In a freshly unearthed interview with Pageant magazine circa September 1952, the star details her unorthodox diet and fitness routine, as Elle UK reports.
Take Marilyn’s “liquid breakfast”. “Before I take my morning shower, I start warming a cup of milk on the hot plate I keep in my hotel room,” she shares. “When it’s hot, I break two raw eggs into the milk, whip them up with a fork, and drink them while I’m dressing.”
“I supplement this with a multi-vitamin pill,” she adds. “And I doubt if any doctor could recommend a more nourishing breakfast for a working girl in a hurry.”
Marilyn’s “startlingly simple” dinner doesn’t get much better.
“Every night I stop at the market near my hotel and pick up a steak, lamb chops or some liver, which I broil in the electric oven in my room. I usually eat four or five raw carrots with my meat, and that is all. I must be part rabbit; I never get bored with raw carrots,” she says.
Her diet’s one redeeming factor? Regular ice-cream sundaes.
"It's a good thing, I suppose, that I eat simply during the day, for in recent months I have developed the habit of stopping off at Will Wright's ice cream parlour for a hot fudge sundae on my way home from my evening drama classes,” Marilyn admits. “I'm sure that I couldn't allow myself this indulgence were it not that my normal diet is composed almost totally of protein foods.”
And she’s careful to work the whole thing off care of a 10-minute “bust-firming” exercise routine done in the comfort of her hotel room each morning.
"It is a simple bust-firming routine which consists of lifting five-pound weights from a spread-eagle arm position to a point directly above my head. I do this 15 times, slowly. I repeat the exercise another 15 times from a position with my arms above my head. Then, with my arms at a 45-degree angle from the floor, I move my weights in circles until I'm tired. I don't count rhythmically like the exercise people on the radio; I couldn't stand exercise if I had to feel regimented about it."
So there you have it – raw eggs, ice-cream and weights is the key to Hollywood’s most famous hourglass figure.
