I tried Gwyneth Paltrow's diet and workout routine for a week - here's what happened
I tried Gwyneth Paltrow's personal diet and exercise routine. Here's how it went.
I decided to embark on this project because I wanted to see if I could handle two hours of exercise a day.
THE EXERCISE ROUTINE:
Gwyneth exercises for two hours a day: one hour of cardio and one hour of weights.
Before this experiment, I was pretty sedentary. I didn't do much exercise. When I'm feeling super lazy, I'll go on occasional runs.
So for the week, I started on Monday, I skipped Friday because Gwyneth only does six out of seven days, and then I carried through on Saturday and Sunday as well.
I would exercise after getting home from work. I got a medicine ball and a big pile of handheld weights and I would go to town on those every night. A lot of it was lunges, some Russian twists, things that I kind of remembered from my varsity swimming days.
I'm a decent runner - that wasn't too hard for me. I would hop on the treadmill, sometimes I'd go outside.
I was pretty much at a loss on how exactly to fill up an hour with weight exercises. So I was pretty much doing random stuff for at least 30 minutes of the time. I think that probably contributed to me getting hurt as well. Part of it was me just lying on the floor trying to recover, so I was definitely not working out the entire hour. There were breaks. And, running to get water, petting my dogs who were very confused about what was happening.
I woke up very sore on Tuesday. So, I was worried about how the rest of the week was going to be. Thursday morning, I woke up, my shoulder was killing me, and I decided to skip the weights that day. Friday was my free day. Over the weekend, it was much easier to squeeze in two hours of exercise because you're off work.
THE DIET:
Her diet consists of skipping breakfast, a low carb lunch, and a decadent dinner. So I usually start the day with a bagel, then have either another bagel or slice of pizza, and then have whatever for dinner. All of this is punctuated with a lot of soda.
I decided to start skipping breakfast, made myself a giant salad that I ate for lunch throughout the week, and did whatever for dinner. She didn't get too into what she typically has for dinner, but she did mention occasionally having homemade french fries or a baguette drizzled with cheese.
Figured out I could melt Gouda cheese in a frying pan with some olive oil and it didn't explode my kitchen. So I would have that. The nice thing about this was that it was kind of decadent, especially after a day of just salad. It was kind of like a treat at the end of the day.
We had our holiday office party on Thursday and I freaked out, ate a lot of chocolate, drank a lot of wine, so, that's my bad.
THE CONCLUSION:
So Gwyneth Paltrow's not exactly telling people to dedicate two hours to exercise a day. This isn't something that's part of her goop line. She's just a pretty intense lady and this is how she exercises.
One of the advantages that Gwyneth Paltrow has over me is that she has a personal trainer. I don't have a personal trainer and I believe I ended up pulling my shoulder.
This whole experiment has made me realize that I probably should fit more time for jogging and cardio exercise into my life. I think it's kind of kicked me of a bit of a junk food habit for now, which is great. I did it, but I'm really glad it's over.