Welcome back for another installment of the Fad Diet Diaries, a series in which I slowly but surely destroy my already fragile relationship with food, one dumb celebrity regimen at a time. The celebrity in question this time around is one Kourtney Kardashian, a woman who manages to look better middle-aged and after three children than I looked at 21 and before I discovered Postmates. Today is Kourtney’s 41st birthday (not that you’ll be able to tell by anything about her), and in honor of that I did the only thing I know how to do: emulate her diet and then complain about it. These are my stories.
While this particular diet was short-lived, a mere three days, my journey to get to this point actually started a little over a year ago. In February 2018, Kourtney Mary Kardashian released her daily meal plan on her app. These were pre-Poosh days, practically prehistoric. I paid $2.99 for said app (and then forgot to unsubscribe for months, leading to many subsequent payments) so I could get the dirt, and then write this piece about it.
While it’s the cardinal rule of the Internet to not read the comment section, I literally always do because I’m a masochist in constant need of validation. Sometimes it’s rewarding, sometimes it’s soul crushing, and very rarely will I actually respond to things. But a year ago, one kind soul asked if I’d be embarking on the Kourtney Kardashian diet, which seemed like a fair question considering what I do here. Me, being a naïve fool, threw out a cheeky “stay tuned” and left it at that, not realizing the financial burden I was about to undertake.
Well ThristyIPhone, you have stayed tuned for a whole year. Thank you for your patience. I am finally ready to tell you about my journey to becoming Kourtney Kardashian.
I don’t know if you’ve all heard, but Kourtney Kardashian is rich as f*ck. After a little research back in 2018, I learned that her supplement regimen alone was going to be over $100, and that was before I even got to groceries. In news that should surprise no one, Kourtney’s honey of choice costs $40. $40!!! In that moment, my dreams of eating like a Kardashian, even for a short period of time, died. I bid Kourtney farewell and set out in search of other, more cost-effective way to destroy my metabolism. It only took us a full year to realize that companies might actually donate to our cause.
We’d like to give a huge shout-out to our friends at Bulletproof for sending me their Collagen Protein and Brain Octane MCT Supplement, both of which I enjoyed enough to continue using in my regular day-to-day life. Unfortunately we weren’t able to source Kourtney’s blue-green algae or bone broth powder of choice in time, but I think that may have been a blessing in disguise.
All in all, this wasn’t a bad experience. In fact, without having to buy most of the expensive items for myself, it was pretty manageable. Turns out it’s not that hard to be a Karadashian, assuming you have a chill five hours to spare in the morning and limitless funds to fuel your antics.
Kourtney’s routine is very morning heavy. She wakes up, immediately takes collagen on an empty stomach, waits 20 minutes and then drinks a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in a glass of water, waits an undisclosed amount of time and then has a vegan probiotic shot followed by a supplement-stuffed avocado pudding that she makes herself, works out, then comes home and eats breakfast. That all sounds super nice for someone with a flexible schedule, but I have to be at work by 9am, which means I was waking up at 5:30am every day to try and work all this in.
The schedule that I painstakingly built out the night before fell apart almost immediately. There was a significant learning curve here for me, someone who has never had collagen or attempted to eat a blended avocado in her life.
Schedule
- 5:30 – Wake up and immediately drink collagen
- 5:50 – Wait 20 min – 1 tbs ACV with water
- 6:00 – Probiotic shot
- 6:10 – Avocado smoothie (with MCT oil)
- 7:00 – Workout
- 8:30 – Oatmeal
Things were off to a rocky start right off the bat. I now know that the vanilla collagen that Bulletproof sent to me tastes great mixed in coffee, or likely most beverages that aren’t a glass of room temperature water, but Kourtney said she takes her on an empty stomach. I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, and it was 5:30 in the morning, so I mixed two scoops into some water and hoped for the best.
I, uh, wouldn’t recommend it. I would, however, recommend mixing it into some mint tea, which makes for a lovely wake-up, and is what I proceeded to do for the next two days.
Twenty minutes after that, I poured a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar into another full glass of water and basically chugged it. As someone who loves vinegar, this wasn’t as bad as most people might expect. As someone who hates being hydrated, it was a struggle.
Next came the guess work. Kourtney didn’t specifically detail how long she waits between the apple cider vinegar and the probiotic shot, but I had a schedule to maintain. My goal was to finish everything at least 45 minutes before my 7am cycling class and then just pray that was enough time to keep my from puking it all back up. It’s a glamorous lifestyle I lead, but someone has to do it.
I take back everything I’ve previously said about vegan probiotic shots, because it was a dream (not to be confused with Dream Kardashian, who is a baby and not a vegan supplement), truly the highlight of my entire Kourtney experience. I went with the Vanilla Chamomile GoodBelly Super Shot, which I ended up having to actually buy but was fairly affordable, all things considered. Kourtney drinks two of these a day, one in the morning and one at night, and it became the one thing I looked forward to most in the day. A light at the end of a very long dark tunnel full of avocado pudding.
Let’s talk about this avocado pudding.
Every single day of her life, Kourtney blends one whole avocado with one cup of organic coconut milk and two teaspoons of her exorbitantly expensive honey, tosses in some MCT oil, bone broth powder and blue-green algae for good measure, and then proceeds to actually eat it, like a complete and total sociopath.
Full disclosure: I did not buy Kourtney’s bourgeoisie honey. Yes, it has health benefits. No, I do not care. I used regular, poor person honey. I don’t think that my experience would have been any different otherwise, but I guess we’ll never know.
To every food blog that convinced me it would be delicious: f*ck you. Truly, from the bottom of my heart. Consider this my declaration of a formal blood feud. My grandchildren will be forced to murder your grandchildren in the streets, full on Hatfield-McCoy style, all because you lied to the Internet in a misguided attempt to impress Kourtney Kardashian. Was it worth it? Was it?
It’s not like I’m avocado adverse. I’m a millennial. I am a white woman. I am a millennial white woman from California. I’m a walking billboard for avocados. I’ve eaten more than my fair share of them, smeared across every surface imaginable, actual flavor profiles be damned. During Whole30 I ate guacamole with a spoon for lunch on more occasions that I’d like to admit. But this avocado pudding is an affront to God. I managed to swallow two whole spoonfuls before I poured the entire thing down the drain, where it continued to torture me by emitting the most offensive odor I’ve ever encountered when I started spraying it with hot water in the hopes that it would cleanse it from my sink, and memories, forever.
Taste aside, there was no possible way that I could eat an entire bowl of coconut milk avocado soup and then continue to go about my day in any kind of functional way. I sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to work out after. Maybe Kourtney’s schedule allows for more flexible timing, but I was cutting it close on my agenda as is. I’m not going to wake up at 4am and then further punish myself with that concoction. I had, at long last apparently, found my line.
Me: This pudding is the single worst thing to ever happen to me
Kourtney:
So needless to say, the pudding was removed from my regimen immediately. I opted to pour the MCT oil into my morning oatmeal and call it good. I haven’t looked at an avocado the same since, which is unfortunate because Kourtney eats about three of them a day.
As anyone who’s ever watched Keeping Up with the Kardashians knows, those ladies love their salads. But considering the fact that I don’t live in Calabasas, and I’m assuming the Health Nut doesn’t ship lunch orders, I was on my own here. Kourtney’s description of her daily lunch salad was vague at best, only telling us that it usually involves chicken or salmon and some kind of homemade dressing. Enter Poosh: my source for all things Kourtney.
Much of this diet was built out by merging the information disclosed on Kourtney’s app with what I was able to uncover through Poosh and assorted food blogs. It wasn’t an exact science, but it felt like the best route considering I couldn’t just text her and be like, “Hey girl, why do you hate God and love avocados? Also, $40 honey???”
Poosh directed me to Kourtney’s Signature Salad, which became the base for my lunch for all three days of the diet. I added arugula (because honestly, what the f*ck) and salmon to round it out and keep myself from starving, but otherwise stuck with the recipe. You know what smells really good in an open-space office at noon? A salad full of salmon and hard-boiled eggs.
For snacks Kourtney opts for fresh fruit, raw almonds, or (you guessed it) more avocados. Specifically, avocado hummus with fresh vegetables. Do not come within 100 yards of that woman with a pita chip, so help me God.
I will admit, the hummus was a bop. Not only did it taste great, but nothing makes you feel quite as smug and self-assured as telling people you made your own hummus. It’s literally the easiest thing in the world, but in just ten minutes I had fully transformed into a lifestyle blogger.
“I diverged from the recipe and added extra lime juice, which I think balanced out the avocado nicely, but it’s really what you make it!” – something I actually said to a coworker, as if I invented hummus or limes. Kourtney was changing me.
After work I would come home and do another round of apple cider vinegar and a probiotic shot. These became so par for the course that I am comfortable saying I could probably drink straight vinegar at this point. Call it an added perk I guess.
Dinner had perhaps the least parameters of any meal thus far. Kourtney’s app said she likes a “homemade asparagus soup, sometimes a healthy turkey chili when it’s cold,” and Poosh gave me absolutely nothing. Luckily the weather was horribly depressing this week, the perfect conditions for a healthy turkey chili.
The chili wasn’t bad. In fact it was pretty good, considering I couldn’t add a heaping amount of cheese and sour cream as I usually would. But, it did get old. Fast. I have a feeling Kourtney doesn’t make one (far too large) pot of chili, and then proceed to eat it every night because she maxed out her weekly grocery spend on three days’ worth of organic groceries and probiotic shots. In fact, I’m willing to bet that Kourtney has a freshly prepared dinner every night of the week, one that is both incredibly healthy and tasty, and likely prepared by someone who doesn’t pat themselves on the back for managing to blend garbanzo beans and avocados together without incident.
Because the reality of the situation here, and something that I probably didn’t need to tell you all, is that Kourtney has the resources to make these this diet both manageable and accessible. She’s got time, limitless money, and what I’m assuming is a full-time staff at her disposal. I, tragically, have zero of those things.
The next two days continued the same as the first, albeit with a few less hiccups. I woke up at 5:30am every day, worked out, and painstakingly accounted for every single thing that I ate. And, against all odds, I actually felt better for it. Obviously three days isn’t enough time to inspire any real change in my body, but I can’t discount the fact that I just feel better. Despite waking up earlier than I usually would, I’m more rested than I can remember being in a long time. I’ve slept better this week than I have in months. My thoughts are clearer, my skin is brighter, and I’m generally more confident in what I’m consuming. Sure, all of that could be a placebo effect, but I don’t really think that’s the case.
While time consuming, this routine has had the positive effect of making me stop and take stock of every single thing I’m putting in my body. As a result, not once in the past three days have I felt guilty about something I’ve eaten, or worried that I’m indulging. Arguably I shouldn’t feel like that on a normal day, but that’s a discussion for another time.
It’s no secret that better ingredients make for a better lifestyle. It’s even less of a secret that money unlocks those opportunities, as well as a wealth of others. What I’m saying here, is that we shouldn’t be surprised that Kourtney looks as good as she does. If I continued living like this, worked out like she did, and didn’t have to worry about trivial things like money, I probably would too.
Coming out the other side of this endeavor, all I can say is that we as a society can no longer claim that Kourtney Kardashian has no talent. She’s a mother. She’s an entrepreneur. She’s potentially a witch with access to a fountain of eternal youth. But most importantly, she manages to eat that cursed avocado pudding every single day, which makes her a stronger woman than I will ever be.
Images: Giphy (4)
