay thin enough to appear on the catwalk of the most prestigious designer labels.
In a stunningly honest interview with River Café owner Ruth Rogers on her podcast, Ruth’s Table 4, she tells how she used ‘harmful’ cleansers and attended a £10,000-a-week retreat in the US, where she would once undergo a starvation diet. she reached her late twenties.
It coincided with her struggling to keep her weight down as she approached her thirties.
Canadian-born Ms Evangalista – who stars in the Apple TV show The Super Models – said: ‘I used to be able to eat anything’ It (her metabolism) started to slow down in her 30s. I started training when I was 27/28 because I thought things were a little different.
Evangalista used ‘harmful’ cleansers and attended a £10,000-a-week retreat in the US, where she would undergo a starvation diet once she was in her late 20s.
“I know when I was flying and working every other day and running around on jet planes and traveling the world, I had to work on keeping the weight off and then there came a period where I really had to look.”
Ms Evangalista, now 58, says that in addition to undergoing the ‘Master Cleanse’, which requires users to consume only salt water and a laxative herbal and medicinal tea for the first ten days, she also went to a week-long retreat in Palm. Feather twice a year.
The Canadian star said: ‘I started doing cleanses all the time and I loved doing these cleanses, but I think they were very harmful to me.
‘I’ve done the Master Cleanse a few times, but I also did medicated cleanses, like a powdered drink, the rice base, or I went to We Care for a week once or twice a year.
“It’s in the desert near Palm Springs, Palm Desert, and you just do liquids, usually water with lemon and mints and tea, and you get a glass of juice a day and you get a diluted, watered-down vegetable once a day, a so-called soup.
In her heyday as one of the world’s groundbreaking supermodels, Evangalista famously declared that she wouldn’t get out of bed on less than $10,000 a day
Ms Evangalista, now 58, says she has been doing the ‘Master Cleanse’, which requires users to consume only salt water and a laxative herbal tea, and medicinal tea for the first ten days
‘But it’s actually a starvation diet, it’s amazing. I will never do the hardship, I will not do that again.”
Ms Evagalista also appeared to criticize the fashion industry 30 years ago, when she was one of the most sought-after models in the world, and hinted that there was pressure to stay thin.
Commenting on the changes in fashion that is now being adapted to women’s sizes, she says: ‘In the 1990s the models had to adapt, adapt to the clothes.’
Last year, Ms Evagalista revealed that a fat freezing procedure called ‘CoolSculpting’ left her ‘permanently deformed’ and ‘brutally disfigured’.
She shared how she used different methods to correct the rare post-procedural complication known as paradoxical fatty hyperplasia. She underwent two rounds of liposuction and at one point stopped eating.
Ms Evagalista said: ‘I was so ashamed, I had just spent all this money and the only way I could think of to solve it was zero calories, so I just drank water. I went crazy.’
Listen to the podcast on: Ruthie’s table 4