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