13 years into her experiment, Rebecca Harrington, the author of I’ll Have What She’s Having. My Adventures In Celebrity Dieting, tells Christina Horsten how easy it was to find out what famous people eat every day
Fish for breakfast, mutton for dinner and “glutinous” biscuits in between — after stumbling across the details of the diet of former American president, William Taft (1857-1930), on the internet, Rebecca Harrington decided she had to try it herself.
“I was obsessed with the diet of America’s fattest president, I don’t know why. I just started it,” says the US journalist. “It was a repugnant high protein affair, but it was so bizarre it made me interested in the eating habits of the famous. I tried the Liz Taylor diet next and the experiment was born.” And 13 years later she has written a book about her experience: I’ll Have What She’s Having. My Adventures In Celebrity Dieting. The book has been well received in the US, described as “delectable” by the Wall Street Journal.
From Cameron Diaz (savoury oatmeal with lots of water) to Madonna (macrobiotic with no flour, eggs, meat or dairy products), from Greta Garbo (dried apricots and a dish made of celery, nuts and milk) to Jackie Kennedy (baked potatoes with caviar and sour cream), and from Pippa Middleton (lots of protein) to Victoria Beckham (five handfuls of food a day), Harrington chose the 14 diets in her book according to a simple principle: “I would find a celebrity that interested me, and they usually had a diet attached to them.”
The 29-year-old searched online and in bookshops for details of the diets.
“One of the strangest things about researching these diets was how easy it was to find out what famous people eat every day,” she says. “People are obsessed! It is practically the only thing you find when researching actresses.” Many celebrities have talked about their diets in interviews, she says, or even published their own cookbooks. Italian actress Sophia Loren, for example, has published two cookbooks and says she mainly only eats pasta. “I am kind of excited about this diet because it doesn’t sound like a diet. Pasta for all meals? What could be better! Pasta is my favourite food,” says Harrington. She quickly establishes however that the portion sizes recommended by Loren are not that filling.
Harrington also spends a few days trying out recipes from the cookbook by US actress Elizabeth Taylor, who died in 2011. She is not impressed with the results. Dry toast with fruit for breakfast? “I can’t stand that.” Swordfish for dinner? “It tastes like an old shoe.” She studies Karl Lagerfeld’s cookbook and on the advice of the German designer guzzles Diet Coke all day: “I lost a couple of pounds on that.”
She loses the most weight by following the diet promoted by US pop diva Beyonce, though she notes, “You only drink a special lemonade on that. The most revolting diet was that of Marilyn Monroe, the Hollywood star who died in 1962.
“There is nothing more disgusting than raw eggs in warm milk for breakfast, a steak and five raw carrots for dinner and a hot fudge sundae for desert. I felt kind of gross on it,” she says. And what was the most surprising diet? “Gwyneth Paltrow’s. It was surprisingly delicious for entirely healthy food.” But Harrington is not fully convinced she could follow a celebrity diet full time.
“I don’t know if I could actually recommend any of the diets,” she says. “They all have their drawbacks.”
The German Society for Nutrition (DGE) also warns against crash diets as well as those that are based heavily on just a limited selection of foods: They don’t work in the long term and can hinder a balanced diet, it says.
