Gisele Bündchen Overcame Struggles Through Diet

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Supermodel Gisele Bündchen, in a recent interview, described how she overcame “severe” panic attacks and depression in her 20s by changing her diet.

Appearing on “The View” on Thursday, she shared that she “had no idea” that her mental health struggles were related to her lifestyle, and food “was a big part of it.”

“I wasn’t really paying attention. I was just going 100 miles an hour,” she said.

Bündchen said she spent over a year going “through all the specialists” seeking answers. Only when she started to see a naturopathic doctor did things take a positive turn.

“He said to me, ‘Gisele, we have to change your diet,’” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Diet? What does that have to do with panic attacks?’ And he’s like, ‘No, it has everything to do with it.’”

At the time, Bündchen said she was drinking coffee, smoking and “eating terribly all day” before realizing her lifestyle was “destroying [her] health and creating the condition [she] was in.”

“Everything changed,” she said. “I became a different person. I started practicing meditation. I started practicing yoga. I started practicing breath work. It was a long journey.”

Bündchen has been open about her mental health in the past. Last year she admitted to having suicidal thoughts at the height of her modeling career during an appearance on CBS’ “Sunday Morning.”

“I was in tunnels; I couldn’t breathe. And then, I started being in studios, and I felt, like, suffocated,” she said, according to USA Today.

Bündchen, 43, recalled a time when she was overwhelmed with anxiety.

“I lived on the ninth floor, and I had to go up the stairs because I was afraid I would be stuck on the elevator, and I’d be hyperventilating … because, you know, when you can’t breathe even when the windows are open, you feel like, I don’t want to live like this,” she said.

Asked by CBS host Lee Cowan if she ever thought about jumping from her floor, Bündchen said yes.

“Yeah. For a second, because you’re like, I can’t [do this],” she said.

Bündchen divided her personality as a way of coping with the pressure. She started seeing herself as “her,” the persona that modeling agencies hired, and “Gisele,” her real self.

“They weren’t hiring Gisele; they didn’t even know me,” she said. “They just liked the way I looked, and they liked the way my body looked in clothes … and now, I get to be me.”

Bündchen added: “I just think now I’m allowing myself to come out as Gisele versus as ‘her.’ I don’t have to play a character. I can be me. And that’s liberating.”