Rebel Wilson is on the Mayr Method diet, which involves excessive chewing
In May, Rebel Wilson did an Instagram about her weight loss goals for the year and how she’s gotten very serious about fitness and diet. She said her goal is to get down to 165 lbs, and she’s already made a good start. She’s been using a trainer nearly every day for months, and she’s been on a diet. In May, I wondered aloud if Rebel had gotten some kind of contract with Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig (or maybe even the Zone, if that’s still happening). As it turns out, she’s on a different diet, something called the Mayr Method (which I keep misreading as Martyr Diet). The diet involves no snacking, reducing gluten and dairy and… excessive food-chewing. *deep sigh* Okay, here we go.
Rebel Wilson recently declared that 2020 is her “Year of Health” — and she’s working on her goals through a mix of workouts, frequent walks and a revamped diet. For the Pitch Perfect star, 40, it all started last year when she visited Austria’s luxury medical detox and wellness center VivaMayr with friend and TV host Carly Steel. While there, Wilson got “amazing results” by following the center’s Mayr Method diet plan, a source tells PEOPLE. And she’s kept it up ever since.
The Mayr Method is based on the “Mayr Cure,” created by Dr. Franz Xaver Mayr, an Austrian physician, nearly 100 years ago. Mayr believed that most people are poisoning their digestive systems with the foods they eat and how they eat them.
“Everything starts with the gut,” Dr. Christine Stossier, assistant medical director of VivaMayr, told The Guardian in 2017. Using Mayr’s philosophy, the center revamps their clients’ diets to eliminate snacking, reduce gluten and dairy intake and change how they chew their food.
“The fundamental principle is that you can improve someone’s health through digestion,” Stossier said. Meals are centered around very slowly eating whole foods with high alkaline content, like vegetables, fresh fish and sheep’s milk yogurt. At breakfast, clients are given hearty spelt bread so they can train themselves to focus on consuming slowly — VivaMayr instructs them to count out 30 chews per mouthful, according to Jezebel. The act of eating is given increased importance at VivaMayr to aid in digestion. Clients cannot have their phones with them at meals, which are scheduled at least four hours apart, and they do not drink water while they’re eating.
Now that Wilson is back at home, she’s continuing to follow the tenets of the Mayr Method, while also increasing her workouts.
“She exercises with a personal trainer up to six times a week, goes on walks and is trying to up her protein intake nutritionally,” the source says. “I know she’s also been working on conquering her emotional eating patterns of behavior.”
I mean, I’m not a scientist or a dietician. The whole “chewing slowly and thoroughly” thing was something around in the ‘90s though? I remember that, not as part of a diet method, but people just generally talking about the need to chew your food a lot and to eat slowly. I’ve never been able to! I eat fast. But I go through phases where I try to stop snacking and I do feel like that’s just good baseline advice for anyone trying to lose weight: eat proper meals and don’t snack. Don’t eat after a certain time in the evening. These sound like obvious things but you never know. Maybe I’ll eventually create The Kaiser Method. It involves no nighttime snacks but you can have a few McDonald’s frappes every week.
Photos courtesy of Instagram.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pLHLnpmirJOdxm%2BvzqZmb25paIR2e9GemZ6kj6y2rb%2FOp5aiq4%2Bku6DAx56Wppmpp6yusdOhpp2XlJ6ytavWoaCcoI%2Beu7e7y6%2BcrJeVrbCmv9KirZ6Xk52yuLXNoGY%3D