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If you’ve ever seen Top Chef on Bravo, you have to wonder how Padma stays looking so fit.
She eats a pretty decent amount of very rich food, for seven weeks straight. And yet she still looks like a supermodel. (for those that don’t know, she was a supermodel)
Don’t Do The Crime If You Can’t Do The Time
Padma has said that during the seven weeks that Top Chef is filming, she works out 12-15 hours per week.
If you do the math, that’s two hour workouts six or seven days per week.
You have to keep in mind that she has to. She’s trying to combat eating thousands of extra calories per day judging the food on the show.
If you aren’t planning on judging a food contest (and all the calories that come with that), you can cut out about 9 hours per week of lifting and get the same results.
Padma Boxes three times per week, lifts weights, does cardio on the treadmill and rollerskates.
If you’ve never done a boxing workout, I like it for all of the same reasons I like kettlebells – it blends strength and cardio and it’s intense.
While I’d like to get a little more info on Padma’s weight training routine, I’d be shocked if it wasn’t *gasp* circuits including squats and lunges, maybe some deadlifts and some upper body free weight stuff. If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, that’s pretty much the standard “being on TV” workout.
Just chillin’ 🐙 #tbt #topchef #casual pic.twitter.com/m7PKPNYsb8
— Padma Lakshmi (@PadmaLakshmi) August 2, 2018
Padma Eats Wicked Clean When She’s Not on Top Chef
Padma cuts out as much sugar and fat as possible, and tries to only eat carbohydrates and lean protein.
She’s all about fruits and veggies and drinking enough water.
I’m telling you girls and guys, there’s no magic to it. People who are lean eat good food.
Even Padma’s snacks are awesome:
“Coming from the East, I love to graze on dry fruit and nuts and crudites with Middle Eastern yogurt dip made with za’atar powder. Other snacks I like are an apple with lo-fat peanut butter or non-fat cottage cheese with rye crackers or celery.”
Basically, when she’s not on the show she eats really, really clean.
You Can’t Do Enough Working Out to Counteract a Top Chef Judge’s Amount Of Food
So Padma eats to look like a rockstar when she’s not on the show…
…But on the show, she has no control over what she eats.
She has to judge the food, so she’s grubbin really amazing, rich, delicious food, and she has to sample every dish on that episode.
Padma says that she gains 10 to 15 pounds over the course of filming each season, even with all of the time she spends in the gym.
I think she looks rockstar the whole season, but she says the reason you can’t tell is because she’s tall (5′ 9″).
She’s also said in interviews that she has one set of clothes (that show off her rockstar body) for the beginning of the season and another set of clothes (that are a little more forgiving) for the end of the season!
This is something you really need to keep in mind – even with 2 hours per day, six or seven days per week of workouts, Padma still gains weight eating during the show.
Hosting Top Chef causes Padma to eat more calories than normal, seven weeks out of the year.
When the Top Chef season is over, Padma returns to eating like a supermodel, and her body goes right back to supermodel body.
She’s said that she thinks about it like a “food detox” and she eats really simple food for a while after the season.
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Apply This To Your Own Fitness
Just seven weeks of eating way too many calories = a weight gain of 10-15lbs. (kind of like most Americans in November and December)
Most Americans over-eat all year long. Is it no wonder that they’ve got “stubborn fat”?
Lets make it easier: You don’t have to do two hours a day of working out if you clean up your diet.
Less is more. As in, less calories = more results.
Padma hits two really important points workout wise – lifting weights and boxing. Boxing is really high intensity. It’s not shocking at all that she looks lean, fit and sporty.
Also I give her big ups for rollerskating. Seriously, people need to remember that this can be fun. You’re allowed to be active just because it’s fun. Remember recess in school?
Padma’s Books
Padma’s first book is Easy Exotic, about how models eat to stay thin. I’m going to pick this book up ’cause I’m getting in a phase where I totally dig cooking again.
Her second book is Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet is another book is the same style – world recipies made simple and easy for anyone to cook.
Sometimes I feel like who-ever cooks the most wins. Seriously, my clients that subscribe to Cooking Light always drop weight and love their food.
It’s worth learning how to cook.
Like I always say, collect cookbooks, not diet books.
By Josh Hillis
“I’ve seen more results in 6 weeks training with Josh than I saw in the previous two years working out on my own” -Stephanie Weis
Josh has been featured in USA Today and The Denver Post.
Hi, I like your site, and I am in week four of your S7P. I have some pain in my shoulder, so I checked out the Z-Health system that you are recommending/using.
To me, it looks very suspicious, and I just found this thread
http://www.somasimple.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-4088.html
where the advocates of Z-health, although given the chance and asked very simple questions, completely fail to explain what Z-Health is or any consistent theory behind it. This is a bit disappointing to me, since I enjoy your criticism of bad information in the fitness world. So I was hoping that you would be equally critical of things like Z-health…
What do you think of this?
you have a paragraph with the topic being “You Can’t Out-Cardio Too Much Food” yet you don’t conclude that at all.
is your topic/statement chosen based on this sentence: “This is something you really need to keep in mind – even with 2 hours per day, six or seven days per week of workouts, Padma still gains weight eating during the show.” ?
I own Easy Exotic and I’ve read through much of Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet. Easy Exotic is NOT a book about how models eat, it’s a book of vaguely ethnic foods, prepared in a low-fat (and easy to cook) manner. You’d probably enjoy it. Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet is much more complicated recipes and not really low-fat at all.
Hi Natalie!
Wow, I was totally lied to by Amazon! Ok, I’ll revise the part about Easy Exotic!
You’re totally right Thomas!
I actually am editing it right now. I post the articles half done, but I don’t send them to my subscribers for another 2-3 days while I’m revising them.
If any of my readers want to see like a “behind the scnes” or “making of” the articles, my first drafts are here every week.
I was really impressed with Z Health. But I’m biased – a Z Trainer fixed my knee and my elbow, both of which had been hurting me for a solid year.
And in that year of being in pain, I’d been to everyone else – sports medicine doctors, a sports physical therapist, a chiropractor, and an active release therapist. I spent A LOT of time on the physical therapy, and the pain didn’t even lessen up. This is not to say that PT has never helped me, it DEFINITELY has. It’s just that this time PT didn’t help me at all.
Zachariah Salazar, a Z Trainer Master Trainer Candidate, fixed me up in about 20 minutes. That is to say, after a year of being in pain, I was pain free in 20 minutes. And practicing the drills for a month kept me pain free for the past 6 months.
I was skeptical of Z for about three years. But it worked on me, and it worked in a really amazing way.
Padma is lovely, and it might not be chivalrous to say it, but I’m going to be heretical here and say I think she looks either severely overtrained or way undertrained. The first picture–the one on the beach–gives us the best sense of what her body is REALLY like. Yes, she’s lean, but her arms and legs show surprisingly little tone for someone who trains so much. 12-15 hours a week is approaching Dara Torres hours, and she looks nothing like Torres. Now–maybe she doesn’t want to–but frankly, Padma’s legs and arms don’t look like they’ve ever SEEN a free weight. I’d therefore be surprised if her workouts were based around intense, heavy-hitter exercises as you suggest.
My theory? She’s doing a zillion hours of low-intensity cardio and a few curls with plastic dumbbells.
I love her — she is beautiful but it’s not just her exterior (which she has done a great job at keeping fit) but she is really intelligent too. This is the woman who was married to Salman Rudshdie!
Thanks for sharing!
I agree with Andrew. She’s nice and slim, but she doesn’t look particularly athletic or strong to me. I bet she never picks up anything over 10 pounds or even does challenging body-weight exercises.
jessica beil LOOKS like she lifts weights. Padme doesn’t.
Josh I just like looking at her regardless of how she works out. 🙂 I do have to say that my wife and I have been using your workouts for about three months now. We purchased the twelve week programs for men and women. My waist has gone from 38 to 33 (around the navel). Thanks man! And, yes, my favorite exercise is the kettlebell swing. I have gone from 35lb to 53lb; my wife from 20lb to 35lb. Youre the man!
I love Top Chef and I have always wondered how Padma stays so thin eating all of that rich food. Now I know. That is a lot of working out and she still gains weight…that must be some extrememly rich food. But I think she looks great throughout the season.
Dear Josh, this may be a little off topic. However, today I was at the gym and I wanted to do some cardio. However, most of the machines were taken. Thus, I was left with either a bike or the rowing machine. I decided to try out the rowing machine and employed the best posture I could muster from how I’ve seen people use the machine itself as well as the picture on the machine of how to row. Anyways, I found it to be quite an interesting workout which uses many muscles. I was wondering what your thoughts are on the rowing exercise itself.