Ate correct diet breakfast, went shopping in Chapel Street feeling demoralised, but at least had begun process. By midday felt fantastic: Bought great earrings, a very cool pair of summer shoes, and felt convinced I could beat Jennifer Aniston, regardless of scientific evidence.
Shopping glow entirely replaced by incandescent caffeine-withdrawal rage. Met lovely friend at the George pub. She had gin and tonic, I had water and ice. She chatted about life, I tried not to scream or kill her. The caffeine rage lasts three days. In the midst of it, smiling through gritted teeth, I have my "before" photos taken. As usual, I can't help feeling that the mad-hair, potato-faced results can't really be me, but for some reason I care less than usual. Perhaps because I am beginning to believe in the transformative powers of this exercise.
This belief is aided by my interview with hair stylist Renya Xydis, cutter to the stars, who does Cate Blanchett's hair and Naomi Watts's and Ian Thorpe's. She gives me a special shampoo and promises to cut and colour me for the final photographs, on the last day of the month. Don't worry," she promises celebrity team members are good at telling you not to worry: State-of-nation meeting with food coach. She asks questions like, "What about your sleep patterns?
Went shopping to macrobiotic shop and had following loud discussion in aisle containing organic chocolate.
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The great point about this exchange is that normally I would have it with myself, my greedy side would win, and I would buy the chocolate. But now, suddenly, I have a paid professional to fight the battle of will for me. And according to my research reading a few crappy magazines , it's also a great secret of celebrity success. Jennifer Aniston, for instance, reportedly has no food at all in her house, and has thus eliminated all ugly internal struggles over whether she should have just one chocolate biscuit before lunch.
Instead, a personal chef simply delivers precisely calibrated Zone Diet meals to her door three times a day. And Julia Roberts has a "fridge doctor" who removes all the ice-cream and replaces it with carrot sticks, so she doesn't even have to see the evil substance - let alone be tempted to grab a teaspoon and hoe in. I don't have quite this level of personal attention at the gym, where, due to budgetary and geographic restrictions, I have to go it alone until the end of the month when Donna Aston will repeat my measurements and calculate my wonderful God willing results.
But to the amazement of all concerned - including me - I do go, and keep going. The first few times I feel like a total dag, with my strange baggy trackpants and my routine carefully written out on a piece of paper. But I've always liked the sense of obsessive higher purpose that a new regimen gives me I would have been a good religious fanatic in the Middle Ages so I stick with it.
On day five, I suddenly notice my skin looks really smooth and bright - as if a watt bulb has been lit somewhere behind my sinuses. This has never happened before, and it is so startling it carries me through Friday night drinks with hardly a sideways glance at everyone else's two-for-one cocktails. Miracles will never cease. One of those days where best efforts were constantly foiled by fate and own ineptness.
Had pedicure this morning: Spent whole time searching glossy mags for pictures to add to my style scrapbook. Have been directed by stylist to compile a book of "looks" I like - fabrics, styles, colours - in preparation for our shopping trip next week. Consequently was not paying attention to feet and ended up with horrible round nails instead of regular square ones. Am very vain about feet and was therefore devastated. Spent much of afternoon walking with ugly nails around local park in order to make up "walk time" for PT.
Bit boring, but sustained by thoughts of washboard stomach and gleaming skin and cellulite-free thighs. Went to dinner party at editor's and watched acres of forbidden food and wine roll out before me like a Bacchanalian feast. Sudden realisation as to why so many movie stars are coke fiends. It's the only joy in life that carries no calories, that one can enjoy in a vaguely social setting.
Neither my editor nor my food coach is willing to incorporate cocaine into my celebrity life. My food coach, in fact, is quite cross with me. Apparently I am "doing too much", am consequently worn out, and therefore less beautiful than I should be. I resist the temptation to point out that if someone would give me a gram or two of Bolivian marching powder, I'd be feeling a lot more energetic.
Looking like a celebrity, I'm discovering, is surprisingly time-consuming. I think in the past I've assumed that all that stands between me and Cameron Diaz apart from genetics, obviously is that Cameron has the team and I don't. But I'm beginning to realise that even with the team, no one can do your exercise for you, or get your eight hours' sleep, or drink your two litres of water or eat your special meals. You have to do it all; and it's a full-time job.
And I already have a full-time job, and a social life. Or not, as the case may be. Bizarre experience tonight of going on a date and consuming a total of three waters all night: Be still, my beating heart. Got home at 1am and had to make more muesli God forbid I eat pre-prepared version: Crucial muesli ingredient is LSA: Consider collapsing weeping on kitchen floor; alternatively, brutally calling, waking and asking food coach.
That would teach her. Finally take a punt on linseed, sunflower and almonds primary contents of post-shopping trip pantry, henceforth to be known as Health Shrine. Grind with soup whizzer inside cocktail shaker. Nutritional virtue is all very well, of course, but is it really the most important thing in life? What about meeting new people, or maintaining relationships with friends and people you love?
Three days later, I meekly endure a bollocking from Judy Davie for the following sins: I do pray no one died. You simply can't eat that late at night and go to bed soon after. You must eat and wait for at least three hours before going to bed to give the body time to digest the food. In this case you couldn't go to bed at 2am because you'd wake with huge bags under your eyes, which you can't do, either.
It's a tough life being a celebrity! And with my eating and drinking and socialising so radically curtailed, it's also strangely lonely. Maybe this is why celebrity relationships only last about three seconds: Presumably so that I have something more than protein shakes for which to forsake my friends and loved ones, Davie plans a cooking lesson.
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I've assumed it will take place at Davie's palatial pad but, on the day, she suddenly telephones and suggests we do it at my place. I think of the week's worth of dishes filling the sink, the clothes all over the entry hall, the general pigsty chaos, and agree brightly. I hurtle home to clean up and discover that the kitchen sink is blocked and filled with brown water.
I bale out the sink into a washing bucket and tip the contents into the bath, feeling filled with a deep inner certainty that this would never, never happen to a proper celebrity. I wipe the kitchen floor with tea towels and hurl them into my war-torn bedroom as Davie arrives. For some mad reason, she immediately opens the bedroom door. Trying to look unconcerned and celebrity-like would Catherine Zeta-Jones care about mess?
I don't think so , I go to the Health Shrine in search of seaweed. Davie, however, has brought the ingredients with her. I had no idea I was so sensible. My kitchen is so tiny Davie has to direct operations from the entry hall. She shows me how to cut spinach leaves. Apparently I must cut them "with the vein" and do them one by one, in a sort of spiritual acknowledgement of the time it has taken the leaf to grow. I resist the powerful temptation to plunge the knife into the centre of the pile and hack madly against the vein, as an acknowledgement of my feelings about this whole experience.
As the lesson proceeds, I cook and poke around in the brown water, and make several more trips to the bathroom with the bucket. I have never felt further from celebrity status in my life. Sink unblocked at last. Mental scars will take longer to heal. Why did I not just say no to food coach?
No celebrity would have had slightest compunction about it. More to the point, no celebrity would be cleaning her own house at all except possibly Uma Thurman - but then, she is a Buddhist. Maybe am being too hard on self. In fact, maybe we all are: Perhaps should get some kind of celebrity guru in manner of J.
Lo and Madonna to make me feel better. Actually, guru could be good on number of fronts. To deal with increasing food preoccupation find myself lying awake at 4am wondering if I'm allowed to take large can of tuna to work, or only small ; apparent failure of weight loss according to gym scales I haven't lost a gram ; and strange disconnect between having a celebrity team and actually feeling like a celebrity. Alternatively, I could become a Buddhist. Or maybe just spend more time with my stylist. The day after the cooking disaster, I meet up with Alan Keyes for our shopping expedition and he immediately tells me how serene and beautiful I look.
I am not a total stranger to stylists and I know that they all say this, all the time. But the great thing is to be able to say it with sincerity, as Keyes does. He's had a lot of practice soothing fragile celebrity egos, of course: He gave Angelina a mohawk and put a tarantula on her shoulder, he tells me as we set off.
Given her beetle fetish, I suspect this may have been an inspired choice. But within 10 minutes he's earnt my undying devotion by bulldozing through three snooty shop assistants, shouting "No! I need more wow factor! It takes me a while to get into the spirit of things - especially since I keep putting things on back-to-front - but Keyes is very reassuring. As previous experience has taught me, it's another mark of the great stylist that they never say "You look foul in that", but have a raft of delicate rejection phrases.
In Keyes's case, my favourite is the judicious pause, followed by the gentle: We spend an exhausting afternoon trying on all sorts of beautiful clothes, including Armani and Lanvin and Dior. And in Gucci, suddenly, I have a series of revelations.
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The first is that I actually fit into a size 40, despite the ridiculously tiny Italian sizing policy. The second is that I seem to look slightly less untoned and flabby in the changing room than I usually do. And the third is that I am finally witnessing the power of the celebrity entourage in action.
All the shop assistants are utterly awed by Keyes, who makes constant notes in his lizard-skin Filofax while calling out things like, "Well, it's plain now, but with half a million bucks worth of diamonds it might be quite nice. Between shops he explains the fundamentals of celebrity styling. Celebrities, it emerges, rarely buy their own clothes for red carpet events.
If you are important enough, any fashion house worth its salt will FedEx you items from all over the world. And if you are really, really important, they will let you keep them. The year Gwyneth Paltrow won the Oscar for Shakespeare in Love, she was apparently given 52 gowns, all by designers desperate that she should choose theirs for the ceremony.
This story astounds me - how can she have chosen that God-awful pink one if she had 52 to choose from? It gapes here at the back, and it's wrong across the boob. What about gaffer tape, I suggest, making the skirt twirl in a circle.
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Gaffer tape is the secret weapon in every stylist's arsenal. Not even gaffer tape," says Keyes. When Linda Evangelista opens a major fashion show wearing the same gold dress you tried on less than three hours earlier. And that even on her it gapes at the back and looks wrong across the boob. Am filled with relief and triumph. If Linda Evangelista can't make a garment work, then I am off the hook. I never thought I'd say this, but the gym has actually become something of a refuge. At least when I'm doing tricep dips I'm not thinking about Red Rooster chips with extra chicken salt.
But I am getting better. I'm still shaking like a palsy victim during my weight-bearing routine, but I've stopped falling sideways at every V-sit, and I can do 10 FitBall pikes without stopping. I'm not sure if this is because my stomach muscles are getting stronger, or if the psychological benefits of my new T-shirt with "Princess" written across it in glitter, purchased to help me get into the celebrity mind-set, are finally kicking in. This mind-set is proving problematic. On the one hand, I love having all these people crowded round me if I hadn't been a religious fanatic, I could have been a feudal lord , but on the other, it's all starting to seem ever so slightly ridiculous.
Surely Davie, an obviously intelligent woman, has better things to do than try to convince me that a date tastes as good as a Cherry Ripe and will satisfy my sugar craving just as effectively. It does not, and will not, and that's all there is to it. It also seems faintly undignified.
I am a great believer in dignity and truth, and surely this applies to beauty as to everything else? Perhaps being beautiful always involves some level of indignity, even deception think of having your legs waxed or your hair dyed , but surely there are limits? The other day Davie went out of the room, and I ate an almond, and she came back in before I had a chance to swallow. For one terrifying moment I thought she was going to shout "Drop it!
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And in retrospect, I realised something even more terrifying. Very, very bad day. Inexplicably, at some point over the weekend have suddenly become food nazi. Shouted at two people in the office this morning. Then another journalist was quietly eating his lunch at his desk and I found myself screeching, my finger stabbing the air like some Dickensian crone: So much for dignity. I always thought being beautiful would be a bit like falling in love: And yet here I am, my cheekbones evident even in normal light, the tops of my arms mysteriously divided into three distinct muscles, and my collarbone and those little knobs at the edge of my shoulders clearly visible, and I hate the world.
Actually, that's not quite true. Perhaps I'm just nervous about the photo shoot. Alan Keyes is working himself into a frenzy: If Apple Books doesn't open, click the Books app in your Dock. Click I Have iTunes to open it now. View More by This Author. Description A new cartoon picture book for children that features a cow named Molly Moo. Customer Ratings We have not received enough ratings to display an average for this book. More by Al Benge. Myrtle Moo the Musical Cow. Sigrid Squid is Having a Sale. Myrtle Moo the Curious Cow. Myrtle Moo the Creative Cow.