Julie Goodwin has always known her way around a kitchen – and now, it turns out, she’s just as adept at roasting unsolicited opinions.
The beloved MasterChef Australia winner has issued a spicy statement on Instagram after receiving a barrage of comments about her appearance, particularly her recent weight loss. And while she’s known for dishing out hearty meals, this time she served something else: a well-seasoned helping of boundaries.
“Thanks to all who have expressed concern about my health. I am well and I am within the healthy weight range. My doctor concurs,” Goodwin wrote, putting the matter to rest with the kind of authority only a GP – and a fed-up woman with a public profile – can provide.
But Julie didn’t stop at a health update. She made it clear that she’s not interested in being your weight-loss coach, thank you very much.
“For those who have asked me for advice or tips, I am not qualified to provide this. It’s advice that should be sought from your trusted health professionals, not from me. I’m a TV cook,” she said. A gentle reminder that just because someone can whip up a soufflé doesn’t mean they should be your personal trainer.
And as for the chorus of couch critics dissecting her figure?
“For those who want to comment on the shape and condition of my body please, do it on your own page because I’m tired of reading it,” she wrote, announcing she’d be turning off comments. “For all of us can we please find something more interesting to talk about. Can we please model kindness to our kids and grandkids and can we please leave this obsession with people’s looks back in the 1980s. Peace and love.”
It’s not the first time Goodwin’s appearance has prompted public chatter. In 2016, she told Women’s Weekly she’d “accidentally” lost 20kg amid the chaos of running a business, saying it was hardly a lifestyle to emulate.
“It’s not that I’ve gone on some stupid, sad diet and dropped a whole heap of weight in a hurry… I’m running a business and running around like a mad thing, and sometimes I forget to eat, none of which is healthy,” she said at the time.
Julie, who first won Australia’s heart in 2009 when she beat Poh Ling Yeow to take the MasterChef crown, has since built a rich career as a cookbook author, columnist and TV regular. But she’s also been candid about the toll fame has taken on her mental health.
In a deeply personal episode of the Head Game podcast, she described spiralling into severe depression, at one point believing her family would be better off without her.
“I just had nothing left. It’s a sickness, right, severe depression is a serious illness,” she said, adding that she turned to alcohol as a coping mechanism: “The only way I could shut off my brain late at night, was to drink wine… So I was self-medicating, and that’s a terrible, terrible way to sleep.”
Thankfully, Goodwin says she’s now in a better place — but acknowledges that wellness is a work in progress.
“I’m good, I really am. But it’s a concentrated effort to remain good, you know,” she recently told Nine Honey.
So next time you’re tempted to weigh in on someone else’s body, maybe take Julie’s advice: leave it in the 1980s, pop on some Madonna, and focus on something kinder – like her lemon curd recipe. Peace, love, and perhaps a little less commentary.
Images: Instagram
