It’s kind of a given that supermodels always have the get fit quick secrets in their back pockets. But it’s a pleasant surprise when one of them actually holds the secret to the fountain of youth in their kitchen.

Carol Alt has been a household name for decades. The supermodel superwoman has graced the cover of countless fashion magazines and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue more times than we remember. She is a movie star and at the young age of 48, the beauty posed nude for Playboy.

Sure, she isn’t the oldest woman to ever strip down in the magazine, but it’s clear she is one of the most confident women to ever do it. So what’s her secret to a smoking hot bod when most other women are feeling insanely out of shape? Food. She eats lots of it. As long as it’s raw.

“Raw food is all around you. It’s there more and more. And it’s great. It tastes good. Not only that, it tastes better than cooked food, “ she explains.

A Raw Foods Diet is based on the idea that raw foods contain enzymes, which help the body digest and absorb nutrients. Food heated above 116 degrees destroys these vital enzymes, so nothing is cooked through. Ever.

“I eat everything that a football player would eat! I just eat it prepared differently. That’s the end,” said Alt. “I’m not Vegan. I eat raw milk and cheeses. They’re unpasteurized. I eat meat if I want to; carpaccio, tartar, or even a seared steak.”

In her book “Eating in the Raw”, Alt explains that she was struggling to maintain her ideal weight of 125 lbs. (Her second raw food book, The Raw 50 was released in 2007.) She was constantly sick, run down, and hungry.

“I was starving myself. That was discipline. I was trying to maintain weight.”Alt , like many women, started dieting very early in her career. “I must have tried every fad diet in the book – I was constantly dieting and the end result was, oh, yes – I was thin enough, but I was also becoming ill! I had colds and the flu all the time; my respiratory system was a mess; and I seemed to be allergic to everything. Hell! I was even allergic to myself! And I was really becoming sick and tired of being…sick and tired.”

In an effort to improve her health in her mid 30s, Alt turned to Dr. Timothy Brantley, a Los Angeles based doctor who was prescribing raw juices, colonics, herbs and enzymes rather than pills and medicine. He instructed her to indulge all weekend on raw veggies, seared fish, and fresh fruits – with no restrictions on the amount.

“All I could think was, ‘This man wants me to eat. This is the most freeing moment of my life!” Carol immediatly felt her body turn around for the better. Gone were her chronic colds, coughs and sinus conditions. Her skin cleared up and her weight adjusted itself. And 13 years later, her clothes came off for the entire world to see.

“I feel better than I did in my twenties.” And it shows.

Raw Chocolate & Avocado Mousse
Serves 4

• 1 avocado
• 3 tbsp sweetener (or equivalent of stevia)
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 tbsp coconut butter
• 4-5 tbsp raw cacao (cocoa) powder
• a pinch dash salt

Blend all ingredients in a blender until smooth.

 

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Two Sports Illustrated covers, lucrative contracts with Cover Girl Cosmetics and Hanes, countless fashion magazine covers... Carol Alt was flying high as one of the most famous faces and bodies on the planet throughout the eighties and early nineties. Playboy Magazine called Carol "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World," and Life Magazine dubbed her "The Next Million Dollar Face." She played Howard Stern's fantasy woman in 1997's hit biopic chronicling Stern's life and career, Private Parts.

Carol Alt also found herself in the same precarious situation as most models, having to maintain an impossible body weight (125 lbs. on her 5'10 ½ frame) and eating very little, for years, as a result. During our conversation, Carol also shared with me her past lack of education about food and nutrition and how years of poor eating habits came to a head at the age of 34, when she found herself rundown and not feeling well on a regular basis. After a serendipitous phone call with an old friend and encounter with a holistic physician, Carol Alt explains how she became educated in nutrition and what the body needs to function at an optimum level of health and well being. She learned about the immense benefits of raw organic eating and started on a new path toward a lifestyle that would become her life's passion. Now, at the age of 45 she says she feels better than she did in her twenties. Since embarking on this journey more than ten years ago, Carol has written the book, Eating in the Raw, in which she shares her own personal experiences and provides a "how to" guide that anyone can follow, for finding and preparing raw foods.

PR.com (Allison Kugel): In your early thirties you were experiencing some chronic health problems?

Carol Alt: Here's the thing…I guess because I'm surrounded by young people all the time in the [modeling and entertainment] industry…there's always somebody coming up behind you. I got a chance on a trip to Venezuela to work with a nineteen-year-old girl and I was about 34 years old at the time. I saw this girl happy, fun, full of energy. She was jumping on tables. Now I'm the name on the project, technically the big star there, but the entire crew was drawn to her because she had energy and she was jumping and she was laughing and everybody was having a good time with her. And I was kind of tired and sitting on the side. They were putting her in g-strings and I was hiding myself behind rocks, because the flight had made me bloat. I only had the one day [down there] and I was literally hiding behind rocks. As I got on the plane to go home I was sitting there thinking, "What happened to me as a body, as a person…between, say, 25 and 34?" At 34 years old I was on allergy medicines for my sinuses, I was taking eight Tums a night for acid stomach, and I was really, really tired. My body was starting to change. I was eating less food. I was already eating no food to maintain my weight at 125 lbs. at 5'10 ½" as a model. Now at 34, even starving myself for two days wasn't getting me down to my fighting weight. It didn't matter how much I worked out. I was up to 135 lbs. at that point and just couldn't get it off, and I just couldn't eat any less food. It took me Nyquil to fall asleep, it took me coffee to wake up. And it wasn't like, "Oh my god, I have to have it!" It was just something I did. It was just my routine.

PR.com: It sounds kind of extreme though. It sounds like, maybe you were doing the opposite of what you're doing right now, and sort of really letting yourself go.

Carol Alt: But here's the thing, Allison…it wasn't extreme! It was pretty normal. Look what people take! I wasn't feeling extreme. I was just like, "Everybody takes Nyquil when they have the flu." It just makes me fall asleep so much faster. It gets into your veins. You can feel it going in…you know what I mean? It's a drug, even though it's over the counter. My point is, at 34 years old, I was experiencing those things that everybody was calling "aging." You're just getting older. All my girlfriends say, "Oh, I hit the wall. I just started gaining weight. All of a sudden I got wrinkles. All of a sudden this. All of a sudden that." My point to you is it wasn't all of a sudden.

PR.com: When did you first start to feel your body not cooperating?

Carol Alt: It was this trip (her trip to Venezuela) because I got to see somebody in front of me who was like I was at nineteen. And my question was, "How did I get where I was at 34?" My acid stomach I looked at as a badge of courage. I'm stressed, I'm the highest paid model in the world, I'm doing four films a year…I wore it as a red badge of courage. But truthfully, I'm just as stressed now. I probably work harder and I do more diverse things, and I haven't taken a Tums in ten or eleven years.

PR.com: How did you learn about raw eating? Because you're saying, I was not liking the state of my mind and my body. How did you find the solution?

Carol Alt: Coming back from that trip made me very depressed. And I thought, "You know, I just don't feel like working anymore. I don't feel like being in L.A. I don't feel like pounding down people's doors for parts." So I took off to the desert. I went to my mother-in-law's house. Nobody had the number there. And I just remember being there and trying to relax, but just tired and not feeling like doing anything. I thought, "What's happening to me?" And I remembered my father saying to me, and my father died of Liver Cancer in 1983 on Christmas morning, my father said to me just before he died, he said "Carol Ann, I should've known there was something wrong with me when I didn't feel like working." And my father and I are exactly alike. I am my father's daughter. I love to work, I love my job, I love the people that I meet and I didn't feel like working anymore. Something in my head said there's something seriously wrong. This is not aging. And certainly if I was aging at this rate, what am I going to be like at 45, 55, or 65?

PR.com: Yeah, because 34 is not all that old…

Carol Alt: Exactly. But people were saying, "Oh don't worry about it. That's just aging. Oh yeah, I get headaches too. Oh yes, I have acid stomach." I was experiencing the things that are actually normal for most people. Depression here and there, bloat at their period, moodiness, tired…those were the things that normal 34 year olds were experiencing. But my mind was going analytical. If I want to keep a career, if I want to… I can't believe life is supposed to be like this at 34, because they're saying our lives are longer and more productive and I'm thinking, "This is 34!" So I just remember being in the desert and thinking, "God, please! There's got to be something more than this. You've made me somewhat famous. Allow me to do something with this fame. I want to do charity work. I want to do things to help people, and I feel like I'm dying and I need your help." And I swear to God that he answers whenever you do that. I got a phone call from a friend of mine, and I write about it in my book (Eating in the Raw), at my mother-in-law's house. Now how many friends of yours have your mother-in-law's number? None! I Go, "How did you get this number?" and he said, "I have no clue. I just have this number for you." He goes, "I have to tell you this…you're the healthiest person I know, so you'll appreciate this…" And I'm thinking, "Holy cow, if I'm the healthiest person this guy knows my PR is doing a very good job, because I personally am feeling like garbage." He goes, "My girlfriend is 22 years old and they wanted to do a radical hysterectomy on her. She was full of cancer. I took her to this doctor. Everybody was saying [we were] crazy. We went against every doctor, but I'm telling you, he will make you look at food like you've never looked at food before. He will change your life! You will not be able to eat with friends and watch what they put in their mouth, because you will know they are poisoning themselves. In six months, he cured my girlfriend of cancer. She just got a negative biopsy."

PR.com: This is an alternative doctor he took her to?

Carol Alt: This was an M.D. in Los Angeles. I write about it in the book. His name is Dr. Timothy Brantley. Dr. Brantley doesn't say he cured her. It's not a word he's allowed to use. Just so you understand the technical problems with using that language…

PR.com: No, I'm sure. I understand…

Carol Alt: That was the word that my friend said to me. Now that girl, who they wanted to do a radical hysterectomy on, that meant take everything out, just had a baby two years ago. So you tell me what's cured.

PR.com: This was from putting her on a raw diet?

Carol Alt: He put her on a raw diet, juiced her, did high colonics, clean outs. Put her on his herbs, enzymes and supplements. Just basically taught her how to re-build her body, which at 22 she could do really easily because she was 22! She had a lot of reserves and she was able to do that. At that point I just thought, "If that [doctor] could do that with that girl with cancer, could you imagine what he could do for me with all the stupid little aging things that are making me crazy?" I don't want to be like everybody else. I want to be happy. I see all my friends on Prozac and Zoloft and all this kind of stuff. I don't want that for my life. I don't want to be on all these OTCs (over the counter medications). I just thought, "What the heck?" And I gave the guy a call, putting all ego aside, because believe me, I rolled my eyes when Steve told me about this. I don't know man. Just a voice inside of me said, "Don't be an idiot! You need something. Check it out." I called the doctor and left a message. He called me back and we started chatting. He asked me what I eat. I said, "Well I love turkey heroes, I eat pasta for dinner but with tomato sauce, not cream sauce, because I'm watching my weight. I have my coffee in the morning. If I'm not working, I'll put a little scotch in it and whip cream and make it my only drink. I only drink once a day, that's it." I'm making all these excuses for my diet. He just listened and finally he said, "Do you eat any vegetables?" I said, "If I eat a salad it just doesn't fill me up," and he said "That's because you eat iceberg lettuce." He starts talking about the food and he goes, "I'm surprised that with your food, you don't have sinus problems, trouble falling asleep, colds and flues.

(Carol suffered chronically from all of these conditions).

I got colds and flues all the time, after every movie [I did]. Ten days. As soon as the movie [wrapped], I'd land in New York and I'd be sick in bed for ten days…

PR.com: Just from being on set and being in close proximity to other people?

Carol Alt: Allison, they would say, "Oh my god! Cough cough cough, Carol Alt! I've always wanted to meet you!" And then extend their hand to me. Three months on a movie and so many people come in and out of my space.

 

 

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