Tess Holliday calls out Gwyneth Paltrow’s diet video: ‘Everyone’s too afraid to be fat’

The plus-size model joins dietitians in criticising the actor’s food habits, which includes not eating until 12pm and then choosing meals including bone broth and vegetables

Tess Holliday has condemned Gwyneth Paltrow’s day-to-day diet, which involves an “intermittent fast” between 7pm and 12pm and eating bone broth for lunch.

The Iron Man star, 50, is also facing criticism from dietitians after she revealed her eating habits during a recent episode of Dear Media’s podcast, The Art of Being Well with Dr Will Cole.

In the podcast, Paltrow said she usually has dinner around 6pm or 6:30pm and will not eat again until 12pm the next day. In the mornings, she has coffee or “celery juice with lemon or lemon water” because she doesn’t want to “spike [her] blood sugar”.

She then exercises for about one hour in the morning, which could be either “[taking] a walk, or I’ll do pilates or I’ll do my Tracy Anderson [routine]”.

Following her morning exercise, Paltrow said she does a “dry brush” and then gets into her “infrared sauna for 30 minutes”.

When she finally does break her intermittent fast, Paltrow said she “really likes soup for lunch” and has “bone broth for lunch a lot of the days”. For dinner, she follows a paleo diet and eats “lots of vegetables” to “support [her] detox”.

Holliday, a plus-size model who has previously spoken out about living with an eating disorder, took to TikTok to share her thoughts on Paltrow’s diet.

“I’m not judging, because I have an eating disorder. [But] bone broth is not a suitable meal. And then to end your day with just eating vegetables? But yet people continue to give her airtime, to give her a platform, to take her ‘advice’, because everyone is too afraid to be fat,” Holliday said.

The 37-year-old model and body positivity campaigner recalled attending a “big fancy Hollywood event” several years ago where Paltrow was also present and sitting down for the “set meal”.

According to Holliday, Paltrow made others around her refer to her by her initials “GP” and had been seated at a table with US designer and celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe.

She said: “It was a seated dinner and we had a set course, a set meal. And [Paltrow] loudly had to let everyone know, in this very tiny room – with Natalie Portman, Catherine O’Hara, you name it, they were there – that her and her table, which were a handful of her close friends, as she said, that they were going to have something different: pizza.

“But not just any pizza. Cauliflower crust pizza with no cheese. And I’m not shading anyone who likes cauliflower pizza, go on, do your thing. But everyone just laughed like it was no big deal.”

Holliday continued: “I’m not here to judge what people put in their bodies, especially as someone that has a restrictive eating disorder. And I get mocked all the time, because I’m fat, so how dare I talk about not feeding my body, right?

“But this s*** isn’t normal, and it’s affecting a whole other generation of young folks who think that eating like ‘GP’ is appropriate, is OK.”

She concluded her video by acknowledging that she does not “have all the answers”, but pointed to “all the talk about Ozempic and all these other weight loss drugs” as a reason for speaking out against the “exhausting” diet culture.

“It is OK to feed your body. Carbs are not the devil. Fat isn’t bad. And I mean fat in your food and on your body. It’s not bad. But hey, anything for a dollar, anything for the cost of people’s mental health,” Holliday added.

Her comments come after several dietitians on TikTok also slammed Paltrow’s routine. Dietitian Kim Lindsay told The Independent that Paltrow is “promoting many restrictive diets such as intermittent fasting, paleo, replacing meals with low calorie fluids (coffee and bone broth) and detoxing”.

“We know that diets are unsustainable and can lead to weight cycling, increased risk of chronic disease and disorders,” she added.

The Independent has contacted Paltrow’s representative for comment.