Giada’s #1 Tip for Taking Control of Your Health

We’re not gonna lie: We’re big Giada fans over here. We love her new cookbook and her recipes; we think she’s pretty great. So we were thrilled to eavesdrop on her chat with superstar Kate Hudson as part of our virtual cooking class and conversation series. They talked about her book, its mission, and her love of brown rice, salmon and wine (because moderation matters!)

Giada had a tough go of it in her 40s. She divorced her husband, had a kid in preschool, and was struggling with chronic sinusitis. Every flight seemed to make her sick; she couldn’t handle the bright lights in her TV studios. When she examined why she was constantly sick, flitting from doctor to doctor, she zeroed in on her diet. Giada was “addicted to sugar,” she says, to the point that her colleagues mocked her freezer stash of chocolate chips, which she tucked into all day. Cheese was another obsession, and when she got low on prepared food, she’d have a block of Parmigiano-Reggiano with crackers as a meal. “If I eat a block of Parmesan cheese I can’t tell you what I’ll feel like later,” she now remembers. “It’s awful.”

Digestion-wise, sleep-wise, and mood-wise, she was suffering. At last she overhauled her diet, stocking the fridge and freezer with pre-prepared portions of brown rice, greens and frozen salmon (you can poach it in olive oil; get the book!)

The one biggest tip she had for overhauling such a central part of your life? It’s simple:

Ignore the naysayers.

Giada is super-close with her family. As she zeroed in on the foods she thought were causing her to feel bloated and sluggish, she told Kate, it became very difficult to explain her path to her Italian family.

“I’m so close with my family, and they were like, ‘Are you out of your mind? How can tomatoes not be good for you? How can you not eat eggplant? What are you talking about? It’s not pasta, it’s you.'” She laughs remembering it, but it was a hard response to overcome, as was her embarrassment—as a cook—about eating just fish, brown rice and greens on set.

“It wasn’t any one thing’s fault,” she now says, “It was just over a period of time I never let my body take a break, and when your gut never has a break, the bucket that we fill with toxins overflows.”

That’s why her cookbook is half recipes, and half a primer on how to overhaul your diet in just three days. Though doctors proclaimed the virtues of a week-long dietary overhaul to Giada, she says, “After three days, I already started feeling a lot lighter, a lot less bloated, a lot clearer, I could sleep better, I had a lot more energy, I just felt lighter on my feet.”

In Giada’s experience comes inspiration. With her book in hand, we have what we need to kickstart our diet in 2021—and feel better every step of the way.

Get the book!