Gisele Bündchen is 41 and has never felt better, but that wasn’t always the case.
During an interview with British Vogue, the iconic Victoria Secret Angel revealed that her lifestyle choices during her 20s was a concern for doctors who told her that she could die if she didn’t make a change.
Despite being the one of the highest-paid supermodels at the young age of 22, Bündchen confessed that while to an outside spectator she seemed to have it all, she was dealing with a secret internal struggle with her mental and physical health.
“From the outside, it looked like I had everything and I was just 22 years old. On the inside, I felt as if I’d hit rock bottom,” she admitted to suffering crippling anxiety and panic attacks behind closed doors for more than a year-and-a-half.
Gisele continued, “I was starting my day with a mocha Frappuccino with whipped cream and three cigarettes, then drinking a bottle of wine every night. Imagine what that was doing to my mind…”
After reaching a breaking point with her health, she sought guidance from a naturopath on a friend’s recommendation who suggested a total detox that consisted of no sugar, grains, dairy, caffeine, alcohol and cigarettes.
Gisele was only allowed to consume vegetables, nuts and small amounts of lean meat which resulted in nasty withdrawal symptoms she credits for the “worst migraine I’ve ever had in my life.”
She recalled her French doctor calling her “Adrenalina” in reference to her shot nervous system; he told her that if she didn’t stick to her new diet she would die in her 20s.
“I remember him saying, ‘Well, do you want to live?’ It was that simple,” Bündchen said and in three months her ailments disappeared.
Now with her daily 5 a.m. workouts and holistic approach to health and medicine, she says, “I think I feel better in my forties than I did in my twenties and not just physically, because we’re all told that life is over at 40 and I feel like I’m just beginning.”
Back in 2009, the Brazilian bombshell married NFL quarterback Tom Brady and has since welcomed two children Vivian Lake, 9, and Benjamin Rein, 12. She’s also a stepmom to Brady’s 14-year-old son John “Jack” Edwards, 14.
While Brady focuses on football, Gisele revealed that she “takes the reins” when it comes to making decisions about her family.
“I don’t think relationships just happen; it’s never the fairy tale people want to believe it is. It takes work to be really in sync with someone, especially after you have kids,” she told the publication. “His focus is on his career, mine is mostly on the kids. And I’m very grateful that he lets me take the reins when it comes to our family. He trusts my decisions.”
Gisele shared a moment during her pregnancy where the football star had put faith in her decisions, “I remember, in the beginning, he wasn’t into the idea of home birth. He was like, ‘You’re not going to do that, because you’re going to die,” she said.
“I made it clear that this is my body and I’m going to decide how I give birth,” she added that she had persuaded him by asking him to research home births before agreeing.
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