What do skinny women know? What dieting tips and diet secrets do they know for holiday eating?
They know that there are sure-fire ways to gain weight or even lose weight during the hectic festive season.
If you're on the run and find yourself grabbing "whatever," it's a perfect recipe for the kind of holiday weight gain that will leave you depressed when you reach January.
I've ghost written a slew of celeb diet books, which are often filled with exactly the same information. In a nutshell, these experts agree that you should workout several times a week…blah, blah, blah. I wanted to focus on their eating tips, which I think are the starting point when you want to drop a few or many pounds.
Here are some dieting tips and diet secrets for holiday eating?
*You can and should drink your breakfast. No time because you're on the run? No problem. I watch Hollywood stars drinking their breakfast in the form of healthy smoothies made of almond milk plus their favorite fruits including skin saving blueberries or delicious peaches. Throw it over the top by adding a teaspoon of flax seeds, which will make your face glow and turn back the aging clock. The point is some breakfast is better than no breakfast to get your metabolism jump started, plus you need the energy boost.
*Avoid fruit juices. Hollywood diet pros always cut the juices from their client's diets. You can eat an apple with all that nourishing fiber for far less calories than drinking apple juice (which probably has sugar added). Yes, we all love our juicers, but make sure to keep control of the sugar content.
*Stop rationalizing when it comes to foods posing as "diet foods." When I used to fly all the time from Chicago to LA, one of my favorite airport breakfasts was a soy latte at Starbucks with a banana nut muffin. Somehow in my brain, I had happily talked myself into the fact that the muffin wasn't really that bad for me because it had the word banana in it and there were two walnuts on top. Wrong! Later, I found out that muffins like this one have 600 calories on upwards. Add the soy latte to the mix for another 200 cals and this was an 800-calorie breakfast that wasn't even satisfying and didn't include any protein. That's why you need to be armed with real information. Look up the cal count of some of your favorite foods.
*Frozen yogurt is dangerous. A small fro-yo, no problem. But it's easy to slip into a large one if you're hungry, which is often a sugar overload and can easily top 800 calories if you put on a few toppings. Remember that just because it doesn't seem like a diet buster it is if you over indulge.
*Don't fool yourself with high cal cocktails. At a Beverly Hills bash, I noticed that the one drink that was always popular in the Midwest – cranberry juice and vodka – never crosses the lips of those who are figure conscious? Why? The cranberry juice is packed with sugar and (worse yet) corn syrup. This is not a healthy drink. Want a drink? Experts agree that you might try a glass of red wine, which has heart and even skin benefits.
*Cheat, cheat, cheat! All the really skinny women know that you can't live on lettuce alone. They don't cheat every single day, but they do eat fried chicken once in awhile if that's what they need. Even Jessica Chastain recently told me, "When I really want to indulge, I'll make fried chicken for Octavia Spencer." (She co-starred with her in "The Help.") Yes, eat that pizza or a dessert. The point is to only do it once a week. Even Nicole Kidman once told me that she saves us calories. "That way I can do a really decadent dessert and not feel bad about it," she said.
*The kitchen is closed after dinner. I've stayed at the homes of many of my celeb book clients, and I've never seen one of them indulge in any snacking after dinner. The most they will do is sip a little herbal tea. It's a great discipline. After dinner, it's safe to figure that anything you will nosh on is just empty calories that won't be burned off unless you're taking a midnight zumba class. Why not make it your routine to brush your teeth after dinner and consider the kitchen closed? Sure, you'll break that rule when you go out or on special occasions, but you'll keep the healthy habit the rest of the time.
