Gwyneth Paltrow’s health-conscious lifestyle and eating habits can be traced back to a phone call a decade ago that, she says, “changed my life.”

In a new GOOP newsletter, the actress writes that, while filming The Talented Mr. Ripley in Italy in 1998, she learned her father had been diagnosed with throat cancer.

“I watched his health deteriorate slowly until his death in 2002,” Paltrow, 36, says of her director dad, Bruce. “During this time I began to read about Eastern medicine and the body’s capacity to heal itself.”

These days Paltrow credits her top-notch physical condition to three doctors in London, New York and L.A., whose advice has helped her get through health problems including pneumonia, anemia and stress.

Some of the building blocks of a healthier life, according to the actress’s doctors, are plentiful sleep, regular exercise and eating organic and additive-free foods (including lots of veggies).

Source:www.People.com

Mario Batali doesn’t only costar with Gwyneth Paltrow on PBS’s Spain … A Culinary Road Trip, he also eats her food.

“%26#91;Gwyneth%26#93; is great cook!” the celebrity chef told PEOPLE at his book party (for the companion volume to the TV series) Monday at Manhattan’s Bon Appétit Supper Club and Café. “She made braised sea bass, kind of Chinese-style, with flowering chives and like, shitake mushrooms. So good!”

The Oscar winner cooks daily for her children, Apple and Moses, according to Batali, who said she provides them with “a very healthy lifestyle %26#91;that’s%26#93; very thoughtful and smart.”

Friendly Foodies

“%26#91;We’re%26#93; obsessed,” Batali said of his foodie friends, who take turns hosting dinner parties. “The last one was at Spotted Pig, there were probably about 30 people.”

Among them: Jay-Z, who, along with Batali, is an investor in the Greenwich Village gastro pub, and a longtime confidante of Paltrow and her husband, Chris Martin.

“Jay a great guy,” he said. “Very soft-spoken but very smart.” And with Beyoncé?

“They’re just very friendly. They’re very together,” Batali gushed. “They’re very holding hands, and they’re very much involved in whatever group they’re with.”

Another famous fan of his food is Jennifer Aniston.

“I love her!” he exclaimed, adding that he chatted a bit with her and beau John Mayer during their recent visit to his Italian eatery Babbo. “I don’t really know John very well - he’s very quiet. But she’s a happy person, she likes to eat really good food.”

Source:www.People.com

Gwyneth Paltrow makes being svelte look easy, but the actress tells Oprah Winfrey that she finds it nearly impossible to stick to a diet.

“I just cannot diet,” Paltrow, 35, says on The Oprah Winfrey show airing Wednesday. “I think maybe it’s the idea that you can’t have something … I just can’t do it.”

Instead of counting calories, the slender Oscar-winner prefers to work up a sweat. “It’s worth it to me to do that extra exercise so I can eat what I want and not think about it.”

The PBS series, which debuts Sept. 20, follows them on a culinary tour of 13 cities. “The Gwyneth you see in Spain is the real Gwyneth,” Batali told PEOPLE. “Funny, and likes her food.”

At 4, Gwyneth Paltrow’s daughter Apple loves to play dress-up - and she isn’t shy about getting her 2-year-old brother Moses in on the act.

“She makes %26#91;Moses%26#93; cross-dress,” Paltrow, 35, told PEOPLE at Wednesday’s launch of Estée Lauder’s new perfume, Sensuous, in New York City. “But she doesn’t put makeup on him!”

Maybe because she’s keeping it for herself: “My daughter plays with anything that’s girly. … She loves makeup,” said the actress, who is married to Coldplay frontman Chris Martin. “She puts on the eye shadow and my high heels. … She likes to take my tank tops and make them a dress. And then she asks me to tie a rubber band on the back so they stay up.”

But it’s not all maternal duty for the star. After a day of dress-up (and the inevitable cleanup), Paltrow makes sure to decompress.

“Oftentimes when I put my kids to bed I’ll take a bubble bath and have a glass of wine,” she said, adding that she also likes to play chef.

“I don’t make complicated Japanese food or anything like that,” said the star, who recently admitted to having lots of lovely vices. “But I cook all the time, so I’m always trying new stuff.”

Kelly Osbourne, Stella McCartney - and of course, Gwyneth Paltrow - were among the 5,000 fans in London singing their way through Coldplay’s first live show since 2006.

“Thanks for coming to see us after such a long time!” lead singer Chris Martin told the crowd Monday, alternately skipping, dancing and twirling around the Brixton Academy stage.

Martin’s wife Paltrow stayed hidden from the audience (and photographers). She previously turned up at the band’s rehearsal-with-friends-and-family-show at Wembley Arena June 13, where she sang along to every word of the 90-minute performance.

Sure, Chris Martin is a big rock star married to one of Hollywood’s top A-list actresses, but he was never a ladies man, he admits.

“I had a tricky time with girls until I was, like, 21,” the Coldplay frontman, 31, who married Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow in 2003, reveals in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.

“I got trapped in the friendship trap many, many times,” he says. “It was like, ‘I need to be a rock star because this is no good: Being the kind of guy that everybody likes but no one wants to %26#91;sleep with%26#93;.’ ”

Instead, he wanted “to be the guy that everybody” has sex with.

“I always felt it would be great to be with a very powerful woman because it would keep you in your place,” he says. “Being married to someone very successful and very powerful basically keep you hungry to improve.”

It’s that very hunger that drives the musician in his career, as well as in his relationship - with the exception of one small issue. As he says: “You’ve got to be hungry. If your wife went out with Brad Pitt, you’d want to prove yourself, you know what I mean?”

Talk about baby buzz! Gwyneth Paltrow is open to adding to her brood - any way possible.

“I may force myself to do it one more time because the result is so worth it,” the Oscar winner says in the July issue of Harper’s Bazaar. “My mother loved each %26#91;pregnancy%26#93; to bits; she felt alive and beautiful. I wanted to throw up all the time.”

The 35-year-old mother to Apple, 4, and Moses, 2, adds that she’s “very open” to adoption, factoring in the expansion of her family with husband Chris Martin.

Back on the big screen with the hit Iron Man after her four-year hiatus, Paltrow also talks about her desire to give more as an artist. “It’s something within you, something that burns,” she explains. “It’s not a hobby, it’s a need.”

More: See Gwyneth’s 2004 PEOPLE cover and read about Apple’s birth

Gwyneth Paltrow says that taking time off to be mother to daughter Apple, now 4, and son Moses, 2, made her feel forgotten by Hollywood.

In Cannes to promote Two Lovers, in which she costars with Joaquin Phoenix, the Shakespeare in Love Oscar winner, 35, expanded upon a comment made by Jodie Foster, who noted that Hollywood has a short memory.

“I really did not know if there would be a place for me,” said Paltrow. “Jodie Foster was right, especially if you are a woman and especially if you are not 25. Hollywood is pretty cutthroat, and everybody has a short memory. There is always someone who is younger or hotter or prettier.”

She considers Two Lovers, a romantic drama set in Brooklyn, a shot in the vocational arm.

“It has given me a lifeline, because I had taken a long time off work,” said Paltrow. “Going from being a mother at home for a long time, which was the greatest time in my life, but also feel like an artist again … that was a gift for me.”

Gwyneth Paltrow’s showing off a bold new look on the latest cover of V Magazine - photographed by Mario Sorrenti - and in it, the Iron Man actress spills new details about her home life, her post-baby weight loss, and her indulgence in certain chocolate-chip “vices.”

But how did she make the jump from motherhood back to movies? “I have an amazing nanny,” she tells the magazine, on newsstands May 15. “I didn’t have one till Apple was 14 months old, but then, because we were going on tour %26#91;with husband Chris Martin’s band Coldplay%26#93;, we found someone fantastic. She’s been with us ever since.

Another rough part of parenthood? Losing the baby weight!

“I put on 40 pounds with Moses. And I found it really hard to loose the last 20 pounds,” Paltrow, 35, admits. “I didn’t mind having the big boobs. But it was the stomach roll, the back fat, and the post-pregnant butt. And it was so hard to get rid of.”

She did it with by eating “organic, seasonal food that isn’t processed.”

“I haven’t eaten meat for about fifteen years. I eat fish, a little bit of dairy - not much milk - but I love cheese,” she adds. “We’ll make chocolate chip cookies and eat them, but sugar makes me feel pretty bad. I have coffee and wine. I’ve got lots of lovely vices!”