I tried the Friends diet from the 90s (could it have *been* any harder?!) 

Hi everyone! So... I never thought this video would have so many views and from the comments I just wanted to mention 2 things: 1. The reason why I mentioned a few times that "I don't eat meat but I eat fish" was to explain why I was deviating from the original recipes. I know that fish is meat, but that is the language used in the definition of Pescatarian. I don't like saying that I'm a Pescatarian because I don't like to label my diet (I could do a whole video on this ramble) but if there is a better term or way to phrase it then please let me know and I will use that going forward. 🙏 2. Yes that was raw zucchini 😅 and it's good to eat raw! (if bought commercially and well washed) - I never knew this would be so controversial but I accept that I'm a minority who just doesn't like cucumber at all 😂 Thank you for watching and for all the love, really! You're all just too sweet 💖

It’s insane that Matthew Perry and Matt LeBlanc’s weights fluctuated like crazy and no one ever cared about how they looked.

What I noticed in the 90’s was that no one EVER asked the guys on the show what they ate.

Watching Friends I never thought Lisa looked fat AT ALL. I thought she looked really good and healthy. That’s so horrible that she felt that way🥺

I think one of the saddest things is that a part of my brain felt like I should try this diet, too. Diet culture is ingrained in us so deeply.

“If you’re a woman and you’re underweight, you look good” Reminded me of 8th grade when we were being weighted by the school nurse, and girls from my class would brag about being underweight. I was at a normal weight, but I felt like I was incredibly fat because of that.

As a child seeing fat Monica turn into thin Monica genuinely made me think that to be an adult you had to be thin. I was like ‘when im in my 20s I’ll be thin too, and now im in my 20s and im not thin there’s still a part of me that feels like I should look like Monica Geller

While rewatching Friends as an adult woman, I realized how horribly skinny Monica looked in the 'middle' seasons. You could tell it was super intense dieting because the quality of her hair also diminished. From a fitness standpoint, weight training after cardio in the morning on an EMPTY STOMACH makes zero sense.

Lisa Kudrow came out and talked about how sick she would get trying to stay so unaturally small for her body type and I love her for sharing that. More colds and flu, loss of energy etc. Dieting, can be dangerous.

Lisa was gorgeous. Her clothes were frumpy most of the time while the other girls were better dressed. But in the scenes where she was given the option to dress well, she could out-do anyone.

I don't mind filling salads for lunch. But the same lunch for 10 years? You can have healthy meals that aren't always the same. I cannot believe they ate always the same

I’m a registered dietitian and I’m so impressed with your scientific approach to trying these women’s diets! Your research was spot on. A lot of youtubers/ influences promote such unhealthy diets without any real research at all. This was so refreshing! Thank you (:

"The salad that three people ate for ten years straight" you've got me on the floor, drowning in a puddle of my own tears

Lisa had a baby pretty early on in the series and that just changes your body in so many ways. It's too bad that she had to be surrounded by two underweight woman and feel the pressure of that comparison.

This is a really good video that shows the reality of the extremely dangerous body images that were popularized during the 90s and just how hard the women had to live in order to keep their jobs. Also, side note, I like that on your phoebe day you walked with your friend Monica, if you have a Rachel friend she should have come with.

It's sad that they didn't treat Monica as a human being when she was 'Fat Monica'. She was no less sweet, fun, friendly, caring, or generous, but was only ever shown as the butt of jokes about food and size and weight and being a virgin. Like she didn't warrant common decency from the people around her until she was thin and therefore a 'real person'. It might seem like harmless comedy to some, but at the peak of Friendsmania I witnessed that influence play out on people in real life for sure.

My daughter was hooked in by the clean eating, 1200 calorie a day schtick. She ended up quite severely anorexic but at no point was it the classic refusing to eat. No - she ate 3 meals a day and lots of veg so she was “healthy”. Fortunately, she eventually recognised she had a problem, sought treatment and is now in recovery, although she still struggles enormously around food and exercise. Thank you so much for doing this video. The way that extreme eating is normalised and even seen as something to aim for and emulate is really messed up and can do so much harm.

I think it’s interesting that the 1200 calorie diets are popular at the same time that 90s style fashion has made a comeback. It shows how much we manipulated ourselves to fit the fashion and not the other way around. While I was naturally thinner in the 90s because I was younger and hadn’t had children yet, very few people are naturally that slim with no diet modification or restriction.

As a dietitian watching this video, this is absolute horror. The amount of calories these women ate, ESPECIALLY with the amount of exercise each day is not NEARLY enough to sustain them. It's EXTREMELY unhealthy. Yes, you should absolutely have "criticised" them and the show that forced them to look like this, for the horrible effects it definitely had on the actresses themselves but also the people watching.

It’s no wonder they were all smokers: nicotine is an appetite suppressant. I wouldn’t be surprised if, whenever they felt hungry, they reached for a cigarette (or several) instead. This, in addition to the low calorie, high energy, and high stress conditions they punished their bodies with for decades, likely resulted in some lasting health problems and definitely a warped view of food and body image. I feel awful for these women. If you’re David Schwimmer showing up to the Friends set and not feeling great about how you look, so what? Wardrobe department puts you in a comfortably-fitting button-up and some jeans - problem solved. If you’re Jennifer, Courtney, or Lisa, you’re probably feeling awful about your body every single day. You show up to set exhausted from insufficient food and poor sleep (also a nasty side effect of undereating), are hyper-aware that whatever your body looks like now will be recorded on film for all of time, and are surrounded by beautiful, equally hungry and burnt-out actresses you can’t help but compare yourself to. You feel fat, awful, ugly. You walk into wardrobe and are handed a bodycon dress that shows ev-er-y-thing. You feel miserable and want nothing more than to wear a sweatshirt two sizes too large (it’ll help with the cold hands too), because, in a case of deeply cruel irony, the same obsessive fixation on “the PERFECT body” that makes you look great in everyone else’s eyes only draws your attention to every flaw…and rather than enjoy and show off your hard work and agonizing dedication, you’d rather just hide. The clips you inserted of the female Friends placing their dinner orders and being ridiculed by the waiter were painful to watch 😢 Glad you only subjected yourself to this for three days! Thank you for the care and emphasis you put into explaining how awful these behaviors are for you. 🙏 It’s just not worth it

As a recovering anorexic who was hospitalized at 80 pounds with my organs shutting down; we can spot an eating disorder a mile away. Just like how a drug addict can spot an addict. Courtney and Jennifer were ED for sure. They trigger me so bad.

Lisa Kudrow said on multiple occassions in interviews that she was struggling very much with her body image, because she felt “big” next to Jennifer and Courteney. If I can remember correctly, there were multiple moments in the FRIENDS series where I though that Jenn and Courteney are just too skinny, Monica was tiny and very muscular (a lot of training I guess) and Jenn was just super tiny.

What a great video. Why we shouldn’t compare ourselves to Hollywood celebrities. And the characters ate “normally” and even ate a lot on the show. No wonder 11yo kids think they need to go on diets!!

this video made me want to give Lisa Kudrow a giant hug! I have never ever compared any of the girls’ bodies in all the time watching the show! i’ve been jealous of them compared to myself but it breaks my heart that Lisa cared so much that she wouldn’t even watch it 😭😭😭

You should do the diets of the cast from sex and the city, they were always very thin, in the movie they even criticize samantha for having gained a little fat in her belly

Jennifer Anniston very famously was on the zone diet during the filming of the series and had her meals prepped and delivered to set. She discussed this openly in many publications.

Believe it or not, this stupid "the zone" diet was what started my ED when I was 13. I remember reading about it in a magazine (Jennifer and Brad doing it) and going "that's what I need". I was 50kg for 162cm at the time so needless to say ....I didn't really need any weight loss. It gave me a fear of carbs and a problematic relationship with food until the end of my 30's..... Believe me the 90' and 00' were not a healthy time and society when you were a young girl. Almost all my friends had similar issues.

The way Lisa Kudrow felt is how I felt growing up around smaller or shorter girls. It's like we are made to feel guilty for taking up more space than someone with a smaller frame than us. What we were shown on TV from being young girls is why we have deeply ingrained body dismorphia and EDs. And seeing their heights, weights and bmi's is crazy because being 5'5, when I was 118 lbs I looked sickly and underweight. Thanks for the brilliant video ❤️

Wow….. I’ve been re-watching friends, and feeling really terrible about myself because of how Courtney and Jen looked. I did a quick search to see if they were considered underweight at the time, in hopes of stymying my insecurity, but couldn’t find anything. Alas, here you are, a true gift! I thought Lisa looked healthier, but I was even wrong about that! Thank you for this, deeply.

It's really sad how fake and toxic the body image is portrayed on television. Like these girls (especially Monica) always ate a lot and unhealthily in the series and this simply spreads the message that they can eat what they want and still look so perfect

I know what Lisa means. I'm 5ft 8in and all my friends are between 5ft & 5ft 4in and I've always felt 'bigger' next to them. It's a horrible feeling.

The salad looks amazing, but I don't think I would be able to eat it everyday! Can you imagine 10 years straight? That's crazy 😦

Eating disorders are the scariest thing in the world. I remember I had days when I consumed 400-500 calories per day, I had no energy, I didn't want to do anything and was very restrictive with my food. When I think now, thats so sick...

as a recovering anorexic/bulimic i can tell after a period of time without proper meals, your body gets used to being without it. but honestly is awful, it doesn’t even hurt anymore, actually hurts when you eat a “normal” food quantity. it sucks, honestly. but now, as i recover, i still spend a lot of time without food, bc i don’t really feel “hunger” in a normal way, but if i get too cold or too tired out of nowhere i know my body needs to eat, and if i don’t eat when it feels like i know i won’t be able to eat without feeling sick. it’s awful.

God, TV shows from the 90's and early 2000s seriously messed up my body image. All those actresses I saw on screen were all so slim and barely had any body fat on them. I always saw myself as fat, because I didn't have a super flat stomach and wanted to lose weight starting at the age of 8. I'm very grateful for the body deversity we have in media today, because having this one unattainable for a lot of people body type regarded as ideal caused so many people to have eating disorders and distorted body image it's not even funny.

I remember even at the time thinking Monica and Rachel were too thin. I would just stare at their bodies all episode trying to figure out how the dimensions worked, because they didn't look like normal humans. Then at the same time, Rachel was super toned but didn't work out in the series, so it felt like a mind f***

I gained weight between Halloween and Christmas. We're back on our normal diets. I'm exercising regularly. My body is looking so much better. Tiny bellies 24/7 is a fantasy. That's called an empty belly. You looked beautiful before the video and look fine after. Lisa at 5'10" and 118 lbs was severely underweight.

Some people don't understand losing half a pound or 1 pound a week is still A LOT but people think that's too little because we are conditioned to think people can lose 10lbs a week or like 50lbs a month....that's impossible and if you do reach that it's impossible to maintain it. You might even gain more weight than before

I feel for Lisa, I can relate. I always felt like was thicker than some of my friends, plus I had all sorts of psychological issues, and that created many insecurities and eating disorders that took me years of therapy to overcome.

“If you’re a woman and you’re underweight, you look good.” This is such a toxic reality that young girls feel like they should live up too. I remember celebrating with one of my best friends that we were both underweight and happy to be so skinny and pretty. We were 12.

I love Lisa’s advice. Our bodies do tell us what it needs!

That feeling of being a mountain of a woman is sincerely something experienced by tall women. I often find I intimidate other people (even shorter men but especially a lot of women) bc I am sincerely a mountain of a woman. My bones are indeed bigger. Even at my frailest, I am a big person. I am 5'10" so I understand her insecurity...might not be related to weight solely but also just height will do that. Holy shit ... She weighed 118 lbs... I have never been that skinny. My lowest weight as an adult is 153 & people started to ask me if I was anorexic. I couldn't imagine 118 lbs at my height.

I really enjoyed this video! The 90s were interesting. Hopefully we can all move on as a society towards a healthy lifestyle.

I’m glad someone did this!! I wanted to know all of this for many years thank you!

Diets like these can be so damaging to everyone, it’s crazy that we aren’t more educated about ACTUAL healthy eating habits !!

90’s and 00’s diets were wild. I distinctly remember regularly reading about 1,200 calorie plans in magazines. For years, I thought that was the only way could lose weight.

I used to watch a ton of these videos with an unhealthy mindset- to find tips on how to look thinner. I clicked on this out of curiosity but was nervous this would be unhealthy. I was so surprised how you approached this- with an honest look at their diets.

This was the first of your video's I've seen and I really enjoyed it! As a child who grew up in the 90's, and was plus size, seeing Monica being criticized for being fat all the time really got to me as a kid. And seeing how skinny literally everyone was on that show really must have done something to my perception of myself and the people around me. I am glad to have somewhat gotten out of that headspace but 90's skinny culture was brutal for a young girl.

Just want to point out that a salad with bulgur, chickpeas, pistachios AND feta has a lot of protein, in fact it's almost all protein plus cucumbers! I'm surprised Courtney and Jen were on Atkens (essentially keto) and eating that much bulgur (aka wheat) though!

This was super well done, that salad looked really good! I also appreciated how you talked about the side effects of following such a restrictive diet because a lot of ppl tend to brush over how dangerous it is

I clicked out of curiosity but this video was so well made! Thank you for presenting this in a healthy and realistic way. I loved all the calculations at the end 💗

this is such an amazing video i love how u went into detail about the relationship with food and the importance of knowing your own body. honestly so well done thankyou

Jen did all that exercise on a morning on an empty stomach? How did she have the energy to do it? 😱

There were SO many comments made in this video that are golden. If you’re underweight as a woman you look good. It’s what pushes so many of to exercise and under eat, unfortunately. It makes for good side plots to my books! 🥰 I appreciate your honest opinion, despite how much of a fan you are. I think I’m the only one who hasn’t watched the show. 😳😆

Not seen your channel before but this was a brilliant video. Really interesting, well edited and informative. Also great to see someone being so sensible and normal about food!

Girl, this video is everything! Really!!! Such a great job on research, such relevant information, and you gave us everything, thank you so much for that!

I am a Gen Z, and it is so shocking to see that these toxic diets and "body goals" were existent even in the '90s. This is a great video, and it gives a lot of clarification. Especially the trigger warnings. It is great to see a video like this, where the creator doesn't hide the little details and is very truthful with ALL of the information. Thank you!

Thank you so much for your patience on this one - it took me so long to edit but I really wanted to post it! Let me know if you like this type of videos and any other cast/celebrities/fad diets you’d like me to try (is this going to be a series? 🤭) much love 💕

This is a great video. Nice work in describing influential 90s icon's diet and exercise programs that turned out to be very relatable 👌🏼

As a fellow tall girl I can relate to Lisa's body image issues so much! I'm not the skinniest person out there (not over weight, just on the higher side of a healthy bmi), but I feel like even if I were to lose loads of weight I'd still feel gigantic simply because my body is taller, and therefore bigger, than average. It's something that we just have to make peace with within our minds. As a tall person, I'll never be "dainty" or fragile looking like the beauty standard (btw, what a terrible misogynistic standard), and no amount of exercise or diet will ever change that. In a way, it is a blessing to know for sure that you can't change these things about your body. Like Lisa also probably realised, it forces you to have realistic expectations and treat your body accordingly. When you feel like there's no limit to how far you can shrink yourself, you might never stop.

I am the same age as the Friends ladies, my favorite show of all time btw, and it was always said that Jennifer Aniston did the Zone diet and other low cars diets, like Atkins. Trust me, I followed all the diet recs from People magazine about how they all ate. =). xoxo

I was between the ages of 6 & 16 throughout the 90s and watched Friends religiously. The diet culture was real, everywhere you looked, and it's stuck with me even now, well into my 30s, even as a fitness coach and a mother, as someone who knows better, it's still with me. Great video :)

Love the serious and participatory research that went into this! Kudos and hearty thanks for sharing this! ♥

This was so interesting! I have been watching Friends for the first time and feel the same shock of how thin they all are - it definitely made sense to hear Lisa had the most “healthy” diet because she looked that way too! Impressed with your 90s deep dive on research, giving it a go, and all the info at the end. Ps. Your bangs are cute!

What a helpful video to put things into perspective! Every time I watch an episode of friends I always thought Rachel looked so lean and good thinking it was effortless and wishing I was naturally petite. Very informative!

i love how conscious you were about talking about dieting this restrictive, and i appreciate your warning about weights and measurements 💕

I just stumbled across this video (probably because I just watched friends for the first time recently and now love coming to RU-vid for complications!) and I’m so glad the algorithm recommended it to me! Speaking as a teenager who has suffered from multiple eating disorders, we need more creators like you who will actually discuss the facts around how unhealthy this ‘ideal’ lifestyle is and what these diets actually do to your body. Diet culture is so pervasive - and apparently has been for decades now - which is why it’s so important to deliver this sort of content with the transparency you have. Truly, thank you :)

This is the best video I’ve seen in a long time. So informative and in depth with it all. Thank you for doing this for us

I heard that the Jennifer Aniston salad is not the one she ate on friends, she actually ate a Cobb salad. The vegetarian Mediterranean salad isn’t really in line with a low carb diet. And apparently it’s from a much more recent interview

I have no idea how I ended up here, but I’m really glad I found your video! Your editing is great, your tone and narration are lovely, the content is fantastic, and outside of all of that, it was a fun topic! Glad to have come across your channel! Now, if you don’t mind me, I have a list of your videos to start binging lol

This video was really well done, thank you! I love the way you ended it.

Love the thorough research, loved the warning tag, thanks for such an informative video!

You have done an extraordinary service to so many women. This experiment is exactly what we needed to see. THANK YOU!

Interesting video. Thank you for sharing. I was a teen in the 90s and, as many teens in the 90s, I’ve struggled with eating disorders in the past. After 3 kids, I’m struggling so much to get to my goal weight (10 lbs to go), but my body will just not hold up on diets or extreme exercise anymore. I’m trying intermittent fasting and then intuitive eating with just cutting out processed foods. This video was comforting. And in a way it’s also comforting to see how Lisa was pretty much the one who aged the best in my opinion. They all look great, but Lisa just looks wonderful.

You are so refreshing to watch 💗 I really needed this video, well informed, credible sources I so appreciate your outlook on life. Love from the UK ✨

Thank you for talking about the thought process many can go through when doing these diets/exercises, and for showing the exercises and talking about them. Very informative and honest

This is really helpful thank you. An important reminder when watching the great series of Friends. The characters are often eating pizza, big dinners etc and it of course doesn’t match with the weight of the women as they are actors on restrictive diets. Worth remembering when enjoying their acting.

This has to be my favorite “work-out and diet” video. I love how you explain so much stuff at the end. For someone that has body issues and watches videos to look better- this just makes me feel very comforted. Thank you.

Shout out to you for the fact that you also included all of that info that is very important to know!

You have just done a wonderful job with this video. Making a fun video but also telling us the realities of the situations. 👏🏼👏🏼

This has been the perfect mix of an informative nonetheless entraining experience, sincerely thanks!

You’re really lovely, I loved how informative you were to make sure and to exactly tell us what happens to the body and how exhausted u felt, also actually I believe that eating balanced meals around 2000 calories shouldn’t be a problem with the right exercises, being underweight is no fun and games and we’re beautiful the way we are, being in our healthy figures no matter how different we might look as long as we feel right, and our body is taking the right food it needs

I have really been struggling with eating disorders recently and this video has given me so much information that really helped and I feel will help in my recovery. Thank you x

Great video. You kept it interesting and fun. You were honest without taking them down. Lots of love and light.

This was an informative and entertaining video! Thank you so much! As someone who has had an ED in the past and still struggles with it almost every day, I wanted to add that Phoebbe’s way of eating, only when hungry, can work for some but would be horrible for others. I could go an entire day without eating and without the feeling of hunger, so I have to eat at certain times to avoid falling into an longer period of not eating.

this was so interesting to learn and watch~! thank your for this jessica!

I adore everything about this - thank you for making this! 😊

Such a calm, sensible and measured video. I learned a lot, thank you : )

this is a perfect video and it can be seen how hard u worked for it. i think it deserves more views

Wow learned a lot about restrictive diets and the guilt afterwards. Thank you! Also always nice to see a fellow pescatarian👋

Great video! Learned a lot in a short amount of time. I love your gentle approach on the topic of eating.

This is so helpful to people struggling with body image issues and building a healthy relationship with food. Thank you so much for doing this. Like so many girls, I idolized the friends crew and desired a significantly smaller frame. It’s so great to see the fact and science proving they were unhealthy and underweight. Thank you. ☺️🙏🏼

As an elder millennial I remember Lisa Kudrow being in one of those health magazine in the 90s and saying she ate frozen grapes as a snack.

nicotine also curbs appetite so id say its a big part of why they smoked

This is a beautiful example of how diets tend to fail us when you don't know the information correctly and I think you very much for breaking it down and putting it out there for people to understand you did a beautiful job your presentation was amazing

that was very interesting video, nicely edited and full of usefull information and your hair looks lovely!

Ohhh yeah girl the YT algorithm had you on my home page! I really hope your channel blows up soon:) Loved this video btw, no wonder they were wasp thin!

It’s really refreshing clicking on a random video and seeing someone who actually knows the facts about health and nutrition

Thank you so much for making this video ❤ as someone who's always been a little overweight and struggles with body image issues it's important that videos like this exist. A lot of people forget that most of the people we see on tv aren't realistic/healthy representations of how a body should look. It's sad that Courtney, Jennifer, and Lisa felt the need to follow such extreme diets and exercise regimes in order to feel good about their bodies and I hope they're all doing ok now! Also just wanted to add how much I like the style of your video and how informative it is, as well as how clearly you explain things. Lots of love! ❤

This is the first video I've seen of yours- you're such a lovely person. Your kindness towards the actors, yourself and others who are struggling with food is amazing to see. What an awesome video!