From a ballerina in the “Black Swan” to the Mighty Thor in the newest “Thor: Love and Thunder” movie, Natalie Portman has had to go through some challenging transformations throughout her acting career.
Apart from acting, she is also an amazing mom of two as well as a producer and a co-founder of a women’s football club!
She’s amazing and successful at everything she does, and she also maintains a great approach to health and fitness. Let’s talk about how Natalie’s diet and workout routine changed over the years. :)
Natalie Portman Diet
Natalie Portman has been vegan for quite a long while now and she says she sticks to a pretty clean diet. She loves food and she loves making it as well as knowing that she isn’t having a negative effect on any living creature.
Natalie and her husband even grow their own garden with a variety of herbs, chard, artichokes, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, lemons, avocados, figs, peaches, and even olives.
RELATED POST: Is the Vegan Diet Good for Weight Loss
What Natalie Eats for Breakfast
Natalie doesn’t drink coffee first thing in the morning unless she’s really tired when working and needs that extra boost.
She likes to start her day off with some oatmeal or avocado toast. As she has both American and Israeli citizenship, she also likes to enjoy a traditional Israeli breakfast with chickpeas, salad and tahini.
What Natalie Eats for Lunch
She’s a big fan of Mexican food so a typical lunch for her would be some tasty tacos.
To celebrate Earth Day, Natalie shared a tasty Lentil salad recipe with roasted potatoes, kale and vegan feta. You can try out this lunch recipe here.
What Natalie Eats for Dinner
Once a week she treats herself to a glass of wine, champagne or beer with her dinner.
But if she had to pick one meal for dinner, it would have to be something with pasta. Both Natalie and her husband cook, and they enjoy making Italian, Japanese, and Middle Eastern dishes.
You can even try one of her favourite recipes, Spicy Chickpea Stew, the way she prepares it! Just follow along with her recipe and enjoy a tasty vegan meal. :)
What Natalie Snacks On
There is one snack she craves the most and has stocked in her freezer and that is vegan ice cream. Her favourite tastes are Banana Salted Caramel and Mint Chip.
Natalie Portman Diet for Thor
During the filming of the movie, Natalie stuck to her vegan diet. She did end up eating more than she usually does since they needed her to maintain all of the muscle she built while training. The important part was increasing her protein intake.
According to Pendergast, Natalie ate five meals a day, plus three vegan protein shakes.
Her typical day would look something like this:
Breakfast: oats and berries along with a plant-based protein shake
Lunch: falafel dish with a plant-based protein shake
Dinner: vegan curry and plant-based protein shake
Snacks: fruit, nuts and salads
Natalie Portman Workout
For “Black Swan”, Natalie had to get very lean and slim. To get prepared for a role as a ballet dancer, she followed the Ballet Beautiful Program by Mary Helen Bowers, a former dancer with the New York City Ballet.
We have a blog post on the Ballet Beautiful Method, and you can check it out below. :)
RELATED POST: Ballet Beautiful Program Review
Natalie prepared for an entire year to play a ballerina! She had some previous experience as she trained in ballet until she was 13 years old so that was helpful.
She had a double for some of the more difficult moves, but as Mary says, almost 90 percent of the dancing is actually Natalie which is very impressive.
When she wasn’t following Mary’s custom mix of mat work and ballet, Natalie gave her joints a break by swimming. They would swim 1.5km (1 mile) every day.
After giving birth, Natalie still liked swimming as well as going hiking. Her favourite thing to do was put the baby in the carrier and head outside for a hike.
RELATED POST: Why You Need Cardio for Lean Legs
Getting Bigger for the Mighty Thor
Natalie’s role as Jane Foster in the Thor movies changed her diet and workout routine quite a bit. She was asked to get as big as possible, especially in her arms.
Natalie Portman Thor Workout
In order to reach that goal, Natalie trained for 10 months with her trainer Naomi Pendergast.
Pendergast says that their focus was building her arm and abdominal definition and Natalie gave 100 percent to achieve this, never complaining.
They also worked on her stability and agility since Natalie had to do quite a few stunts in the movie and they wanted to make sure they went as smoothly as possible with no injury. It’s super cool to see that she was doing some of her own stunts!
To focus on her core, she followed this workout:
- 1 set/20 reps: Basic abdominal crunch (feet down)
- 1 set/20 reps: Abdominal crunch (feet up)
- 1 set/20 reps: Abdominal crunch with a twist
- 3 sets/1 minute: Weighted overhead arm raise
And for those amazing toned arms, she really put in the hard work and the effort paid off.
First she’d start with a warm-up consisting of exercises such as marching arms, lat stretches, roll-down walk outs, etc.
For the main set, she would focus on a lot of weightlifting exercises such as:
- Dumbbell straight arm lateral raise
- Seated dumbbell arnold press
- Dumbbell bicep curl
- Dumbbell tricep press
- Along with planks, squat jumps, etc.
She’d finish this up with a cool-down session which included stretching and release with a foam roller.
When it comes to cardio, they would focus on 3 rounds of boxing for 2 minutes followed by 1 minute of skipping. She would rest for a bit and then repeat the set.
Final Thoughts on Natalie Portman’s Diet and Workout Routine
Natalie’s diet and workout routine have changed over the years, but during all of that time, she has kept her commitment and passion for staying healthy.
If you’re looking to get lean and slim, then Natalie’s routine for Thor is definitely not for you! But if you don’t mind growing some muscles, you can give it a try. :)
What’s important is that you try to be as healthy as possible like Natalie, and you will reach your body goals so long as you stick to a good routine!
Love Rachael and the Femme Nativa Team
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