Why Stevie Nicks’ ‘Mindset’ Left Her ‘Terrified’ of Potatoes
Stevie Nicks is bracingly candid in interviews, sometimes sharing information that her team would prefer she kept quiet. She enjoys being honest about most aspects of her life. The Fleetwood Mac artist has shared her tips for health and nutrition, including ways she’s cultivated her look as a performer for decades. And on one occasion, Nicks spoke about her diet and why the restrictions left her afraid of certain foods.
Stevie Nicks tailored her wardrobe to her look
When Stevie Nicks first joined Fleetwood Mac, she decided she wanted a tour uniform. She knew she wanted the look to be timeless and uniquely hers. Nicks hoped she could still dress in this style decades down the line.
Nicks found inspiration from a stranger in Santa Monica. The woman wore a long layered skirt, riding jacket, and platform boots, with her hair piled up like a Gibson Girl.
“This girl obviously had some money, because this was not a cheap outfit,” Nicks told the Los Angeles Times. “It was beautiful, and I went, ‘Oh, that’s exactly how I want to look.’”
She partnered with designer Margi Kent to create her iconic wardrobe of shawls, platform boots, and top hats.
She went on the restrictive Atkins diet
Several decades after creating this look, Nicks and her publicist were flipping through a fashion magazine. Nicks believed that she was too old to wear the clothes, and her publicist said the styles would no longer look good on their bodies. This negative comment made Nicks decide to go on a diet.
She decided to resume the Atkins diet, a restrictive form of eating that she’d followed in the past. The diet severely limits carbohydrate intake, causing Nicks to veer away from certain foods.
“When you get into its mindset, you’re terrified to even have a potato,” she said, per the book Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks by Stephen Davis.
A Vulture article from 2019 revealed that Nicks had shifted her diet again to eating off a defunct Weight Watchers’ plan. She kept her refrigerator stocked with chicken, Jell-O, and “at least 25 baggies” of baby carrots.
“That’s how I stay on my perfect diet — I can come out here in the middle of the night crazed, and there just isn’t anything, so there’s no reason to even bother to come out here, because I’ll just be eating one of my meals that is supposed to be for tomorrow, and I don’t really want that, because it’s exactly what I just had today,” she explained.
But she would allow herself some “special time” before bed, where she’d treat herself to yogurt.
Stevie Nicks shared that there’s 1 snack she craves more than anything else
Nicks also shared that her restrictive diet would leave her craving one food above all else: animal crackers. She asked that people hide the snack from her because she can sniff them out.
“They’re back there. I can smell them,” Vulture reported her saying as she moved past a craft service table. “I could trash this whole place finding those animal crackers.”
