Gisele Bundchen is shilling her new cookbook, Nourish: Simple Recipes to Empower Your Body & Feed Your Soul. From the sound of it, it’s just a lot of very healthy stuff with maybe some Brazilian and German classics. Gisele covers the February issue of Harper’s Bazaar to talk about food, divorce, motherhood, modeling and more, although she’s not really breaking any news here. Her divorce from Tom Brady was over fast and it was clear that she moved on well before she even filed. She splits her time between Miami and Costa Rica, and she sounds genuinely happy and at peace. Some highlights:
She’s not a vegan anymore: Bündchen attempted a vegan diet because of her love of animals but suffered from nutritional deficiencies; she now eats minimal meat that she is careful about sourcing. “I can offer some things I’ve learned and that have helped me and my family. I’m just a mom who has a very busy life, and I think a lot of women can relate to that.”
You can’t buy good health: “I want to live the longest feeling the best that I can, but for me to achieve this, I have to make decisions today. You can have all the money in the world. If you don’t have your health, it’s not possible to buy it back.”
She’s against food waste: “If we had barbecue on Sundays, all the rest of the meat would go to arroz carreteiro on Mondays, which was just rice and meat mixed with some onions and tomatoes… You are where you come from. All those things that I learned as a kid are things that are in me. It doesn’t change. In many ways, it’s also what kept me safe, because my value system was so strong. Today, being in the place where I am in my life and having access to all the different things I’ve had access to, I feel like the simple things are best because I keep trying to go back to those things. At the end of the day, those are the things that make me the happiest.”
Sometimes beautiful women are awful: “I’ve been in a business where I’ve seen the most beautiful women. Sometimes, they’re kind and they’re nice; now they’re more beautiful. And sometimes they’re just not, because their whole beauty goes away because of how they carry themselves and how they treat other people.”
Her daily routine: These days, Bündchen’s routine usually begins at 5 a.m., when she wakes up and takes her dogs for a walk. She also meditates daily and is a longtime student of crystals and astrology. (She’s a Cancer sun with a Scorpio moon.) In addition to weight training and Pilates, she now practices jiujitsu three times a week with brothers Joaquim, Pedro, and Gui Valente, a trio of fellow Brazilians and third-generation instructors who work out of Miami.
Her home in Costa Rica: She has a lush retreat she describes as a “vortex of healing.” “People get transformed when they’re there. They’re like, ‘I don’t need all this stuff.’ They start having an epiphany of how they want to live in a more simple way.”
Everyone should have access to nutritious food. “It takes discipline to meditate, to exercise. You’re the one who is going to reap the benefits. But still, it takes a bigger effort. But food is a necessity.”
She wants her kids to have tools to navigate the world: “‘The way you make your room, the way you organize and make your bed is the way you’re going to do your life,’ ” she recalls telling them. “ ‘If you’re not learning here and now, then when and with who?’ Sometimes, I get pushback, especially because now they’re in two different homes and there are two different ways. But I feel like I owe it to my kids, because of what my mom taught me.”
She doesn’t care what people say about her: “I can’t really worry about what other people say about me because what they say about me is none of my business. It’s really their business that they’re trying to project onto me. If I’m going to be affected by that, I’m never going to live my truth.”
I’m actually sort of a Gisele fan these days – I admire the way she handled her divorce from start to finish – but I kind of disassociated a little bit in this interview. She comes across as someone living in her own ass. That’s not fair to her, I know – she acknowledges her privilege at various times, and she talks about her humble childhood in Brazil, and I know that a lot of stuff didn’t come easy for her in the beginning. But it’s easy for her now and her raving about her second home in Costa Rica and all of the stuff about food and her elimination diet… I don’t know, she comes across like Brazilian Goop.
Cover & IG courtesy of Bazaar.