I Can Make You Hot! (8 page)

When we were both nineteen and living in Paris, model Elaine Irwin and I tried the white diet. For several days we ate nothing but cereal and rice. It certainly gave us a lot of energy, but it was also boring. It wasn’t any fun sitting at a café with our friends wearing our tight black miniskirts (the model’s uniform of the ’90s) and watching them enjoy their dinner while we ate nothing because we’d already consumed enough rice and cereal for an entire small nation. After a few days we were both starving and bored.

What did I learn from that? Food deprivation does two things: It makes you irritable and it leads to binge eating.

Model diet secrets that DON’T work. (I’ve even tried some myself!)

Eating nothing but cereal and rice for days does
not
work.

Cigarettes do
not
work.

Drugs do
not
work.

The alcohol diet does
not
work.

Binging and purging does
not
work. In fact, it makes your face look bloated. Who wants a thin body and a fat face!

Diuretic teas do
not
work.

Enemas do
not
work.

The Graham cracker diet does
not
work.

A vegetarian diet with no starch and no protein does
not
work.

The tapeworm diet does
not
work. Instead of making you thin, it makes you dead.

Eating nothing but an apple a day for a week does
not
work (although it does save you money).

Liquid diets do
not
work. They don’t teach you how to eat well; they just teach you how to
not
eat.