You probably don’t want what Rebecca Harrington’s having. Source: Supplied
MOST female celebrities look as though a strong gust of wind could knock them over.
But author Rebecca Harrington can only admire their iron willpower.
After working her way through the stars’ diets for her book I’ll Have What She’s Having, she came to the conclusion that only someone constantly photographed in their bikini would put up with such misery.
Harrington scoured magazines for the weird recommendations of anyone qualified by a famous name and zero expertise, from Cameron Diaz to Pippa Middleton to Karl Lagerfeld. Then she modelled her life on each one for 10 days at a time, if she could stomach it.
Beyonce used spicy lemon-water to lose her post-baby weight. Source: Splash News Australia
Going old-school with Elizabeth Taylor’s meal plan, she forced down “repellent” combinations cottage cheese with butter, peanut butter on steak and tomato paste with spring onions. “It turned my stomach”, she told news.com.au.
But at least she thought Liz sounded like fun. Greta Garbo would not get a party invite.
“Every recipe contained something disgusting,” says Harrington. “There was raw eggs and orange juice, or this awful celery loaf with loads of pureed celery, spices and breadcrumbs.”
Garbo obeyed the advice of a nutritionist Gayelord Hauser, who espoused the benefits of “wonder foods” (sound familiar?): that’s yeast, molasses and wheatgerm.
Marilyn Monroe’s food habits struck Harrington as those of an unhappy person. “She ate in an illogical way, having things like raw eggs in milk, then nothing all day, steak and carrots for dinner and then a hot fudge sundae late at night.”
Gwyneth Paltrow has the perfect life. You just can’t afford it. Source: Supplied
Defy age Madonna-style with tofu tartar sauce and seaweed soup. Source: Instagram
With her blood sugar levels going haywire, Harrington didn’t lose any weight, but she did almost faint into a subway grate, which is almost the same as Marilyn’s iconic, white dress moment.
The diet superwoman Beyonce used to lose nine kilograms after childbirth was the hardest, and most effective. “You’re basically not eating solid foods, just lemonade,” says Harrington.
As for the much-maligned Gwyneth Paltrow, hers is actually “such a great diet, it just requires you to be a millionaire.” If she needed to cook a whole fish in salt, or soak almonds in water, Harrington says she would definitely turn to Gwynnie and her Goop for guidance.
Harrington’s commitment to her research is hilarious, revealing and truly disturbing. She suffered through bad skin, mystery rashes and salmonella in her quest to live the celebrity life.
“I was incredibly hungry on every diet,” she says. “A lot of them made me feel ill. I left feeling bad for them.”
To look like Liz Taylor, eat peanut butter on steak. Source: AP
Other adventures saw her channelling Madonna by working out furiously and munching on macrobiotic “sea vegetables”, and unappealing creations like “tofu tartar sauce” and “barley and seaweed stew”.
By the end, she was a wreck. “I combined the tofu cheese with quinoa to make a gross salad,” she writes. “The tofu cheese tastes surprisingly like tofu, yet combined with quinoa it has an odd granularity. I am supposed to finish the diet with a tofu scramble, but I can’t even do it. I have some fried chicken instead.”
Not to be deterred, Harrington tried out Pippa Middleton’s aqua-cycling and illegal haggis, Cameron Diaz’s favourite meal of savoury oatmeal (really??) and Victoria Beckham’s alkaline-based meals.
There are some surprisingly unhealthy-sounding routines in the book — Sophia Loren’s love of pasta, Dolly Parton’s Velveeta processed cheese, and Karl Lagerfeld’s 10 Diet Cokes a night.
Cameron Diaz loves savoury oatmeal and has a holistic approach to food. Source: Splash News Australia
In the rare cases where the celebrity hadn’t written a cookbook or started a preachy lifestyle blog, Harrington found the internet stuffed with each famous person’s “weird tricks” for maintaining a svelte physique.
While slurping cabbage soup is unlikely to turn an ordinary-looking woman into a demi-goddess, we remain committed to uncovering our idols’ precious secrets.
“It’s a commodification of celebrity,” says Harrington. “If they’re held up as tangible figures and can’t offer some kind of guide, it’s hard to make money off it.
Marilyn favoured raw eggs and milk for breakfast and a hot fudge sundae late at night. Source: AP
“People are obsessed with celebrity diets. It’s one of the most common questions asked. That’s been going on for a long time.”
She believes that when people started realising they looked different in photographs to how they looked in the mirror, film stars naturally became the default experts on visual culture. Soon, any woman in the public eye was habitually asked for diet tips, from Jackie Kennedy to Hillary Clinton (Kennedy: baked potato and Beluga caviar; Clinton: unconfirmed.)
But is this really what the celebrities are eating? “I have no idea,” says Harrington. “They could all just be eating nothing and smoking cigarettes and saying, ‘I eat smoked salmon, Omega-3 is so important!’”
It’s not just women. Karl Lagerfeld downs 10 Diet Cokes a night. Source: AFP
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