Hello boys: It's Cindy Crawford, still a super model at 40
Last updated at 11:04 08 June 2007
Fab and forty: Cindy Crawford shows off the style that made her a £25million fortune
Still super model Cindy Crawford shows off the form which earned her a £25million fortune as one of the world's leading cover stars.
At a photo-shoot on a Malibu beach, the 40-year-old mother-of-two, oozes sex appeal as she displays her enviable figure in a one-piece swimming costume.
Clearly still focused on her glamorous job, the catwalk beauty has kept her model-ready figure by sticking to a high-protein diet and a rigorous exercise regime of Pilates, cardio work and yoga.
Cindy admits her slender size 8 figure came naturally to her when she was younger, but has said she appreciates it much more now because of the effort she has to put in to maintain it.
After she reaching her milestone 40th birthday, Cindy said in an interview: "When I was 23, other women could look at me and say 'Well, she's never had kids'. But now I have and I know what it's like to have to lose baby weight.
"I'm actually happier with my body now than I was back then, because the body I have now is the body I've worked for."
In another shot, Crawford wears a sailor hat at a jaunty angle, and looks alluringly at the camera. Crawford was one of a group of models who earned the super tag in the early 90s. They were: Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Helen Christensen and Claudia Schiffer.
Crawford who has two children, Kaya and Presley, with husband Rande Gerber admitted her stunning good looks are not purely a result of daily two-hour workouts.
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Still stunning: Even at forty Cindy shows why she's still considered a super model
Earlier this year, she revealed she makes regular trips for treatments ranging from Botox, to vitamin and collagen injections. And that she has been getting such extra help with her looks since the age of 29.
The supermodel also claims the high standard of beauty in Los Angeles helps keep her from feeling too old.
She said: "A good thing about LA is that you see women in their 40s and 50s who look great, so you don't think 'I'm 40, it's over.'"
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Buxom Cindy has kept her model-ready figure by sticking to a high-protein diet and a rigorous exercise regime of Pilates, cardio work and yoga
The death of the diet: Eat butter, sip cocktails and nibble chocolate
The latest celebrity guru has surprising (and very welcome) tips for living it up as well as living well
By LIZ JONES
Last updated at 8:02 PM on 11th January 2009
Women everywhere will welcome Esther Blum's advice (picture posed by model)
This diet is revolutionary. It is realistic, attainable and sustainable. It is taking America by storm and is winging its way towards you fast. And it's so simple that you'll wonder why no one has come up with it before.
It is the no-diet diet, described in a tremendous book, allowing women to enjoy a lifestyle that enables us to eat foodstuffs we had believed, for the past two decades or so, to be off-limits.
The book is called Eat, Drink And Be Gorgeous and has been written by Esther Blum, a woman who is about to become as famous in the diet and fitness industries as Martha Stewart is in the world of home decoration, or Oprah Winfrey in the world of self-help.
Blum is a registered dietitian and certified nutritionist who is urging women brow-beaten by misleading science, peddled by quacks after a quick buck, to forget fasts and ditch the detox.
Hers is a realistic mantra that understands not only that the more extreme a diet or fitness regime, the more destined we are to fail, but also how damaging to our bodies and our minds these restrictive, faddy, excluding-everything-but-brown-rice-and-lemon-juice diktats really are.
Blum has been endorsed by celebrities including Sarah Jessica Parker, Sharon Stone and Teri Hatcher - three teeny-weeny women who have found, as they have got older, that punishing regimes have a tendency to pile years on to a woman's face and that they really need to be gentler on themselves.
We all know that self-denial followed by failure followed by guilt followed by over-indulgence is a vicious cycle.
The diet and fitness industries want you to fail: when you find you can't keep up the daily power-walks and the skin brushing and the banishing of dairy for four months, you go for a quick fix instead, which means you throw money at the problem.
A revolutionary philosophy
But there is another way. This is how the non- diet diet works. First, you learn to accept you are flawed.
'A little self-acceptance,' says Blum, a delightfully un-neurotic New Yorker, 'goes a long way to softening our own critical voice, which can serve as a barrier to helping us reach our goals.'
We don't all have to torture ourselves like Sarah Jessica Parker to stay in shape
Just because we do not have Madonna's willpower does not make us weak or bad or lacking.
Blum's revolutionary philosophy is that the dieting industry has got it wrong. We need food. Much of what has, until now, been deemed bad and naughty is, she assures us, quite the opposite.
Blum cheerfully admits her relationship with chocolate goes deep, and understands that ours does, too.
Rather than making eating chocolate as shameful as if you started injecting heroin, Blum lists its beneficial nutritional qualities - it contains phenylethylamine, which releases endorphins in your brain, making you feel happy, as well as serotonin, theobromine and anandamide, all of which increase circulation and elevate mood. She recommends we eat one ounce of dark chocolate every day.
Blum urges us to forget what we have ever been told about good and bad foods, with her second rule being that we women should all be eating full-fat food.
Hurrah! 'We live in a fat-free culture. Women have done their bodies a disservice because we have disrupted our hormones to a phenomenal degree,' she says.
She explains that we need cholesterol to make oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone, the hormones that regulate our moods. Starving our bodies prevents our hormones from working properly, making us prone to depression.
Fat-free foods can also, perversely, make us fat. 'These products register in the body as carbohydrate,' Blum says, 'and can contribute to weight gain.'
Let's start with eggs. Don't believe the hype about eggs raising your cholesterol level. It isn't true. 'Eat the yolk and the white,' she says. 'Egg yolks contain more protein than the white, as well as lecithin and choline, which help the liver break down and metabolise cholesterol.'
And how about that old enemy of the woman on a diet, butter? She has a chapter entitled: Feel Like Buttah? Have Some Buttah!
In it, she explains that saturated fats 'support bones, protect the liver from toxins, enhance the immune system, protect the heart muscle, and absorb omega-3s. In moderation, they don't cause heart disease, but do slow down the absorption of foods in your stomach, making you feel fuller for longer.'
Just enjoy yourself
Most importantly, Blum points out that it is not the quantity of fat in your diet that could cause breast cancer, but the quality of fat. Fabulous fats - as well as dairy, these are found in grapeseed, olive oil, nuts and seeds - should take pride of place in your larder.
Meanwhile, you should discard low-fat, low-cholesterol spreads and margarines that are regarded by Blum as 'frankenfats: the structure of margarine is not found in nature, so the body has a hard job breaking it down.
'This can lead to headaches, joint aches and a host of other problems.'
Some fats can be good for you - just don't overdo it
Starch - rice, beans, corn - is beneficial. Cheese, the traditional bete noire of the January detox, is also not off the menu: organic, cottage, goat's, feta, sheep's milk, buffalo milk and any unpasteurised cheese contain not only fabulous fat, but calcium, which is essential to ward off osteoporosis (brittle bone disease) in later life.
We can also eat chocolate cake, chips, avocado, sorbets and biscuits: just not all the time, and as long as we intersperse them with fruit and veg.
Unlike most self-help tomes, this book understands that you might, just occasionally, want to enjoy yourself.
Rather than dictate that you stay indoors all summer for fear of contracting malignant melanoma and skin like a rhino, Blum recommends we all 'get some luminescence, at least three times a week for at least 15 minutes a time, up to 30 minutes if you have a dark complexion'.
More cancers are caused, she notes, through lack of vitamin D, which can be produced in the body only with the help of sunlight, than from dangerous UV light. 'That's right, ladies, direct sunlight, sans sunscreen, on your gorgeous bod!'
Dietitian Esther Blum: Liberating women from their diet nightmares
This news will be as unsettling for all those magazine beauty editors who have been extolling the virtue of being pale and interesting for years, as it is for the manufacturers of suntan lotion. No, Blum isn't encouraging you to fry yourself until you are as red as a beetroot, she's just telling us not to be afraid of the great outdoors.
Blum even acknowledges that women might, in moderation, want to enjoy a tipple or two. She includes recipes for martinis and Cosmopolitans, and guidelines for drinking sensibly.
'Avoid sugary cocktails, skip the mixers, order soda between drinks, and finish drinking early enough for your body to metabolise as much alcohol as possible before going to bed.'
She even offers a few herbal hangover cures.
What I like most about Blum's philosophy is that it is not 'all or nothing'. So many women at this time of year 'slip' and immediately throw in the towel.
She implores us never to miss a meal, explaining that 'skipping meals raises your cortisol levels, so that you feel stressed and store your calories around your midsection'.
Blum comes up with a concoction of affordable supplements that will quash your cravings, including herbs and minerals.
She suggests magnesium (which helps maintain nerve and muscle function), evening primrose oil (can help with stress and PMS), milk thistle (supports liver function), borage oil (an essential fatty acid that helps balance hormones and promotes healthy skin).
And she is a huge fan of flax seeds: these contain omega-3s and are high in fibre, one of the few foods to deserve the prefix 'super'.
Exercise is not punishment
When it comes to exercise, women have been so brainwashed that we feel if we don't embark on a regime that would make an SAS soldier blanch, we are letting down the side. Esther Blum's mission is to liberate us from this guilt and to think of exercise as 'an opportunity, not a punishment'.
'Only do things you really enjoy to get results,' she advises.
'Gardening, pole dancing, belly dancing, walking.'
For the unrepentant slobs among us, the new non-diet diet will still seem like too much hard work.
Blum bans pasteurised milk, soya, white flour and water drunk from plastic bottles.
Don't be brainwashed into fad diets, Blum says
She even recommends a water filter for your shower because 'we take in as much, or more, chemicals through our skin as we do orally'.
And if you follow her advice, you will be packing so many supplements whenever you catch a plane that you will be probably be charged for excess baggage.
Yet for most of us trying desperately, miserably to lose weight, this woman is a breath of fresh air.
My advice is don't worry about keeping to a punishing regime in January: it is too cold and dark.
If you are going to start a new regime, do so in April or May, when salads and fresh vegetables and fruit are in abundance, and the days longer. You will have much more chance of success.
The final word, though, goes to Blum: 'Develop a mantra for yourself and repeat it whenever you feel anxious. It can be as simple as: "I am stronger than I think." Your mind and body will start to believe all the loving, kind and gentle words you are feeding it.
'So embrace yourself, hold your chin up high and remind yourself who's in charge here - you're gonna make it after all.'
• ESTHER BLUM'S books Eat, Drink And Be Gorgeous (£13.99) and Secrets Of Gorgeous (£7.99) are published by Chronicle Books. To order copies (p&p free), call 0845 155 0720.
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