The first thing you notice about Gotham Gym in the West Village of Manhattan is that it doesn’t resemble a gym frequented by celebrities. There are worn mats, low ceilings, and an enduring leather and disinfectant odor. For years, Bella Hadid has been going there to work out with trainer Rob Piela and wrap her hands while the city goes by outside. Her eating habits were designed to support that type of work, not to diminish her, so that detail is more important than any meal plan.
Most people consider breakfast to be unglamorous. A plain bagel with an egg sandwich. Sometimes it’s just sausage and eggs. There is no ceremonial bowl or green powder ritual. In contrast to the mythology surrounding model diets, which typically involve either extreme deprivation or ridiculous wellness theater, what strikes you is how commonplace it sounds. Her diet is more akin to what a construction worker consumes before a shift, and that’s most likely the point.
Brown rice or non-starchy vegetables are typically served with grilled chicken or salmon for lunch. Dinner is lighter, such as a bowl of mixed greens or protein with sautéed kale. Dr. Charles Passler, her nutritionist, has long encouraged his patients to eat a lot of vegetables, moderate fat, and high protein. It’s not revolutionary. The more difficult thing is that it’s consistent.
The fashion industry becomes more prevalent in the drinks. Several espressos in the morning. Green liquids. Ginger shots. Kombucha. Between appointments, have protein drinks. One suspects that some of that is just what’s available backstage and in the cars in between castings, while some of it is true habit. It’s still unclear if ginger shots have any quantifiable effects. It seems more plausible that they have any effect on her sense of routine.
She is particular when it comes to exercising. a protein drink, juice, or smoothie about half an hour before working out. Next, a hearty, high-protein meal, usually chicken over wholegrain rice. Her annoyance is understandable to anyone who has worked out hard on an empty stomach. You don’t become leaner by skipping that window. By round four, it makes you feel lightheaded.
The most intriguing thing is what she won’t do. She has publicly disregarded the diet-culture norms that view bread as a moral failing, stating unequivocally that it’s okay to eat pasta or pizza whenever you want. Donuts are known to be consumed by her. The whole thing becomes much more relaxed when she isn’t getting ready for a performance. She has talked about a time when she thot she had lost too much weight and about years of dealing with chronic Lyme disease, which alters your relationship with food whether you want it to or not. It seems like she learned this the hard way.
This reads very differently from the runway diets of the 2000s, when starvation was essentially a trade secret. Around 2018, something changed. The default language was changed from restriction to protein. On Instagram, trainers began to appear alongside the models.
However, it is important to be clear that this is a plan designed for a person whose work is physically demanding, whose schedule is erratic, and who has a nutritionist making adjustments in the background. For most people, copying it word for word makes little sense, and anyone with a history of eating disorders should probably read something like this with extreme caution or avoid it completely. Neither the salmon nor the bagel is transferable. It’s the fundamental principle: eat enough, eat frequently, train hard, and don’t freak out when the scale shifts.
There’s a steadiness to it that the routine itself doesn’t fully explain when you watch how she talks about it now, several years into a career that could have gone very differently.
