I know Eliza Coupe from Happy Endings, she’s a 36 year-old character actress and is currently on Hulu’s Future Man with Josh Hutcherson. (I’ve heard good things about that and need to check it out.) She talked to Bon Appetit about her schedule, fitness routine and diet it was so extreme I wanted to cover it. To be fair to Eliza, I’m also kind of crazy and regimented about those things so I could relate to her. For instance she wakes up at 4am to do yoga. I set my alarm to 5am so I can get a workout in and get some work done but usually wake up naturally before that. I love waking up before everyone else although I desperately need a nap in the afternoons, but I digress.

Eliza is married to the creator of Shakeology, which is a racket if there ever was one. Those diet shakes are a multimillion dollar business and they benefit from their connection to the Beach Body franchise popularized by Sean T. It’s so annoying to pay over $100 for some fitness DVDs (T25 in my case, although I got them on eBay) and see diet shake advertisements before and after every workout. So of course she mentions Shakeology and this might be a covert ad for that, but please don’t fall for it. You can eat real food and still lose weight with sensible portions.

Here’s some of what she told Bon Appetit, including her diet restrictions which sound legitimate, she has real digestive issues:

She wakes up at 4 to do yoga then takes a hot/cold/hot shower
“It’s more about breathing and stretching than working out. If I don’t front-load the day with time to myself, life will get too busy. [A cold shower] wakes me up and it’s good for hormones and the entire endocrine system. I start with hot, go to cold, and then I go to hot, and then I go to cold. The vacillation between those two is just incredibly good for your heart.”

She has food allergies and sensitivites and can’t eat garlic or anything with a seed, like avocado, chia, etc.
“I have the digestion of an infant as a 36-year-old, and I want to know how I can remedy that. l eat three huge bowls of blueberries a day, just because I love them and it’s very hard for me to find a quantity of food that I can digest.

“I’m in such a high-stress job where women have to wear tight dresses all the time, and if I eat something that messes me up, I’ll be so cripplingly uncomfortable that I can’t go 12 more hours of shooting without freaking out. Worrying about it makes it worse, because I am an incredibly anxious person. When I was 23, I cut all sugar out of my diet, quit drinking, and found yoga and breathing and stretching. That’s the best Ritalin you could give anyone.”

“I’m an actress with food issues and body image issues—that’s real. But I’m trying to heal that part of myself and also handle my physical issues naturally by putting the best things into my body.”

[From Bon Appetit via People]

My mom has a serious digestive problem and is on the fodmap diet where certain foods which are known to be irritating to digestion are elimated (more on this here). While it seems almost impossible to me that she can avoid so many foods, as Eliza stated there’s a very high cost to her if she doesn’t. Imagine getting horrible stomach pains and having to rush to the bathroom like you have food poisoning and that’s plenty of motivation for you to eat very restrictively. My mom has to bring her own food with her everywhere and to ask for very specific things on the rare occasions she eats out, but again it’s worth it or her health suffers. I really liked Eliza’s message about healing herself and eating the right foods. She sounds like she’s got a handle on her body image and her health and like that wasn’t achieved easily.

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