I sort of like Olivia Culpo for no real reason. She seems nice, she’s not particularly controversial, but she’s not so bland that I fall asleep reading her interviews. In case you’re all “WHO?,” Olivia is a former beauty queen and ex-girlfriend of Nick Jonas. She’s also a legit celebrity these days, in the same way that the Kardashians are legit celebrities. She models, she’s popular on social media, she’s one of the faces of L’Oreal and she gets paid to make one-off appearances for various brands. Her personal “brand” is all about beauty, health, fashion and… that’s about it? She also does a lot of charity work, so good for her. Anyway, Olivia covers the latest issue of Ocean Drive and God help me, I sort of like this interview. Some highlights:
She was a chubby kid: “As a little girl, I was really chubby. I don’t think kids know anything about diet, so I’m sure I was eating whatever I wanted to. And on top of that I was not athletic. I was definitely more into the arts. All of a sudden, I got really tall and lean. After my crazy growth spurt, I looked like a completely different person.”
She’s played the cello for years: “All of my siblings played different instruments, and we would drive an hour out of state to go to the best orchestras. In high school, the cool girls didn’t understand why I would always play my cello because they thought it was dorky. I remember wanting to hang out with my friends after school and my cello wouldn’t fit in their car, so I could never go home with them. And walking up the street with my cello and having to put it on the bus, and everyone yelling at me because they couldn’t get through the aisle and it was a safety hazard… There was a lot that set me apart. But as I grew older, I began to love that because it is such a unique talent to have, and I do respect my parents for pushing it on me. [Though] at the time, I thought it made me the biggest loser on the planet.”Her diet these days: “I just want to do what makes me feel best. And I don’t think it means you have to be any particular size. It’s different for every person. I am not super strict, but if I have something coming up and I know I need to be in bikini shape, then I will amp up the diet and the exercise. Naturally, I prefer to eat pretty healthy, but I am not the type of person who will count calories. I also drink about a gallon of water every day.
Her thoughts on plastic surgery: “No matter how much surgery you have, whether you are the most sought-after beauty in the world or you aren’t, it’s hard to always be happy in your own skin. If people have surgery to be happier, it’s something that they should be able to do without being ashamed.
Pageant life: “My first pageant was when I got to college. I was 18 years old and that’s when I began modeling. I had to go to the agency and basically beg them to take me. They told me I needed to give them a check for $30, and I had no money, so I had to steal a check from my parents. My agency told me not to do the pageant; they thought it was tacky. My parents felt the same way. They thought it was vain…My parents were never about makeup or hair. My mom to this day still wears absolutely no makeup; she doesn’t even have face cream! So growing up in that environment didn’t exactly promote any sort of putting on makeup or wearing revealing clothes, showing off your features and your beauty. It wasn’t until I branched out of my home life that I realized I could model for a living. When I got to college, friends would tell me I should model.
First of all, the gallon of water a day thing… it’s absolutely true that switching out soda or tea with water is good for you. Water improves your skin, it improves your health and more. But a gallon of water a day? I checked the whole “you need eight glasses of water a day” thing and it turns out it’s a myth – Snopes decoded it here. If I drank a gallon of water a day, I think I would just be peeing constantly. As for the “chubby kid” thing – I was the opposite. I was a skinny little kid and when puberty struck, I became a chubby tween. Then I thinned out in my teens, then I chubbed out in my 20s. Olivia’s growth spurt sounds like heaven.
Photos courtesy of Ocean Drive.
I’m always threatening to drink nothing but water for a month, (but inevitably fail by hour 7 or 8).
I did it. Last Jan my New Years resolution was to give up Pepsi , I drank way too much and it was only when i went cold turkey and felt so ill for nearly a week I realised god I can never drink that stuff again. So I just drink water or fizzy flavoured water , with the occasional glass of suger free squash or fruit juice , and I don’t regret it one bit. I now don’t drink any soft drink because they all seem too sweet, and I’ve got to say my skin is so different to a year ago, and so are my energy levels . I think I was lucky because I’ve never been a hot drink person , so it was a lot easier once the initial withdrawal was over .
You’re an inspiration! Yeah, my issue isn’t soda-pop, per se, but tea and wine. Well, more accurately, the mounds of sugar I put in my tea. Full-on sugary tea addict. Otherwise, (besides tea and wine) I drink seltzer, with a squeeze of some flavor. But yeah, I wanna go full, flat water for a month.
All soda pop is gone including sugar free. Water takes it’s place. At Starbucks I go for the low or zero calorie options. The other day, a mom ordered a huge calorie laden drink for her overweight daughter and all I could think of was….why? Giving up coffee is not an option but I limit it to the mornings. None of this is easy but a steady diet of empty calories adds the pounds but giving up everything is also not realistic.
Sabrine – at Starbucks I get the Coldbuster Tea:
1/2C lemonade
1/2C hot water
1 tea bag of lemon mint tea
1 tea bag of peach tea.
It was just recently introduced to me, and it is so yummy. It tastes like the honey and lemon Halls.
Lol my lack of tea drinking has been a bone of contention to my very English drinking tea cliche family since I was a child … i just can’t stand hot drinks of any kind , just one of those things ! If I’m honest if someone had told me how ill I would feel once stopping I probably wouldn’t have gone through with it, it was full fat Pepsi so prob a mix of caffeine and sugar withdrawal after drink around 2litres a day for about a year or so
It’s not hot tea that’s the problem, unless you’re putting a lot of cream/sugar in it. If you drink it black like I do, tea is perfectly good for you. What’s a problem in America, is that it’s mostly canned/bottled iced tea, which is FULL of sugar, as much as a can of soda. I work with someone who goes through a gallon jug of it a day and it makes me want to gag just looking at it.
I found it quite funny when I visited the US the first time…
“Hi, yes could I please have a cup of tea?”
“Sweet tea? Or hot tea?”
I was like… HUH?!
Iced tea isn’t a big thing where I am from, and we call it iced tea not sweet tea…
The amount of sugar in US iced tea would make me keel over.
Gimme a hot black cup of tea with no sugar any day 😀
@ Lex – ah but in the US Iced Tea and Sweet Tea are two different things.
I drink about a gallon of water a day and it does nothing for my weight… perhaps it’s my love of food that gets in the way – LOL.
I drink a lot of water, always have, just from personal preference. Although I like it and tend to believe that it makes me feel more energetic and alert, I wouldn’t say it is a diet aid in the sense that it will help you maintain a low weight. I know people of all sizes who drink a lot of water a day and it doesn’t seem to have any effect on their calorie intake.
But, yeah, she’s beautiful. Weight maintenance is probably effortless at this point in her life.
Same here. I think the only way it might help people reduce their calorie intake is if they are not accustomed to drinking a lot of water and doing so suddenly makes them feel fuller. It doesn’t affect my appetite at all.
I also drink a lot of tea, especially in the winter when I’m cold. But I make sure to have a glass of water for every cup of tea to kinda balance it out.
I cut the following from an online health forum. I cannot remember which one, I did this a year ago.
Some of the confusion has stemmed from the fact that many commonly consumed beverages contain caffeine, which is considered to be a diuretic. The thinking goes like this: if caffeine makes you urinate, then a caffeinated drink will surely cause you to lose more water than you take in, so a caffeinated drink can’t really be a fluid – maybe it’s more like a ‘negative fluid’.Well, here’s the good news for coffee and tea lovers – it turns out that, for the most part, this simply isn’t true. A review¹ on the topic, which summarized numerous studies on the subject conducted over nearly 40 years, reported that taking in a large amount of caffeine at one time (around 300 mg, or what you’d get in 2-3 cups of strong coffee – and not an amount you’d drink all at once) can promote urination, but only in people who haven’t had any caffeine for weeks. And those who are habitual caffeine consumers develop a tolerance to the diuretic effects – much like they develop a tolerance to the stimulating effects. The report also stated that “doses of caffeine equivalent to the amount normally found in standard servings of tea, coffee and carbonated soft drinks appear to have no diuretic action”. So there you go; caffeinated beverages definitely “count” when it comes to meeting fluid needs.
I drink a loooot of water due to my low blood pressure.
Doubt it has any effect on my diet.
I also drink coffee, which is an addiction. I stopped cold turkey and had the worst headache and felt like I was losing my mind. Apart from that, my advice to get rid off all those fuzzy drinks and have homemade lemonade.
I drink a lot of water that sometimes I feel like all I do is pee it out lol. I use to be addicted to juices when I was a kid and one day, my mom just forced me to replace my juice with water (by not buying any more juice). I never drank all that much soda (only at parties and such when I was a kid as it wasn’t something that my parents ever bought). Now, I appreciate the fact that my mom made water my drink of choice as a kid because I definitely would have 23943924 cavities and a serious weight problem if I had continued down that juice path (seriously, I was as addicted to juice as a child can be).
I started drinking a gallon of water a day 11 days ago. I never drank water before that. Only carbonated, sugary drinks or occasionally juice. I feel and look so much better overall! My skin looks the best it has ever looked, I am not bloated at all, I have more energy. The list goes on. I do have to pee constantly but I’m a stay at home mom and don’t leave the house much during the week so it’s not really an inconvenience but I imagine it would be if I had to work outside the home. I only drink coffee in the morning, a coke with lunch and a Sprite in the evening after I’ve finished my gallon of water kind of the reward myself. I’m so glad I started doing this! I don’t weigh myself so I don’t know if I’ve lost weight or not but the other benefits are totally worth it.
What people fail yo realise is that you can drink too much water as well.
You can drink a gallon or 2 litres but it depends on the way you exercise. The more you exercise the more water you drink.
Exactly.
“Too much water” isn’t really a bad thing, right?
Sure you will pee A LOT but are there any downsides to your body to consuming a lot of water? The only thing I can think of is when athletes or babies drink too much water, there can be an adverse affect as they need something with electrolytes (and not to be replaced with water in certain circumstances). I think that is called water toxicity…?
Yeah, drinking too much water is technically a bad thing too. You need to also maintain healthy sodium levels. While I doubt many people are at risk of drinking too much, your urine is supposed to maintain a light yellow colour, I believe. If it’s clear, you should hold off on the hydration for a bit in that day to let everything rebalance.
Too much water in too short a time can be deadly. But drinking a few ounces frequently through the day and as much as you want at meals isn’t likely to put you in the ER. If you’re on dialysis, though, you have to seriously limit fluids. If you have a kidney disorder, check for guidelines with the medical person treating you for it. Otherwise we’re built to take in a lot of water, depending on activity level and air humidity and temperature.
I was going to mention the salt/electrolytes, too. That can really mess you up if they get too low. Excessive peeing, muscle cramps, fatigue, headaches, can all be signs you’ve depleted your electrolytes.
Some people need more if their office or home is dry. You need more of you also drink more coffee. Or if you live somewhere sunny!
The Snopes piece also addresses this. Once you’ve habituated to caffeine there isn’t really any dehydrating effect to drinking it and you get close to or the same fluid benefits from a cup of coffee as from a cup of water. 🙂
Wait what!!! But for some reason if I don’t have water after my coffee I’m ready to cut a bitch….. But yeah maybe that means I drink less later. I’m glad to learn this
What’s wrong with drinking tea?
It’s not the tea, it’s what you add to the tea. Sugar, et al….
Most Americans drinking tea are drinking canned/bottled iced tea, which has as much sugar as soda. Plain hot tea, without adding anything (sugar, cream, etc) to the brewing, is perfectly healthy.
Yes Jen, I know. As I said, it’s what people add to the tea that causes the problem.
And a completely useless FYI (may come in hand for trivial pursuit one day, who knows) — I’m American who grew up in the north. When I say “tea” I am referring to hot tea (“British tea,” if you will). Iced tea is the cold stuff.
Now, I think southerners do it differently, and refer to “iced tea” as “tea” or “sweet tea.”
But yeah, how a person refers to “tea” is very much regional, and us northerners conform to a more “British” nomenclature.
Tea is English, so you are culturally appropriating their beverage. That is reprehensible. You should be ashamed.
I know you’re joking but England is not teas place of origin…
I gave up soda, Starbucks-like drinks and fruit juice but that was easy. My vice is coffee and I can’t give it up. To make up for the heatiness (in Chinese medicine, it is heaty), I drink more water and chrysanthemum tea. I want to drink more water but going to the toilet too much is too interrupting. Sad. What I do now is stop ordering drinks at restaurants or fast food joints and ask for water or bottled water.
Some here, I end up having a glass of wine or a beer or two every time I go out to dinner. I realize how much this adds to the bill plus the extra calories. But it is so hard to just get water!
No idea who she is but I agree with the water thing. I was majorly addicted to diet cokes years ago and drank an embarrassing amount daily, it was so hard to quit!! I feel much better without though, I drink a ton of water and I noticed the more I forced myself to drink it the more my body craved it, and I lost 5 pounds. Sometimes I miss the carbonation so I’ll drink an izze, which is just carbonated juice.
If you drink a galllon of water a day your body begins to adjust and you won’t have to pee as much. It takes about 6 weeks but it’s true! I teach 1st grade and can’t afford to make a bunch of bathroom trips.
I have one cup of coffee, but I don’t put sugar in it but I do put milk in a little bit of flavored creamer. Then I ice the coffee! It’s so much more refreshing without all the sugar I was dumping into it. I slowly worked the sugar out! I get enough sugar in flavor from the little coffee creamer I use, but I mainly use skim milk. The rest of the day it is water or unsweet iced tea that I make myself.
I drink a gallon of water a day, and while at the beginning you do pee constantly, your body adjusts to it. It has made an enormous difference in my body, but my skin especially. Gabrielle Union swears by drinking a gallon a day and I do believe that its the reason she looks 20.
Sorry, not used to gallon term so I had to google it – thats around 3700ml. That IS a lot!
My personal belief is that water is great and it’s very bery important for my skin. I try to drink a personal goal of around 2000ml a day, its sooooo good for my digestive system and keeps my skin looking fresh/better. And if I’m drinking alcohol (even though it’s all calories I am often at events where they are temptinnnnng free drinks) just to slow myself down I’ll try to have water inbetween servings/drinks.
Plus, if your working out, drinking water is as necessary as breathing well. For meals, I like to combine my meal with carbonated water – from living in the EU – but still water is best for workouts! Soft drinks are basically the same as having candied water, love it but it’s not a good idea – imo!
The guys at my gym carry about gallon jugs of water so they can know for sure they’ve drank a full gallon over the course of a day. It is a lot, and often they are more than halfway done by 10:00 in the morning! I drink a lot but I don’t think i drink quite that much.
omg! I never knew drinking water was healthy for you! Thanks, Olivia! <3
I drink at least a gallon of water a day because I’m always thirsty. Drinking ice water seems to make me more thirsty. I pee a few times a day and get up twice a night to pee. Can’t have caffeine or diet anything so once in a while I have Sprite. Been doing this for 20 years. Cup of water in my hand now
If she lives in LA, a gallon a day in hot months seems reasonable.
plus when you’re a starlet (or whatever it’s called) in LA you cannot eat.
The right amount varies with the person and what kind of food they are eating (some foods have a lot of water in them). The 8 glasses a day was never promoted as the result of a clinical trial (which would be really hard to do meaningfully anyway, think about it) but rather due to practical experience. So whoever started that “but there’s no clinical trial support for it” (and it must be just one source since every single person who sneers at the idea uses the same wording) was just tossing out a red herring. One allergist said that if you produce a lot of mucus, aim for ten glasses a day because that uses up quite a bit of water. That includes clear broth, gelatin desserts, tea, and even soda. Our food really does include a lot of water and we hold on to it better with food – if you’re eating less than usual for any reason, you really do need more water intake. That is probably why more water is advised for people trying to lose weight.
But I’ve had friends whose doctor advised 3 to 4 liters of water or equivalent per day for them for various conditions. If you are prone to water retention and swelling, boosting your fluid intake considerably can actually help your body release the excess from your tissues. I was reading up on research about prevention of kidney stones for those who are prone, and the recommendation is about the same, spread over the day and night. The idea there is to keep the urine from becoming supersaturated in the stuff that precipitates to form stones. Some people are even advised to interrupt sleep to drink some water, it can be that important for them.
As for frequent trips to the bathroom – just count it as exercise. 🙂 But if you drink a lot during meals and otherwise try to spread it out more (maybe usually about 4 ounces max at a time), you may not feel the urge as much as you might think. I wouldn’t try to force it beyond your ability to enjoy it, though, and gradually increasing your intake can be helpful unless you have an immediate acute reason to make a big change.
Definitely make sure your water tastes good – many of us are afflicted with tap water that is gag-producing. Try different bottled waters for starters. Aquafina tastes good to me, it is run through the same carbon and reverse osmosis filters as my own filtering unit at home. So I look for that filter combination in bottled water. If it helps, then think about getting your own home filtering unit. Some grocery stores have machines where you can fill up a jug with bottled water, although my experience with those has been mixed. For years I actually had a big water cooler jug delivered regularly, before I found a good home filtering unit.
If you don’t like water at room temperature, try it chilled. Or vice versa. Some people need extra flavor. You can just try a dash of fruit juice or tea or soda to see if that works for you. Some people swear by putting slices of fruit or cucumbers in a pitcher of water. But try really good water first, you might just be used to covering up the bad taste of tap water.
I do notice a difference in my skin, hair and energy level when I drink not enough water . But somehow I tend to go through periods when I don’t drink enough. I have to force myself.
She seems cool enough. When she used to go out with Nick Jonas, I didn’t like her vibe as she tends to pose hard but she seems all right. A bit like Posh Spice, I like her when I read her interviews but she comes off as unlikable on the red carpet.
I drink a few cups of coffee and I’m in bathroom every half hour. I can’t imagine a gallon of water. I can’t imagine drinking a gallon of anything in a day.
I drank a lot of diet coke/pepsi but I am tryting to tune it down.
I drink a lot of water though. typically 4-5 Ltr in winter and a little more in summer. It really is helpful.
Also drinking green tea,without sugar, is good for health and it helps to reduce body fat.
She sounds very humble and sweet, plus I love her on Jealous.
When I think about the amount of water i need to drink daily, I feel like crying.
Yay, a fellow cellist!
Who needs Nick Jonas? Olivia is with Danny Amendola.
I’m on Jenny Craig and amd trying to drink more water. The consultant said they really notice that people that drink all their allocated water lose way more weight than those that don’t. You need to drink more depending on how much you work out. I dont drink that much though I aim for two litres a day but that’s only half a gallon can’t imagine drinking that much!
Drink half your weight (in pounds) in ounces every day. i.e., 200 lb = 100 oz
Oh And I breathe a lot of oxygen, more than other people.
Love seeing Rhode Islanders on the gossip sites.
Her family just purchased a restaurant near me and they are taking forever to fix it and re-open it but I have hope. It’s all barn red &black – can’t wait to see what kind of food they serve.
Most of this is made up advice though. You only need to drink when you’re thirsty or exercising. It’s a myth you need a certain amount of water a day – there’s water in everything we eat or drink and it all counts. The 8 glasses a day thing is unnecessary, any genuine physician would tell you that. Quite apart from anything, everyone is different with different requirements.
A gallon is excessive unless you exercise rigorously. Just drink enough to keep hydrated. Too much water can be dangerous (granted it’s a LOT of water) but still. If you’re thirsty, have exercised a lot, or it’s excessively hot/humid outside, drink enough to quench you. You don’t need to drink water all day long, it has no real benefit.