Aussie model Elyse Taylor on how she stays fit and healthy
LOOKING good and staying fit and healthy is a full time job for Aussie model Elyse Taylor. She adheres to the blood type diet, which means she can’t eat a lot of foods.
WHEN looking good is your full-time job, it’s a fact of life that you have to restrict what you eat.
Gisele Bunchen doesn’t eat nightshade vegetables — mushrooms, eggplants and tomatoes — while Adriana Lima famously sticks to a liquid-only diet for nine days prior to the Victoria’s Secret shows.
Aussie model Elyse Taylor is far less extreme, but the 30-year-old single mother still sticks to a strict diet.
“I kind of have to, it’s my job. I have a bit more of an incentive than the ‘normal’ woman who has her job and family and everything like that,” Taylor told news.com.au during an interview to promote her role as the face of beauty brand Nude By Nature.
“I’ve been doing the blood type diet and I’m O. So I’m a meat eater, but no dairy. It’s amazing,” Taylor said.
The blood type diet is based on the theory that when we eat, a chemical reaction occurs between the food we consume and our blood. When you eat foods that are incompatible with your blood type, it can cause a reaction.
“There’s an app and it tells you which vegetables are better for you and others that aren’t. I can’t have avocado and coconut,” Taylor said.
But the blonde, who has modelled for Bonds, Seafolly and walked in the 2009 Victoria’s Secret show, says there are no shortcuts to getting model fit.
“I mean, there’s no secret. I go to the gym five days a week,” she said.
“I woke up at 2am this morning because I’m jet-lagged out of my mind and worked out. My hotel things I’m a sociopath, but you just find time.
“If I’m near the beach or the ocean, I’ll swim or I go in the pool. Or I’ll go on the treadmill and do floor work.
“I mean everyone needs to do what they love. For me, I need to be active, like run or swim. I need to feel like I’ve done something.”
Like most international models, Taylor is based permanently in New York, along with her three-year-old daughter Lila.
Since being scouted at age 18, Taylor says she’s learned how to say no to jobs that don’t fit with her brand or work with her lifestyle.
“Like any single mum, you just balance work and say yes or no and if something’s not worth it, I don’t do it,” she said.
“[Lila] use to come to Australia a lot with me when my mother was living here, but my mother has just retired so she’s moved to New York with us, which is really good.
“So when I come [home to Australia], I come here for four or five days, work and go back.”
Taylor says she is approached “all the time” by brands wanting to slap her face on their packaging or post Instagram ads to her 80,000 followers.
She decided to partner with Nude by Nature in 2015 because the brand is environmentally friendly and focuses on sustainable, natural ingredients.
“My daughter is always using my makeup brushes. There was one point where everything just kept going in her mouth and I was like, ‘That’s it.’
“But their products are have no synthetic ingredients or preservatives or silicones and are 100 per cent cruelty free.
“I think women now are educating themselves about what they put on their skin and what the beauty companies do and their ethics and what they believe in. It’s nice to be involved in such a positive brand.”
