Gwyneth Paltrow's body secret - hard work!

Gwyneth Paltrow has revealed that her toned physique is all down to a bit of discipline

Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow
(Image credit: Rex Features)

Gwyneth Paltrow has revealed that her toned physique is all down to a bit of discipline

Gwyneth Paltrow has a pretty enviable body for a 38-year-old mother-of-two, but it’s not down to luck - she's revealed she works hard to maintain that famously slim physique. Speaking at the Good Housekeeping Shine On Awards in New York, she stated: ‘It's not an accident. It's not luck, it's not fairy dust, it's not good genes.

‘It's killing myself for an hour and a half five days a week, but what I get out of it is relative to what I put into it,’ she insisted.

So, what’s her secret?

'I do 45 minutes of cardio five days a week, because I like to eat. I also try for 45 minutes of muscular structure work, which is toning, realigning and lengthening.

‘If I'm prepping for something or I've been eating a lot of pie, I do two hours a day, six days a week for two weeks.’

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Famous for her organic diet, the star is on a promotional tour for her new cookery book My Father's Daughter – inspired by the recipes of her late father, Bruce Paltrow, who died in 2002.

'We would cuddle up on the couch and watch cooking programmes. It was another way to bond,’ she said of her father.

She adopted a strict macrobiotic diet in 1998 when he was diagnosed with throat cancer, in an attempt to improve his health, but pregnancy cravings got the better of her while she was pregnant with first child Apple, so she ditched the diet for a time.

'I could not eat a bowl of brown rice for love or money. I wanted grilled cheese and Baskin-Robbins Jamoca Almond Fudge ice cream, and well, you can guess what won out,’ she revealed during a TV interview while promoting the book.

She’s back on the good stuff now though: 'When my daughter started eating solid food, I went back to organic, whole foods. I still wonder if my father would be alive today if he had grown up eating healthier food,' she admitted.

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