The actress has acknowledged that to get the role of Rachel Green she had to lose weight, but the plan she carried out may not be the most advisable.
Few actresses can brag as much as Jennifer Aniston about having made a pact with the devil. The performer, who is currently celebrating the 25th anniversary of 'Friends', the series that made her famous, has reached the age of 50 with an enviable physique. She was the 'it girl' of the 90s and in hair salons around the world women tried to imitate her famous layered haircut, which was known as 'The Rachel'.
She recently admitted that she had to lose weight to be able to star in the series of the five friends who lived in New York and spent their lives in Central Perk drinking coffee. As she explained, her agent asked her to lose 13 kilos so she could play Rachel Green, since "she didn't get many roles because she was too fat." That's how she started the plan that has gone viral.
The diet consisted of eating a Cobb salad. According to the actress herself, during the ten years that she worked on 'Friends' she carried out the same eating routine. Every day, she, along with her co-stars Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe) and Courtney Cox (Monica) ate that dish together. "After so many years doing diets, I am a kind of authority, almost a nutritionist," she explained to the press.
What is Cobb salad? This is a dish invented by Robert H. Cobb and was emblematic at the Brown Derby (a legendary restaurant chain in Los Angeles, California) for a time. Its history dates back to 1937, when Cobb decided to patent a late-night light snack for Sid Grauma, agent of Grauman's Chinese Theatre. He liked it so much that he became fond of it and asked for it to be prepared often, so the recipe quickly spread throughout Hollywood.
It is very easy to prepare, the ingredients of the original recipe were: lettuce, tomato, crispy bacon, chicken breast, hard-boiled egg, avocado, Roquefort cheese, chives and vinaigrette. Today, if you are familiar with the Keto diet (remember, the plan that is based on the intake of foods rich in proteins and fats and the restriction of carbohydrates and sugars with the aim of generating a situation of "ketosis" - excess of ketones in the blood – similar to fasting) may sound familiar to you, because it is usually a fairly recurring dish within this plan, but is it really as beneficial as Aniston explains?
The salad has too many proteins (it is not advisable to abuse them), and it is not particularly slimming either.
First of all, it sounds a little suspicious that a salad on a normal eating plan will make you lose 30 pounds, unless it is the only food you eat. The main problem with the Cobb salad is that, if you decide to eat it daily like the stars of 'Friends' did, you will probably end up having an unbalanced diet. It has too many proteins and it is not advisable to abuse them (in fact, the WHO recommendation is 0.8 grams per kilo of weight per day and they must be distributed equally between breakfast, lunch and dinner). Aniston and company's diet does not have enough carbohydrates, so they should be added in some other way.
Furthermore, it is not a particularly healthy or slimming dish, since Roquefort cheese and bacon have a lot of fat, although it is also true that Aniston has admitted that she had her own recipe: she changed the bacon for turkey and added cooked chickpeas, a legume to add proteins and increase the satiating power of the ration.
We must also remember that the Keto diet, which often includes this dish, despite being a plan that is currently fashionable, has many negative points: dozens of threads have been opened on the Reddit website of people asking for help. Well, they have started the regimen and have noticed the side effects. Blisters, marks, constant itching in various parts of the body... These are just some of the symptoms that many people have suffered when starting this plan. It is because there is, according to the latest studies, a clear relationship between ketosis and prurigo pigmentosa, the rash we are referring to.
If, despite everything, you want to emulate Rachel, Monica and Phoebe, try to follow a balanced diet and remember that the main key to losing weight is to eat fewer calories than you expend: exercise, combining strength and cardio , is essential in your trip. Also consider visiting a nutritionist to recommend a plan tailored to you, since each body is different, and do not trust magic formulas. Everything is perseverance and effort.
