Nutritionist speaks about how you can turn back the clock by changing your approach to eating
Gabriela Peacock has a lot on. When we meet in a central London hotel, she’s just been on the radio to talk about her second book, 2 Weeks to a Younger You.
The following day she will be throwing a birthday party for her six-year-old twins Iris and Caspar (her elder daughter Maia is 12). ‘I have to invite both classes, so that’s 50 children,’ she grimaces.
Afterwards, the adults will wind down with a pub lunch – where guests are set to include the twins’ godparents, among them Piers Morgan and Princess Beatrice.
The birth of Beatrice’s daughter Sienna two years ago led to what Peacock, 43, describes as ‘a nice, newer dimension to our friendship’. Her dog, however, isn’t so keen on the connection.
The last time Peacock (and her husband, hedge-fund manager David) visited the princess and her husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi at Royal Lodge in Windsor, the dog was terrorized by two of the late Queen’s corgis. ‘So now he’s scared of all the dogs and needs help.’
Meeting Peacock, you can see why all these people love her, both on a personal and a professional level.
Clearly, she inhabits a glitzy world, moving with David between their homes in West London’s Notting Hill, the Cotswolds and the South of France, hanging out not only with royals but the likes of Dame Joan Collins.
Peacock is often more than a friend to these people. As an in-demand nutritionist, she’s also key to making them look their best.
Clients include Katherine Jenkins, James Blunt, Jodie Kidd, Yasmin Le Bon and Billie Piper, and she’s rumored to be the woman who had Prince Harry and Princess Eugenie looking their best at their respective weddings (she was a guest at both).
Did she play any part in getting the royals into shape for the coronation? ‘I might have been helping some,’ she smiles. ‘Actually, Princess Bea has been very kind – she gave me a quote for the book.’
Meeting Peacock, you can see why all these people love her, both on a personal and a professional level.
In a black dress, with skyscraper legs and windscreen-wiper cheekbones, it’s obvious she’s a former model. She’s also funny, self-deprecating, passionate about her profession and clear-eyed about why her approach is so popular.
‘I eat way too much chocolate, I drink wine, I love chips – so I can hardly tell others not to do that,’ she says. ‘It’s all about balance.’ Think kimchi and kale with a side portion of cookies.
OUR DIET AND LIFESTYLE CAN AFFECT OUR GENES AND THE WAY WE AGE
Peacock, who was born in a small town in the Czech Republic, became fascinated by nutrition after she won a modeling contract aged 15 and moved to Paris.
There, her agents encouraged her to eat nothing but fish and green beans to avoid being sent home again (she estimates that more than 80 percent of her friends had an eating disorder). ‘It intrigued me. I wanted to know more about how the body worked,’ she says.
When, in her 20s, she moved to London, Peacock was shaken by the ageism in her industry, with model friends no longer able to find work once they were over 30. Realizing that she needed a second career, Peacock studied for two degrees in nutrition over the course of nine years.
On graduating, she worked for the Queen’s GP Sir Tim Evans at his private clinic, where she quickly became the go-to diet advisor for the A-list.
‘I think it’s because there weren’t many people practicing who had my ethos of not being super-restrictive,’ she says of her success. ‘There are lots of scary nutritionists who give us a bad name – they’re all, “gluten-free, dairy-free, limit your sugar”.
‘But if you live such a restricted life, how can you be happy? If a plan doesn’t fit your lifestyle, it’s not going to be sustainable. You’ll follow it for two weeks and then hate me and never come back.’
Peacock shares a close friendship with Princess Beatrice and said the royal ‘has been very kind’ and gave her a quote for the new book
Peacock’s approach certainly seems a lot less hardcore than many diets out there, as seen in her first book, 2 Weeks to Feeling Great. While many require you to swear off brownies and takeaway curries forever, she favors a pattern of limiting your calories for a few days a week but then allowing yourself to eat ‘what the hell you like’ for one day.
Now, Peacock is focusing on how a similar approach to eating can turn back the clock. The secret is to choose foods and an eating pattern that can help fight inflammation, which scientists agree is a key factor in chronic disease and shortening lives.
‘I don’t like the term anti-aging – it’s insulting,’ she says. ‘It makes age sound so negative and obviously because of modeling that’s my sensitive topic. I don’t mind people knowing my age, but I’d like them to say I look good for it. I also want to feel great.
‘People are living for longer, but if we don’t watch our lifestyles, we could be sick for a long part of that. So this is about preventing that.
In the book, Peacock does an impressive job of making some hardcore science accessible. ‘There’s all this incredible research, mainly from the US, about how our diet and lifestyle can actually affect our genes and the way we age, and that’s so exciting,’ she says. ‘What’s more, it’s never too late to start.’
Her plan to kickstart the age-slowing process involves what she calls time-restricted eating (‘I don’t like the word fasting, it’s so negative’) – in other words, limiting calories, along with shortening the daily window in which you eat to between four and eight hours.
The idea is that by giving yourself a break from digesting you stimulate a process called autophagy that makes your body more resilient. ‘It’s basically a self-cleansing of the cells, which gets rid of the proteins they no longer need, so they aren’t sitting there wasting energy and potentially causing cell death.’
Afterwards, ‘the cells will work more efficiently, and you’ll have much more energy – which you’d never imagine would be a by-product of fasting. So it’s something we should be doing regardless of whether or not we want to lose weight.
Peacock outlines three programs to help lose excess weight (which shortens our lifespan) and kickstart cell renewal.
There’s supercharged (where you eat 700 calories a day for three consecutive days), reset (700 calories for two days) and live long (where you eat ‘mindfully’), using her recipes, to be consumed within an eight-hour window. You can pick one to follow – either short or long term – depending on your goals and lifestyle.
Personally, and she stresses this works for her but won’t be right for everyone, after ‘an indulgent weekend’ she needs ‘a bit of a kick’. So often, after dinner on Sunday night, she won’t eat again for 18 to 20 hours. ‘I drink a lot of tea and take a lot of soluble fibre, because they’re healthy and fill you up.’