Thanks to their star power, celebs are trendsetters in the realms of fashion, beauty, health and fitness. We’d be lying if we said we haven’t tried to tailor our diets to look more like that of Kim Kardashian or Beyoncé. However, some celebrities have tried diets that are so intense, they’ve become famous (or perhaps, infamous) in their own right. These meal plans are so strange that we’d honestly be afraid to try them out.
Grilled steak on toast with peanut butter isn’t for everyone, okay?
From eating raw eggs in the morning to clay in the afternoon, some celebs, like the ones listed below, pick up weird food habits that they swear by. And although we often see modern-day stars sticking to specific diets for health reasons, not everyone in the below list was concerned about their figure or arteries.
In fact, some of the go-to meals are so shockingly unhealthy, you’ll feel like you need to run a mile to burn off all the fatty foods you just read about.
If you have the courage to eat like these stars, then try picking up one of the below diets for a day or so. But if you’re like us, you’ll probably want to stick to your usual grocery list. These people may be famous and all, but that doesn’t mean what they say, do, and eat is gospel (and thank goodness for that).
1. Shailene Woodley
In February 2017, Shailene Woodley revealed to David Letterman that she willingly eats clay — about a teaspoon each day via her at-home toothpaste recipe, in fact. According to the actress, eating clay can help rid one’s body of heavy metals and “radioactive isotopes.”
Woodley also reportedly takes her morning coffee with a bit of coconut oil and butter, which makes the drink taste a bit like a latte, without all the added sugar and cream.
2. Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn’s diet is less alarming and more, wait, why can’t we eat all that and stay so thin? According to Hepburn’s son, his mother never dieted and basically lived off of pasta. “Mum had a serious pasta addiction,” Luca Dotti wrote in his book Audrey at Home. “She couldn’t do without pasta.”
Hepburn also reportedly ate toast and jam for breakfast and indulge in some chocolate and Scotch after dinner. A true icon in more ways than one.
3. Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor wrote about her relationship with dieting and weight-loss in her 1986 tell-all memoir, Elizabeth Takes Off. Although the book is currently out of print, CR Fashion Book tracked down some of Taylor’s top tips and recipes — including “chicken barbecued with lime and potato skins,” and “grilled steak or a hamburger served on a single slice of whole wheat toast spread with half a tablespoon of peanut butter and half a cup of cantaloupe melon and orange mixed with low fat cottage cheese and sour cream.” Interesting combo…
Taylor also recommended leaving a day to “pig out” on your favorite foods once you’ve reached your optimum weight — which shouldn’t be too thin.
The actress preferred to stick within the range of 123 to 125 lbs. (That’s her choice, and doesn’t have to be yours! Every body is different).
4. Sarah Michelle Gellar
Buffy the Vampire Slayer — ahem, Sarah Michelle Gellar — infamously followed a seven-day “cleanse,” according to tabloids, called the “cabbage soup diet.” Following a rigid week-long diet plan that consists of veggies, lean meats, and all-you-can-eat bland cabbage soup, Gellar reportedly used this diet to stay slim during her Buffy days.
This blogger tried the diet in 2013 and reported having no energy and being completely grossed out by the end of the week. Ick.
5. Elvis Presley
Many believe that Elvis Presley’s bizarre and unhealthy diet led to his untimely death at the age of 42. Having grown up on Southern comfort food, Presley loved himself a good meat-heavy diet with a side of carbs. The King famously loved peanut butter, bacon, and banana sandwiches and “Fool’s Gold Loaf,” a hollowed-out sourdough loaf stuffed with peanut butter and jelly.
Presley also reportedly ate four scrambled eggs, deep-fried biscuits, bacon, and sausage, all smothered in butter for breakfast, bacon-wrapped meatballs for a snack between meals, and BBQ bologna for lunch and/or dinner. Woof.
6. Madonna
[fm_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79fzeNUqQbQ"]In 2010, Madonna and other celebs reportedly partook in a fad diet called the “Air Diet,” where you simply pretend to eat food without actually consuming it. The diet, started by the French magazine Grazia and featured in a Dolce & Gabbana campaign, reportedly consisted solely of water and a salt-soup concoction and was based off of the belief that one can exist only by absorbing sunlight.
Don’t try this at home, kids.
7. Nicolas Cage
In 2010, Nicolas Cage told the U.K.’s Sun that his diet revolves around the the mating methods of animals. “I actually choose the way I eat according to the way animals have sex,” Cage told The Sun per the U.K.’s Telegraph. “I think fish are very dignified with sex. So are birds.”
Cage, who once had a pet octopus, continued to state that he doesn’t eat pork because he doesn’t think the way pigs mate is as dignified as fish and fowl. Huh.
8. Marilyn Monroe
[fm_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEyWqVfY4vo"]In the September 1952 edition of Pageant Magazine, Marilyn Monroe detailed her diet and minimal workout routine. “I’ve been told that my eating habits are absolutely bizarre, but I don’t think so,” Monroe told the publication per CR Fashion Book. Um, we think so. For breakfast, Monroe would down two raw eggs cracked into a glass of warm milk. And for dinner, Monroe never ate out. She instead bought herself steak, liver, or lamb chops and broiled them in her electric oven.
She’d snack on raw carrots in-between meals.
And although her daily diet was strict, Monroe allowed herself to indulge in ice cream fairly often. “I’m sure that I couldn’t allow myself this indulgence were it not that my normal diet is composed almost totally of protein foods,” Monroe said. That’s one way of looking at it.
9. Marlon Brando
He may have appeared to be the picture of health and fitness, but Marlon Brando was in love with his junk food. Like Presley, Brando ate peanut butter by the jarful, boxes upon boxes of Mallomars and Cinnamon Buns, steaks, potatoes, and quarts of milk. Brando’s close friend, Carlo Fiore, said that Brando would try crash diets in the sixties and seventies. However, he couldn’t stick with them. And Brando’s wife, Movita, reportedly put a lock on the refrigerator to keep Brando from gorging on cheese in the middle of the night.
He was even nicknamed “Branflakes” because he loved his huge, fatty breakfasts.
10. Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie reportedly relies on “ancient grains” to stay slender, according to a 2014 Marie Claire U.K. article. The actress supposedly sticks to a diet of quinoa, millet, chia seeds, spelt and buckwheat, which she claims give her the necessary nutrients she needs and “shinier skin.” Furthermore, as of 2011, the Pitt-Jolie kids snack on crickets, which are like potato chips, according to Jolie.
Not the weirdest, but definitely on the more high-maintenance side.
11. Jean Harlow
“Actress Jean Harlow promoted a diet of lamb chops, steak, Jell-O, and tomatoes to lose six pounds in four days,” according to culture and food historian Adrienne Rose Bitar via Town & Country. The Old Hollywood actress would sometimes add a small bit of spinach or a hardboiled egg into the mix when she wanted a bit of variety. And she drank black coffee at each mealtime.
It should be noted that Harlow died of kidney failure at age 26.
It’s not fact that a change in diet would have helped her body health-wise, but trying to lose six pounds in four days is never a good idea (especially when you had scarlet fever at age 15).
12. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
If you have a bod like The Rock’s then you better be eating enough food to nourish all that muscle. The Telegraph reports that Johnson wolfs down a whopping 5,000 calories per day (the recommended average for men is about 2,500 per day).
Those calories come from about 12 eggs, 36 to 52 ounces of cod, a ton of sweet potatoes, and somewhere around 5.5 cups of white rice.
On cheat days, Johnson will nosh on some sushi, sweets, banana chocolate chip pancakes, pizza, and subs — probably all within the same day sometimes. And according to Mashed, Johnson can pack away five to seven meals per day.
13. Chrissy Teigen
There was a time in 2017 when model and Twitter icon Chrissy Teigen ate an entire branzino fish every single night. Teigen told Refinery29 that her mother prepares her branzino, “covered in garlic and olive oil, stuffed with lemons and rosemary,” each night.
“I go, ‘Mom! Guess what time it is?’ And she gets all sad and she goes: ‘Fish timeeee.’ Cuz she knows she has to finely mince the garlic, which takes forever,” the model said.
She’s shared her love for branzino on Twitter several times, and although it looks tasty, we’re not sure if we could manage to eat branzino every night of the week, forever and ever.
14. Tom Brady
Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is aiming to stay in the game until the ripe old age of 45. And to do so, he sticks to a strict diet of “alkalizing” and “anti-inflammatory” foods. According to Vox, alkaline foods keep Brady’s pH levels low, which reportedly helps to keep the football player energized and reduce his risk for bone fractures, although the science is a bit wonky. And anti-inflammatory foods supposedly help him recover from injuries at a faster rate.
Basically, Brady avoids alcohol, gluten, corn, dairy, trans fats, sugar, soy, grain-based foods and GMOs.
So, what the heck does he eat? Locally-grown organic fruits and vegetables (except for those of the nightshade variety like tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers), water, and protein shakes. Yeah, no thanks.
15. Kourtney Kardashian
Being part of the family that basically set a new beauty standard with their booties, Kourtney Kardashian took placenta pills after giving birth to her third child in 2014. Kardashian claimed the pills were “life-changing.” The pills, which are dehydrated and ground up bits of placenta, or afterbirth, can reportedly decrease symptoms of postpartum depression, restore iron levels, boost the production of oxytocin, and help a mother produce milk.
However, placenta pills have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, so we think we’ll sit this one out.
Do any of these diets sound appetizing to you? Remember, before switching your diet completely if and when you do decide to follow a celeb’s lead, check in with your doctor first to make sure you’re making a good decision for your body.
