God, I just love Viola Davis. When I really love a certain celebrity, it’s difficult for me to even acknowledge that they are anything less than perfect. That’s where I am with Viola – she is perfection to me. She’s cool and intelligent and talented, with a wonderful humble, vulnerable streak that makes her seem grounded and real. Where was I going with this? Oh, this is my explanation for never noticing Viola’s body in any way. To me, she looks fine/beautiful. She looks strong and healthy and like she eats solids. She looks like she works on her body without being a gym rat. So imagine my shock at learning that Viola is on a DIET. Not just any diet either – she doing “the Wolverine Diet”.
When it comes to shaping up for her latest role, Viola Davis is turning to one of the hottest bodies in Hollywood for inspiration: Hugh Jackman.
The actress says she’s following the so-called “Wolverine diet” to play Susie Brown in the upcoming James Brown biopic, Get on Up.
“[I’m] losing a little weight. When I say ‘a little,’ I mean ‘a little,’ ” she told PEOPLE Saturday at the Los Angeles Hammer Museum’s 11th Annual Gala In The Garden. “I’m not a weight girl much.”
Jackman’s diet for the Marvel Comics franchise calls for limiting food intake to a period of eight hours every day while fasting the remaining 16 hours, according to the Oscar-nominated actress. However, she adds, “For eight hours in that day, you eat anything you want. They tell you not to binge, but you choose those eight hours.”
On the menu for Davis: “I’m a former ‘big girl’, and I like the fat burgers, the turkey fat burgers and the ‘skinny’ fries,” she says. “That being said, I eat a lot of low-carb pasta.”
Her extreme diet may be running its course on her body, but it’s not affecting her emotions.
“I’m not a cranky person,” she says. “I’m one of those people that will wake up in the middle of the night and dig through my drawer for some candy – and put it in my mouth and chew it as I go back to sleep.”
First of all, she’s playing James Brown’s wife?!!? That’s amazing. Get On Up stars Chadwick Boseman as James Brown – he recently played Jackie Robinson in 42. Second of all, how insane is it that some told Viola to lose weight for the role, or that she felt the need to lose weight for the role? Damn it, Hollywood!! STOP TELLING VIOLA TO LOSE WEIGHT. Stop telling every actress to lose weight.
As for Viola’s “extreme diet” – I’ve actually tried a less hardcore version of this before, like I would eat an early dinner and try not snack at all in the evening. It’s difficult to only limit yourself to eating within an eight-hour span every day – think about it. Think about when you eat breakfast and think about how hungry you are at the end of the workday. I’d prefer the “grazer” diet – you’re allowed smaller quantities of food through the day and evening, and isn’t that what many trainers and nutritionists recommend anyway?
Also – “I’m one of those people that will wake up in the middle of the night and dig through my drawer for some candy – and put it in my mouth and chew it as I go back to sleep” – I’ve never heard of anyone else doing that, ever. V has a weird relationship with food, I guess?
This is Viola in January (the photos of V in white are from September):
Photos courtesy of WENN.
SHe is lovely. The green dress looks brilliant on her!
She looks great in both dresses. I love her hair short like that. Her beautiful features really stand out.
I find that when a lot of women lose weight, they lose the “padding” in their face and the look older to me. I’m thinking of Jennifer Hudson, Emma stone, kate Middleton. That alone is enough fore to stay just right. Who wants to look older?
Some say that you have to choose face or body when you get older.
skinny + bad face
more weight + better face
I think I’ll choose face 😉
Liv I agree!
You can cover up body- thats what clothes are for and plus its more enjoyable for the grandkids to be hugging a grama that has a little extra padding.
The face on the other hand, no makeup or scarfs will ever completely cover up the wrinkles.
Well that’s not exactly true for all people. Jennifer Hudson was on the Star Jones diet so her weightloss was not natural and it looks as if she had some unnatural face changes as well. I don’t know who the other people are that you mentioned but I’ve noticed that it’s plastic surgery that ages young people. If it helps old people look young it really does the opposite for younger people. I have yet to see a younger person get work done and still look young. People who eat good foods and lose weight in a healthy natural way don’t look old and haggard like Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Alicia Keys, Leanne Rimes, etc. That’s plastic surgery.
She looks wonderful now, so not sure what this is supposed to change on her. Why does Hollywood tell every woman to lose weight???
IKR? It’s like a standard prerequisite now for any role regarding when.
Female lead- 70 yr old Gma (needs to loose weight). It’s crazy!
That sounds like a diet I could follow. Breakfast at 8:00 am and dinner at 3:30. It’s calories in a day though, not the time you eat it in so I’m not sure it would work that well.
I thought Hugh Jackman told everyone that he had to eat chicken or whatever every 2-3 hours, even in the middle of the night. I’m confused. Are there multiple Wolverine diets? 😉
His diet is more of a bodybuilder’s diet. He can’t do anything that would make him lose muscle and the amount of training (with or without a little steroidal help, as it were) that he needs to pack on and maintain means that he can’t not eat.
Hillary Swank did something like that for Million Dollar Baby. She had to get up at night and drink a protein shake. I would do that diet if I could eat ice cream or French fries in the middle of the night…
Calories in/Calories out is not true! It IS what and when you eat. Read ‘why we get fat and what to do about it’ by Gary Taubes. Very enlightening! Pure science 🙂
I’m sorry to harsh your buzz, but you do realize that Gary Taubes has been completely debunked by multiple sources? That he basically cherry-picks the studies (many of them 30+ years old) that seem to agree with him and ignores the large body of work that doesn’t. Science doesn’t work like that unfortunately.
Not true, the whole “when you eat concept” has been dispelled many times. It really does boil down to cals in/out and Im proof of that. I do most of my main eating late in evening and never eat breakfast b/c I have no appetite in the am. I really dont get hungry til around 1:00 and even then I dont eat much but I do have a good dinner late in the evening. Ive always maintained a size 6 for past 20+ yrs.
my friends on the other hand, buy into every diet regimen out there and constantly are on diets, gaining back n forth. most, if not all are now on the obese side.
My rule is to just listen to my body and feed it when its hungry. If I ate all these small meals thru the day Id probably be hungry all day long and eat far more than I need which would ultimately cause me to gain weight.
The bottom line tho is really that everybody’s body is different and you have to find what works for you.
He says to eat more fat and less carbs – try eating a lot more fat and eating less than 100 carbs a day! If you eat enough fat and protein you’ll never be hungry and you’ll lose the weight. I’M proof of that! And I haven’t even worked out as much since starting the ‘diet’. I’m a BIG WORKOUT GAL. iIt just makes me hungrier if I do it too much. I’m breast feeding and couldn’t lose the last 10 lbs, and now I’ve done it effortlessly . I feel great – my eczema has disappeared, my asthma and depression have improved. You can’t ‘unconvince’ me. 🙂
As far as the when – ever heard of intermittent fasting? That is all.
Lol, true 🙂
Wonderful actress & hottie McHotterson!
Wow! I thought I was the only person who did this. Sometimes (not all the time) I just wake up and pop a Gobstoppers in my mouth, then go back 2 sleep. I know it’s not good for my teeth though … 🙁
I do it too … I hate it … it irritates me because I know it’s not healthy, but sometimes I just need that kit kat !!
Nope, I do that too. it is always sweets or carbs too. I noticed I do it more when i drink too much coffee in the evening. Not sure but I do think caffeine intake has a lot to do with it. I remember Dr. Oz talked about ppl with “night eating” and caffeine was a culprit among other things.
I was watching The Food Hospital on youtube yesterday and saw something about this. Food Hospital is a BBC show trying to correct/improve people’s different problems with food. Most of their advice is run of the mill, like we always get but sometimes they branch out a little.
Anyway there was a man who would graze in his sleep. It turned out to be some deficiency in a vitamin or hormone or something. Might want to watch some Food Hospital episodes to find it.
My BIL does this, or he used to. He’d kept pounds of candy on his bedside table.
I guess it just depends on the person. It doesn’t sound extreme to me.
I read somewhere that it may be better (though not always possible) to eat when your body tells you it’s hungry vs. following what the clock says (8 a.m. for breakfast, 12 p.m. for lunch, etc.).
When I do that, I find I naturally want breakfast at 9 a.m., lunch at 1 p.m., dinner between 4-5 p.m.
That’s 3 meals, 2-3 snacks in 8 hours.
She looks the most gorgeous right now that she has ever looked.
Ah, the turquoise dress. I love that dress. I love her in that dress. Beautiful.
Oh my god yes! with her skin tone it’s just perfection.
I don’t see where she has weight to lose. And that diet sounds awful. And gimmicky. Go talk to JLaw, Viola!
So if you wake up at 6 or 7AM you’re screwed and will end up raiding fridges around 6pm?
I don’t know how celebrities stick to these diets. Do they hire a diet PA to be at their side to control them?
It’s called intermittent fasting, and a lot of people do it.
You don’t try to eat til you pop in those 8 hours, you eat until full and hopefully you still eat pretty healthy.
I do it most days without thinking because I am not a breakfast person and don’t get hungry until after 11 or so.
Grazing for me leads to eating more, especially at night and snacking. If you use food to deal with emotion it can help, as I used to.
Now I use meditation, running and working out when I feel stressed, if I want to eat a burger when me and my DH are out I do, but after all these years of eating clean most times I don’t even want to but sometimes I crave a good ole heaping of pasta and bread. lol
She looks great, I adore purple on her.
thank you! finally someone knows about IF and it’s really not some wacky thing. It’s quite difficult to eat so many calories within that window, especially if you’re not eating junk food. And really, all your doing is skipping one meal and maybe a snack since we sleep 8 hours. So your eating window can be Noon to 8pm. That’s not that weird.
I do IF naturally. Don’t eat until 10 and eat dinner at 6. My weight stays pretty stable without a lot of effort. If you’re doing it to lose weight, then you’re still going to have to watch the calories in, but it’s an easy control mechanism.
She looks amazing and doesn’t need to lose an ounce. I’m hoping it’s story related, and not some d-bag executive telling her to do it.
That diet doesn’t make much sense to me. Isn’t it all just calories in/calories out, who cares what time?
it’s called intermittent fasting, and it actually helps in losing fat. i can’t explain the science behind it, but i’ve looked into it and know many, many women who eat in this fashion and are incredibly healthy and active.
It’s also said to help the body metabolize what it eats-ie, time to do so when there is ‘intermittent fasting’, and gives the digestive tract a break. The digestive system health has been connected to inflammation, aging, etc.
Anyway, this is a gossip blog, so carry on gossips(:
Considering the stretch marks she has on her arms she has probably lost a lot of weight (or gained some) in a very short amount of time, she was probably on a diet before becoming so famous? I can totally relate to the food matter: if you love food it’s so difficult trying not to have any or think of it!
Not necessarily. Me step sister has stayed the same weight and the same size (6) since pretty much forever, with no major fluctuations. Yet she has stretch marks. So does her mom. Sometimes it’s just genetic.
Yeah, those marks are odd for sure. Her arms aren’t big at all; how would you get stretch marks there?
…”“For eight hours in that day, you eat anything you want. “…
…”Her extreme diet may be running its course on her body”…
Wow, so non-extreme diat is eating through all the 24 hours?
Yeah, I don’t get it either. Are people eating in their sleep or something?
I fail to see how this is dieting in anyway. You can eat whatever you want for 8 hours than now food for the rest? That would take no discipline since most of us aren’t eating round the clock anyway.
I did the same kind of diet, which for me was basically not eating anything after lunch. I would not recommend it because I fainted twice in the bathroom after having to skip both lunch and dinner. Very bad.
Good that you stopped after fainting.
Picking up the suitable diat that you can keep is such a subjective thing.
I’ve lived most of my life on this Wolferine diet (didn’t know it has a name).For me it’s easy because I’m not a breakfast person. A black coffee is enough.
A friend of mine is following the Logi diet which is 3 meals a day(moderate)and no snacks in between, even an apple.No fast food either.Works for her.
Imagine if she had played Nina Simone instead of Zoe Saldana. Now THAT would be a film I’d see. What a lost opportunity
+1…the film’s casting director must’ve really dropped the ball when they decided to hire Zoe instead of Viola. I’m sure even Zoe must feel a twinge of guilt every now and then knowing that she was miscast and likely won’t do the role much justice.
Viola would’ve been a much better choice, plain and simple. She’s a naturally gifted actress, just watch her in “Doubt” and you’ll see.
Casting decisions unltimately lie with the producers. no point blaming the casting director.
“Casting decisions unltimately lie with the producers…”
And you know for a fact this occurred with this specific film? B/c I would love to know.
I’m going to try it. My big tush is killing my arthritis in my hips.
it’s all about hormones. when you eat, you release insulin which is the fat storage hormone. When you don’t eat, after about 5 hours, you release the fat burning hormone, glucagen. most days I do what she does but not purposefully, per se. I eat an early dinner and don’t eat again until breakfast the next morning. Fasting is easy when you’re sleeping. Your pancrease LOVES the break. Frequent snacking overtaxes the body as a rule. Not to say every day is the same. Women, as they march towards menopause, experience many fluctuations in other hormones that may increase appetite so it’s about focusing on healthy fats and vegetables etc. 🙂
Kaiser,
She’s playing James Brown’s mother not his wife. The mother that abandoned him. Maybe the Mom was a junky so Viola has to look really skinny and malnourished. Cause right now Viola’s body is rocking hot. Check out her arms and slim waist.
Oh my god I’m so glad I’m not the only person that eats sweets in bed. Swear to god I wake up with Reese’s wrappers next to me.
Lol It’s better than waking up with crumbs in the bed like me. I eat cookies. *Hangs head in shame*
This is actually a diet a lot of athletes follow.
it is called intermittent fasting, and if you can do it within a six hour window, your HGH productuion naturally increases by close to 80%; the studies are pretty crazy.
But y don’t eat whatever you want on true IF.. the time you eat doesn’t affect your rate of weight loss. It’s more about hormone regulation within certain parameters. Weight loss itself will always be solely about calories in vs calories out.
Love her. So excited to see her opposite Chadwick Boseman, too! That man is DREAMY!
She will be playing his mother not his wife.
Intermittent Fasting (IF) is a great way to drop fat. It’s basically allowing your body to burn stored fat for energy instead of burning the constant sugar/carbs that you ingest when you keep eating throughout the day. As long as your body is not dependent on sugar you won’t feel bad at all. But if you are dependent on sugar you have to ease in to it a little bit, by lowering your daily sugar intake until you hit the sweet spot. I IF without even realizing it now because my body loves it. 16:8 works for me. I’ll do a full 20:4 IF after a pizza and beer night to recalibrate. (if I don’t, I feel like crap for about 36 – 48 hours). However, I’ve never heard of it described as “eat anything you want” during your eating window. That’s just asking for major insulin induced mood swings, and possible fainting.
ETA: Viola looks great as is. So I hope this is only temporary to fit the look of the role.
i do IF ever so often & i love the results!
my body runs so much more efficiently because of it.
it try to do HIIT/Tabata wrkouts along with for better results too. 😀
“I’m one of those people that will wake up in the middle of the night and dig through my drawer for some candy – and put it in my mouth and chew it as I go back to sleep.”
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weird says YOU Kaiser!
i got stashes of chocolate ALL over my bedroom just in case mother needs a lil’ sweet nosh in the middle of the night.
so ‘right on’ to Vi for admitting that.
my man teases me about it all the time, but he loves that about me too!
this bitch gonna ‘get’ her happy no matter what! *sssnap* 😉 😛 😀
Love her!!
well first her body is amazing so she doesn’t need to diet. But this isn’t a bad diet this is just smart eating, I mean really eating what you want for an 8 hour period is hardly punishing yourself.
I tried a similar diet and it didn’t work for me but the grazing does. I wouldn’t eat after a certain and it was awful. I’d wake up in the middle of the night with headaches and couldn’t sleep until I got up (which would make me dizzy) and ate something.
God, she is flawless.
I love Viola the same way. She’s a kick-ass actress and seems like a great, well-grounded person.
I’m pretty much on that diet all the time because I don’t eat breakfast and I’m not prone to snacking in the evening.
Of course, the “don’t binge” aspect is something I’m not so great at. Mmm, potato chips…the whole family-sized bag? Sure, why not.
she looks great. Love her as an actress.
I think this “diet” has more to do with stopping snacking. I don’t know about you all, but late night snacks are my downfall. I tend to eat sensible meals during the day, and I don’t snack at all, simply because I’m busy. But when I’m “not doing anything”, reading or watching TV or such, I start mindlessly munching.
Intermittent fasting – I’m a fan! It’s worked wonders for me and it’s easy to follow because I make sure to arrange it so I’m sleeping most of my fasting time. I’ve had more energy as well.
This is not an extreme diet at all, IMO. It’s called intermittent fasting and it really works. You eat enough (good) calories to keep you full and you dont feel like eating the fridge later. Cuts back on snacks. I think it’s fine to try, and the weight just falls off.
I’m a midnight snacker and can blow through half a bag of chips in my semi-conscious state without knowing it. I would have to push my time period to 10 hours-that’s because a job shift is 8 and 1/2 hrs. I think it’s important that the dieter eat a balanced diet and have at least moderate exercise during the time allotted.