I'll Have What She's Having: My Adventures in Celebrity Dieting

by Rebecca Harrington

In the afternoon, I decide to walk with my friend all around the city. Walking is Sophia’s preferred mode of exercise, and she walks for a long time every day. At one point, my friend and I stop for a minute and both think about buying overalls. They are very in now. But then I remember how disappointed Sophia was when her niece wore clothing that Sophia found awful, like “baggy pants and strange tops that made her look like a farmer at Harvest time,” and so I don’t buy them.

  For dinner, I try to make Sophia’s tomato sauce over gluten-free pasta. I couldn’t keep eating the whole wheat pasta. The rash never returned, but after reading a WebMD article about gluten intolerance I think I have all the symptoms on that page. I feel bad begging off Sophia’s preferred pasta, but gluten-free pasta is far worse than regular pasta and this does seem to fit my estimation of Sophia’s powers of self-denial. Cary Grant was always proposing to her and she always said no. One time her sister (who married Mussolini’s son???) openly mused, “I sometimes wonder if Sophia today has any fun in her life.”

  As any Italian home cook knows, you are always ultimately judged on your tomato sauce. I decide to make Sophia’s marinara tonight. Sophia’s is pretty darn good, if a little less flavorful than what I am used to. It’s very simple – just fresh tomatoes, herbs, and a little sugar. I myself am partial to gravylike sauces because I’m a philistine from Rhode Island.

  Day 3

  After a hearty (but small) breakfast of spaghetti carbonara, I decide to make a three-course Italian feast for dinner made entirely from the Sophia cookbook. I am going to make pasta all’amatriciana and veal saltimbocca. Unfortunately, the grocery store is out of veal, but as Sophia says, “Neapolitans live by instinct,” so I decide on the fly to change my dish to chicken saltimbocca. Also, Anthony Quinn once aggressively kissed Sophia while she was eating a lamb chop, so I feel that she would appreciate the lack of red meat in the meal.

  Luckily, the dinner is fantastic. The pasta all’amatriciana (which has bacon and pepper) is especially great. At the beginning of the meal, I decide to have the small helping of pasta the diet allows. But then the baby-fist-size portion just looks so sad and I remember when I went to a wine-tasting class in Italy and the instructor said, “There are no rules for wine!” and that was the whole class. “Oh screw it,” I say, and help myself to a more American-size portion. I am off the diet. It’s over!

  So what did I learn? I learned that sometimes, the best things are terrible when they come in small packages. Better to live like a health nut and then the goodies of life aren’t always right in front of your face. Sophia, for your moderation, I salute you! What a woman!

  I Tried Pippa Middleton’s Diet

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  he public is very fickle in a stupid way, and Pippa Middleton is an excellent example of this. One minute you (Pippa Middleton) are wearing a beautiful dress at a wedding and everyone loves you and thinks you have a nice bum. Then, the next minute, you are in an extraordinarily small car with a group of handsome Frenchmen and one of them is holding a toy gun and suddenly you are the object of censure. What is a woman to do in such circumstances but write a reviled book about celebrating called Celebrate and then later pen an exercise column in the Telegraph? The public drove her to do it.

  I, for one, have always been a fan of Pippa’s lifestyle journalism and of the can-do spirit that allowed her to take her bum and turn it into a brand. I very much defended her when she was in that car with all those Frenchmen. They were all so handsome, and she had just gone to a historical ball with them.

  Thus, it was with a particular pride that I decided to take up the diet and exercise regimens that fueled Pippa’s rise to the top ranks of lifestyle journalism. If the Daily Mail is to be believed and the Middletons really are relentless social graspers and achieved their current position through hard work and patience, then I want them to teach me their dietetic secrets. Because I know nothing about any of those virtues, and I would like to marry a king.

  Preparation

  My diet will trace the life cycle of a Pippa Middleton, as that is truly the only way to understand how she has reacted to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I will start my diet with the diet that Pippa followed right before her breakthrough appearance at the royal wedding: the Dukan Diet, a bestselling French program (the French – always the cause of one’s rise and one’s downfall!). I go ahead and buy the eponymous book at the bookstore. It looks both cheerful and scary at the same time. But I am not done! To complete my Pippa transformation, I buy her four-hundred-page book, Celebrate. This I will use to throw one of my famous dinner parties. I also discover all of Pippa’s coverage of health fads for the Telegraph – a partner in arms! I will attempt every single one of these exercise fads, even though Pippa is definitely a better athlete than I am.

  Day 1

  The Dukan Diet is basically a French version of the Atkins Diet, an entirely protein affair with occasional breaks for dry and oil-less vegetables. Despite being a woman who loves diets and embraces them with two fists, I have never done any super-high-protein diets except for my brief dalliance with the diet of America’s fattest president, William Howard Taft. And that was a disaster of epic proportions.

  Dukan himself even seems ambivalent about bringing his fun French diet to the uncultured land of the free and the home of the brave. He starts his book off with a fun story about how he likes Americans because they saved the French from the Nazis, but eventually he confesses that Americans “scared [him] somewhat” because we are so fat. Luckily, he eventually realized that within “every North American citizen there is a human being who longs to respect the essential relationship between a healthy body and a healthy mind,” and he decided to give us the diet after all.

  I have decided to do the three “phases” of the diet in the next three days. Sure, this may be quick, but I feel it will give me the lay of the Dukan land. The first phase of the diet is the “attack phase.” In the attack phase, you can eat only protein the entire day. This is actually completely fine because you don’t have to do portion control; you can eat as much as you want. I have two eggs in the morning, a huge helping of sashimi for lunch (with only a splash of soy sauce), and several fillets of fish for dinner (I do cheat slightly and have a dumpling too). It feels great, honestly. No deprivation at all. Just a vague hatred of fish.

  Day 2

  Today I am in the “cruise” phase of the diet, a.k.a. the day when I can eat both unlimited amounts of protein and a series of unsatisfying vegetables. Really good vegetables such as potatoes are somehow never included, which is very annoying. For lunch, I am weirdly starving and have two grilled chicken breasts and some soppy mushrooms stewed in their own juices. At the end of this repast, I am full but bored.

  For dinner, I decide to try one of the staples of the Dukan Diet – the infamous oat bran galette, which is a pancake or “galette” (French!) that is made out of bran, Greek yogurt, and an egg white. (I put some garlic in there, too. Mistake.) Dukan once served it to his daughter Maya and reports that she felt “completely full.” Despite the fact that the pancake in its uncooked state looks a lot like yogurt with some garlic bits in it, the end result (after cooking it in an oil-less pan) is not that bad. It ends up looking like a regular pancake with some garlic bits in it. I top this with salmon and low-fat cream cheese. It reminds me of an extremely tasteless bagel.

  Days 3 and 4

  Today is a “consolidation day,” i.e., a day in which I eat both protein and the occasional slice of whole wheat bread. I have my slice of bread in the morning with my egg. To be honest, I really do miss carbs, but not as much as I have missed food on other diets. I weigh myself and realize this particular undisciplined sort of eating does not work for me. I weigh the same. I celebrate this with the “celebration feast” Dukan allows in the cruise phase. At this dinner, I eat three different desserts because I am celebrating. I wonder, slightly, if this is what Dukan intended for me to do.

  Day 5

  Now done with the Dukan
Diet, I decide to attempt Pippa’s current career as a nutritional and lifestyle journalist (really, the best kind of journalist). Pippa used to write fairly frequently for the Telegraph. In each column, she did a crazy fad exercise regimen and then an unseen photographer took pictures of her in weird outfits. In one of her more recent columns, Pippa attempted a new French craze sweeping England called “hydro-spinning,” which is essentially a spin class in your own personal Jacuzzi. As Pippa puts it, “I like cycling. I really like Jacuzzis. But cycling in a Jacuzzi?” (This really is a good column, I have to tell you.) Unfortunately, we do not yet have the particularly French pastime of cycling in a Jacuzzi in New York City, but we do have the ability to do a spinning class in a communal pool with other people, which I eventually decide to do. We call it aqua-cycling.

  Unfortunately, I happen to show up at this aqua-cycling studio right at the nadir of the polar vortex. I am going to tell you something: I do not want to aqua-cycle during the polar vortex, even though I have to for science. I do not want to pay forty dollars to be submerged in a freezing pool. I have been wearing an outfit made entirely of fleece for several weeks. However, it isn’t that horrible in practice. You can forget about arctic temperatures when you realize how hard it is to cycle in water. I could barely stay on the bike or move my legs. It reminded me of what it is like for me to ride a bike normally.

  Days 6 and 7

  After going up to New Haven to see my friend star in a production of My Fair Lady (Pippa would have done the same, I felt), I return to triumphantly hold a “Burns Night” for my friends. “What is Burns Night?” you ask? I found out about it when I read Pippa’s book, Celebrate. A Burns Night is a night that celebrates Scotland. You are required to eat haggis at it, which, according to Pippa, is the “minced heart, lungs and liver of a sheep or calf mixed with beef fat, onions, oatmeal and seasonings.” Delicious! Haggis happens to be illegal in New York City. Apparently you can’t eat lung here. This is not the land of the free.

  Before I even decide how to find illegal haggis (the streets?), I invite all my friends to a dinner party and send them a picture of haggis I found on Wikipedia. It looks like a huge piece of intestine with a hole in it. Everyone is excited about it, especially when I tell them I will order pizza if they come to the party. Eventually, I end up purchasing a legal version of haggis that does not have lung at a British grocery store.

  Despite the fact that Celebrate is several hundred pages long, it is sometimes surprisingly vague. Pippa has no directions for the haggis other than heating it up in a pan and serving it with a turnip-and-potato mixture. I am wary of putting the haggis in a pan – it recently emerged from its tin in a series of congealed brown clumps – but it fries up rather nicely.

  When my guests arrive, I give them a Scottish cocktail that involves oatmeal juice (oatmeal soaked in water and strained), honey, whiskey, and heavy cream. It is called Atholl Brose and is politely declined by all except me, because I sort of like it. It tastes like an old sweater, which is a comfort after all the aqua spinning. Luckily, however, the haggis is beloved. It tastes like a saltier version of corned beef hash. One of my especially ambitious friends even recites an ode to the haggis. I still order pizza like I promised, however.

  Day 8

  This morning, I decide to do a Zumba class at 9:00 a.m. It is a horrible existential experience. It reminds me of when, for Pippa’s thirtieth birthday party, she decided to do a flamenco dance for everyone she had ever known. She described it thus: “I stomp my heels, I spin – I’m a little dizzy but before I know it, my hands have stretched to the sky, my head turns to one side and I pout dramatically as I hold my final position.” I don’t know about flamenco, but I cannot imagine doing public Zumba at my thirtieth birthday party.

  Day 9

  Still hopelessly following Pippa’s Telegraph articles, I decide to take a boxing class. This is even worse than Zumba. I can’t remember any of the boxing combinations, the instructor keeps yelling, “No!” at me, and all the men in the class are very handsome in the style of men in a car in France. They never forget any of the combinations.

  After boxing, I decide to make Pippa’s post-boxing meal, which combines spinach, pomegranate seeds, Peppadew peppers, feta cheese, allspice, and chicken. Weirdly, it is not all that bad. It’s actually the best thing I have had on the diet and much better than the oat bran galette. It tastes like a very healthy version of sweet-and-sour chicken. I might make it for myself normally.

  Day 10

  For my last night of the Pippa diet, I wind up going to Catch, the restaurant she visited in New York when some people thought she was going to move here. It’s so glamorous, like a club with food. There are so many lights!

  Now that I’m finally off Pippa’s punishing regimen, I must admit that I did enjoy it. Her recipes certainly weren’t Gwyneth-level (what is?), but some really were surprisingly delicious. I never thought pomegranates would taste good with allspice, but they did. Also, I think a muscle is appearing in my leg.

  In conclusion, Pippa could be riding around all the time with French people in motorcars but instead she is out there, trying to develop muscles in her legs. You’ve got to give the girl some credit.

  I Tried Carmelo Anthony’s Diet

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  nicks player Carmelo Anthony once made headlines when he told a group of sports reporters that he had lately completed a fifteen-day spiritual cleanse called the Daniel Fast and that it might have been affecting his play.

  “I haven’t had a good meal in about two and a half weeks. No meats, no carbs, anything like that,” Anthony told reporters in an effort to explain why he had been averaging only thirty-two points a game in January (this seems pretty good to me, but what do I know?) and his shooting percentage was slightly down. Then a bunch of sports journalists freaked out about it.

  “I’m all for a good cleanse, but not in the middle of an NBA season,” the New York Daily News opined. “Seriously, with the slow starts they’ve been having, I think it’s a legitimate question as to whether Melo’s fasting hurt the team,” the Wall Street Journal’s Chris Herring tweeted. Knicks coach Mike Woodson eventually addressed the diet and ended up sounding like a Hollywood starlet’s publicist, waving off anorexia concerns with diplomatic utterances about “the right foods” and having “faith” in Melo.

  So how extreme is this diet? I would have to try the Daniel Fast and find out. Probably really extreme if all these newspapermen were making such a big deal out of it! They never exaggerate.

  Preparation

  The Daniel Fast is a diet based on passages in the biblical book of Daniel in which the eponymous prophet goes on several fasts. In one he eats only vegetables; in another he gives up “precious breads.” The modern Daniel Fast allows whole grains but prohibits meat, dairy, coffee, alcohol, and sugar, i.e., all of the most delicious things in the world. Daniel Fasters describe their technique as “a vegan diet with even more restrictions.” I decide to follow the fast’s meal plan and recipes and play basketball for the next thirty-six hours to get a sense of what starving starlet Carmelo Anthony is going through.

  Day 1

  I start the day with a brisk shopping trip to buy ingredients for the recipes outlined on Daniel-Fast.com. The Daniel Fast advocates three square meals and two snacks a day (already this diet sounds pretty easy) but also maintains that “while we can eat as much food as we want and any time we want … we want to keep in mind that we are fasting.” (Even easier.) I keep this in mind as I pay for my food.

  When I get home I make the stir-fry, which is basically kale, onions, carrots, and soy sauce over rice. It’s a little boring and does not have much protein but tastes decent. The portion is actually too big for me to eat all at once, so I eat half and save the rest.

  Fortified by this important meal, I decide to go play basketball, which I have literally never done before in my life. (I used to sit in the girls’ bathroom during gym class. It was fun there!) I buy a basketball at Modell’s and
head to a court I find on the Internet. Carmelo says he needs only forty-five minutes in the gym each day to play as well as he does, so I plan to do the same. How hard can it be to shoot baskets for forty-five minutes a day? Very hard, it turns out, when you are really super bad at it. The ball keeps landing in a puddle of water vaguely near the court because that is the closest I can get it to the hoop. Repeatedly hurling a ball into the air and fetching it is so demoralizing (and wearying for my arms) that I download my first audiobook ever, Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks, to distract myself.

  For dinner, I have the rest of the stir-fry and some homemade flat bread called chapati that I make from flour and water. I am actually stuffed, despite eating about half the quantity of food I was supposed to eat. This diet is great!

  Day 2

  The most difficult part of the Daniel Fast is the lack of coffee. For breakfast, I have oatmeal and an atrocious headache. I distract myself by thinking about Safe Haven. Why did Katie dye her hair brown even though she’s a natural blonde? What is the dark secret haunting her? I need to know.

  For lunch, I make a curry by combining one can of kidney beans, one can of garbanzo beans, one can of lentils, and several raisins. It’s way too much food; I realize later that I made eight portions of this curry and I am only one woman. I eat about one-sixteenth of what I made and am stuffed. I’m going to be eating these leftovers forever.