Gisele Bündchen is known for the super-active, healthy lifestyle she lives and promotes, full of workouts, healthy food, and time in the sun (just check out her Instagram if you don’t believe us). One thing that’s not a part of her day-to-day? Alcohol, but quitting drinking was a more recent decision than you might think.
“Right after I turned 40, actually, I felt a huge difference between when I had the glass of wine and when I didn’t have the glass of wine,” the supermodel and mom of two told People in a profile published yesterday. She pointed out that it’s socially acceptable to have a glass of wine or two, and some people might even say it’s healthy (and there is some research linking moderate drinking to lower risk of heart disease and diabetes). For her body, though, Bündchen says it’s not. “If you want to ask of your body what I ask of my body, which is a lot, I can’t be having all these things (alcohol, caffeine) because they add up.”
The 43-year-old experienced the benefits right away, feeling “more clear” compared to the “foggy” feeling she’d experienced before. “Now I’m very sharp and very present and I notice things that I didn’t notice before,” she said, adding that she’s “sleeping much better” as well.
Those benefits make a lot of sense when you consider that alcohol negatively affects the brain areas that control your balance, memory, speech, and judgment, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. And although drinking may make it easier to fall asleep, alcohol is also known to mess with your sleep quality overall, leading to disturbances and those familiar groggy mornings. It’s no wonder that sober-curiosity is becoming more and more of a trend.
Instead, Bündchen has been relying on meditation, which does pretty much the opposite of drinking by keeping her present and grounded. “It’s not attaching to the emotions, it’s observing them,” Bündchen explains. “It can allow you to take a breath and come in from a place where it’s not reactive, but it’s more proactive.” And she’s right on the money; according to Mayo Clinic, meditation can bring you new perspective and increase your self-awareness while improving sleep quality and lowering your resting heart rate and blood pressure.
For Bündchen, it all comes back to taking care of her body as best she can, which also includes daily workouts (yoga, walks, and weights). “You have to be loving to yourself,” says Bündchen. “You ask a lot of your body, you’ve got to do a reset. You have got to take care of this only vehicle you got, right?”
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