Stardom Is For Suckers, So Says I

February 27, 2004

It was two in the morning on Saturday night, and I had just run into the second ex-boyfriend of the evening. Looking good. Not good-good, just good, but bearing fantastic news: He's getting married!

"Screw Celebrity Nutritionist Oz Garcia," I thought, as I made my way to the bar. "Screw him."

But I'm getting ahead of myself. See, I'd met with Oz Garcia on the previous Wednesday morning, at the kickoff of what was to be a week of intensive self-improvement. What with the Oscars coming up, I was preoccupied with the magical way Hollywood stars morph from the image you see in the US Weekly "Celebrities Are Just Like Us" feature into swanning red carpet divas - and all in a matter of days. I wanted a piece of the action, particularly since I hadn't seen the inside of my gym since the New York Fashion Week circus hit town, and because my diet in the meantime could best be described as "macro-idiotic." (Nicotine + caffeine + alcohol + foods from the pizza and fried potato groups, in case you were wondering.) Late night fashion partying led to a serious dereliction of pre-bed makeup removal and the ol' toilette in general. (Sigh. Never let anyone tell you that fashion is a glamour business; maybe for some people, but not for me.) I'd done a lot of damage to myself in about a week, so what could I fix in about a week?

Thus: Oz, who will henceforward be referred to as "Celebrity Nutritionist Oz Garcia," which is how I thought of him. And thus, also: Justin Popovics, trainer at Equinox, trainer to hopeful contestants in the Miss USA pageant, lovely and personable human being and for five days the bane of my existence. And finally, thus: Dermatologist extraordinaire David Colbert, with whom my relationship was too fleeting to engage any wrath. (If only all relationships worked that way.)

DAY ONE
So, I ask Celebrity Nutritionist Oz Garcia at the start of our fateful meeting, how do I go from zero to amazing in a mere five days?

He shakes his head...

"Look, if you want to know how the stars do it - they get themselves locked away at a spa where they're not allowed to eat anything except broth and egg whites," he notes. "Daily colonics. Herbal body wraps. The works. And," he continues, "you've got to figure that these are all people who are pretty fit to begin with - it's not like they're trying to make enormous strides in a very few days."

Is he disparaging me?! I mean, I may not be a Hilary Swank or a Kim Catrall or a Paris Hilton (who is, like, deformed-skinny if you ask me), just a few of Garcia's A-List clients, but I'm all right. I've just got some bad habits, like occasionally sucking down a couple Oreos instead of a protein shake for breakfast. Sometimes, or OK, not infrequently. Perhaps, on a regular basis. I need help.

"I'm going to recommend a high-induction diet," he says as he tosses a copy of his book The Balance onto the sofa where I'm seated. "That means that there are certain foods, primarily lean proteins, that you will be including at every meal - and certain other types of foods, in particalar high-glycemic carbs, that you will categorically avoid."

As I listen to Garcia elaborate on the types of food I can and cannot eat, I have to admit that his take on the low-carb craze seems pretty humane, common-sense even. No wheat products, no potato products, for sure no refined sugars, but where beans, lentils, nuts and raw and cooked veggies are concerned, go for it. He seems to prefer goat cheeses, but cow dairy's OK, too, in limited quantities, and unsweetened. You can even eat a small amount of rice, preferably long-grain, corn, and certain types of fruit. What’s more shocking is when he warns me against two of the "healthy" things I do eat on a regular basis: Citrus fruits and any of many, many foods made of soy.

"No citrus? Really? It's mostly water!" I’m incredulous. Garcia explains that since citrus fruits are tropical, and it's winter in New York City, eating a tangerine is the digestive equivalent of shouting "FIRE!" in a packed movie theater, i.e., a pointless shock. And as far as the soy - it turns out that the miracle bean is the Benedict Arnold of dieting, since it’s so packed with estrogen that it causes bloat. All those tofu dogs for nothing.
The final depressing but probably inevitable fact Garcia lays at my feet is that I have to cut out the coffee. Decaf is sort of OK, he says, but as far as I’m concerned he might as well tell a coke addict to snort baking powder instead.

"The caffeine just makes you hungry - anything that shocks your system or causes it stress will do that," he explains. "People think it kills the appetite, but that's a temporary response. You're much better off with some Vitamin B-based neutraceuticals."
With that, Celebrity Nutritionist Oz Garcia hands me a big box of Vivaxl, which contains a host of ingredients but most prominently boasts a whopping 5000% daily dose of B-12 in every serving. (Later, a quick glance at a website that sells Vivaxl asserts that a serving can boost the "sexual flush" if consumed half an hour before sex. Hm.) Garcia also recommends a morning dose of 5 milligrams of Enada, "a stabilized form of NADH," which (further research reveals) is "Reduced B-Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide, whatever that means. Garcia assures me that between the two supplements, drinking a great deal of water, eating the Oz Garcia way, and cutting out the "bad shit" (my phrase) I will be able to "peel off a substantial amount of bloat and fat."

Damn straight. And on the subway back to the office I tear into The Balance with a renewed sense of purpose. Since I’ve forgotten to ask (and likely already knew the answer) I skim the book to find out Garcia’s attitude on alcohol. Unsurprisingly, it’s not positive - and not just for the “high induction” phase of dieting. Celebrity Nutritionist Oz Garcia is worried about the way people cope with stress by adding stress to their bodies, in the form of toxins such as caffeine, tobacco, alcohol and sugar. Celebrity Nutritionist Oz Garcia, a cursory glance through The Balance reveals, is not interested in silver bullet strategies for getting me into size 4 jeans. Oh, no: Celebrity Nutritionist Oz Garcia wants me to lead a long and “balanced” life, rife with vim and enthusiasm! He wants me to develop healthy coping mechanisms! He wants me to think of seared tuna and baby mesclun greens as the road to a fulfilling life! This isn’t a diet - it’s a philosophy! Bastard.

Oh well, I figure - it’s only for a week.

DAY TWO
My first workout with Justin. As previously mentioned, Justin has a business training contestants for the Miss USA pageant, and he takes my "how do stars get fabulous fast" angle very much to heart.

"OK, so describe your red carpet dress," he asks me as I warm up on the treadmill. I’m a little bleary, because frankly, the whole getting up obscenely early in order to make and digest an egg-white and tomato omelet has caused my system the kind of stress I used to believe was best addressed with coffee.

"Um," I reply, doing my best, "I guess it’s... Well.... "

"Yes?" He’s so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I don’t have the heart to tell him I hadn’t actually thought of what I might wear on my trip down the imaginary red carpet. I wrack my brain for hot dresses from Fashion Week, but it’s all kind of a blur. Those toxins, probably.

"I guess, uh, it’s halter-topped, and maybe kind of drape-y," I finally stammer, calling to mind the Doo.Ri dress I wanted to take home straight off the runway.

"Oooh, sexy, sexy, great, great," he jumps in encouragingly. "So we’re going to be focusing in on the arms and upper body..."

Uh-oh, now I see where he’s going. I don’t want to work on my upper body! I want to work on my ass! That’s where intensive help is absolutely critical!

"But it skims," I add, "you know, skims on the hips and butt, so that has to look good, too. And it’s kind of sheer, the fabric, so you can see the abs, kind of. Plus it’s cut so there’s lot of leg sometimes."

"I see it, I see it!" I don’t think Justin really does see "it," though, since I’m pretty much making shit up now. There’s no dress that looks like that - and if there were, hell no would I wear it.

It occurs to me later on that Justin's actually on to something when he suggests that focusing on the upper body is the most efficient way to look tighter in your evening dress. As he points out, though there will be full-length photos, most come in for a closer crop around the face - and that's where a nice collarbone line and ripped arms make a statement. Furthermore, I realize on my own, it's hard to find a gown that disguises upper body flaws - and most of the ones that do look as though they were created for dowagers, or Diane Keaton. It's a lot easier to hide trouble spots down south.

"OK, I don’t want to kill you here,” he explains as he leads me to the dip machine, “since we’re working out every day. We’re going to start easy, so you’re not totally immobilized for lower body tomorrow."

Whew, I think. This’ll be a breeze, I mean, I’m not in terrible shape.

After the third set of dips, however, I’m dying - dying, because I haven’t done them since I played tennis in college. And after set four, Justin introduces the centerpiece of his workout plan, which is to do interval training. In layman’s terms, interval training means you keep your heartrate up between sets of lifting, which causes more efficient metabolic burn or something like that. (Like I said, I was tired.) In practice, what this means - for me - is that every time I finish fifteen bicep curls or chest presses or flies, I have to do a little tap dance routine up and down a small, portable metal step. Since I then have to return, immediately, to more bicep curls, chest presses or flies, the tap dancing is a source of great displeasure to me - though, I suspect, as I hop-step up and down, that this is where my ass workout is getting done.

We finish up the hourlong workout with two sets of crunches on the ball, after which Justin instructs me to go back upstairs and do a half-hour of cardio.

"That’s where you’ll really see results," he notes with a smile, "by combining the daily cardio with the weights. You’ll be rocking that dress!"

Lucky for me, I can’t do any cardio today (and figure I got it in anyway, since I basically had to sprint the distance from my East Village apartment to the 19th & Broadway Equinox in order to make the appointment even approximately on time.) I am, after all, a working girl - not a Hollywood starlet - and the office beckons. I shower and sneak out of the gym, hoping Justin isn’t keeping an eye out by the ellipticals.

By the middle of the day I am desperate for coffee. Instead, I do as Celebrity Nutritionist Oz Garcia has instructed and chug a glass of atrocious-tasting Vivaxl powder mixed with water. He’s warned me that I might feel a "flush" (though not a sexual flush, I should add), but it’s more accurate to say that Vivaxl has an effect that seems illegal. This shit is amazing. If it didn’t taste so awful, and if the instructions on the box didn’t explicitly say not to take more than two doses in a 24-hour period, I would be bumping Vivaxl all the time. I have so much energy that when the opportunity arises to meet a friend that evening, I do it. For a drink, natch, but I behave myself and annoy the bartender by ordering a bottle of water. I could not possibly feel more self-righteous.

DAY THREE
The day starts with horror and panic: I’ve overslept. I was supposed to be at the gym by 7:30am, in order to change and get my warm-up done before meeting Justin, but instead, at 7:30 my cat is slapping me awake because she’s hungry. Dammit! So am I! I gobble a handful of almonds and repeat yesterday’s sprint to Equinox.

"Did you warm up?" Justin asks me. I’m warm, I assure him. Better yet, I’m still winded. We head downstairs for what proves to be the most demanding lower-body workout I have ever experienced. My comment about the nonexistent dress showing leg has led Justin to conclude that my quadriceps and hamstrings must be attacked from every possible angle, on every possible machine. I’m just thankful he hasn’t put any standing-squats or lunges into the mix, since my nut breakfast and Vivaxl and coffee-free morning has rendered my sense of balance nonexistent. This leads to a couple close calls tap-dancing on the step, and by the end of the hour the mere idea of going upstairs for a half-hour of cardio is laughable. I eat some scrambled egg whites at the Equinox cafe, instead, and head to the office.

Now, one of the great things about the Oz Garcia Celebrity Nutritionist diet is that I feel I have permission to cast monetary caution to the wind for a week and order a sashimi lunch every day. (No soy sauce, though, no miso soup, and stay light on the rice.) After my Vivaxl hit in the morning and sashimi in the afternoon, I’m feeling great, and raring to go out when the evening rolls around. I do my best to maintain good behavior, as several of my friends nurse beers and cocktails, but I have to admit that by the time we reach the karaoke birthday party time of the night, I really, really wish I was drinking. I don’t, and go home wondering if fun is possible without alcohol. Or if, maybe, I’m supposed to be reevaluating my whole notion of "fun." Perhaps there’s fun to be had in an early morning 5 mile run. It’s definitely never seemed like it, though.

DAY FOUR
Despite the fact that every muscle in body is screaming OW, I feel like a million bucks today. It's Saturday, so Justin and I are meeting a couple hours later than usual. This gives me ample time to eat my egg-white, tomato and feta omelet (the feta makes a huge improvement, by the way), hold my nose and drink the Vivaxl, and get to the gym in time for a pre-training warm up.

Even Justin notes that I seem unusually full of pep today - and consequently determines that we're going to up the ante on the workout. After a few dips, which Justin explains is the "single best ten-minute workout for women who are short on time, since it affects everything," the pangs in my muscles have actually disappeared. I attack my between-set tap-dancing routine with the determined professionalism of a young Star Search contestant, and it isn't until the end of the workout, when Justin is making me super-set bicep curls and tricep pulls (alternating between sets without a break) that I start to lose steam. Nevertheless, I manage fifteen minutes running on the treadmill after my session is over, and do myself a huge favor by spending another half-hour doing yoga stretches. Justin and I aren't meeting tomorrow, and we've agreed that it would be good for me to hit a Kundalini class instead, and, I realize as I lounge in Equinox's perfect steam room, I'm actually feeling excited about doing so.

The best part in all of this, of course, is that in addition to feeling healthy, I'm starting to see improvement, too. Eyeballing myself in the mirror as I get ready to go out at night, my stomach seems sleeker and my legs look lithe and lean. Results! I slip into a mini and head out to my friends' concert at Bowery Ballroom, girded by an early dinner of low-fat chicken sausage and a small mesclun salad.

The early dinner is something to note. The good thing about the Oz Garcia, Celebrity Nutritionist way of eating is that, if you do it right, you never feel very hungry, until you're absolutely ravenous. I had dinner at five, and by the time the headliners took the stage that night, I wasn't even feeling the slightest rumblings of hunger - and having reckoned that I was trying not to drink, hadn't taken any particular care to line my stomach. The reason I note this is that, although I got through the concert sober, the aftershow party presented quite another challenge.

I suppose I could blame the vodka cocktails on ex-boyfriend no. 1, or on ex-boyfriend no. 2. That would be OK; I blame them both for lots of things. But what's more true is that the Oz Garcia Celebrity Nutritionist lifestyle program came into collision with my lifestyle - namely, one that involves a lot of circumstances where drinking is not only involved, it's necessary in order to take the edge off the crowded noxiousness of music, film and fashion events. I'm not even a big drinker - but tonight, after my second disastrous romantic collision of the evening, I'm prepared to make an exception. Plus, the drinks are free.

Which brings me back to the bar. Ex-boyfriend no. 2 was still hanging around, and ex-boyfriend no. 1 was within eyesight, hitting on a cute, young blond. My friend Katherine was M.I.A. and the other girlfriend I'd come with had just about had it with my dead-sober freakout and was getting back at me by hanging out with No. 2, who happens to be a professional colleague of hers. Four weak but empty-stomach cocktails later, at nearly 4 a.m., I was making a nauseous cab ride home and instead of feeling sad, or angry, or dejected, I just felt terrible.

Which is the point of alcohol, sometimes: To become the primary problem.

DAY FIVE
Pain. Horrible, horrible pain.

DAY SIX
Having spent Sunday on a program of intensive rehydration, I don't feel as bad as I could by the time my alarm goes off at 6 a.m. That said, I haven't slept all that well, I'm wishing I could take a day off work, and frankly the only thing that really appeals to me is the idea of drinking a gallon of highly caffeined coffee. I'm still not liking the idea of eggs, but manage to eat some leftover chicken sausage, drink the Vivaxl, and get off to the gym. The whole way over to Equinox, all I can think is that stardom is for suckers - who the hell wants to get up at 6 am everyday in order to be tortured on weight machines? Not me, that's for sure. And furthermore, isn't there something to be said for the gentle comfort of eating half a pint of chocolate ice cream out of the container, in order to salve the occasional stings to the heart?

"The thing is," I complain to Justin, as he adjusts the weight on a squat machine for a drop-set, "I just want to see a result and then get back to my normal routine. This is too much work."

He rolls his eyes, and observes me pounding on my aching quads.

"You're just feeling an extra buildup of lactic acid because you're dehydrated," he replies.

"And the bottom line is, the only way to see results is to make this - " he indicates the gym, " your routine. Think about it from a star's perspective: Call time on the set could be as early as six - and they have to find time to get the workout in before that. Sure, they've got help, but probably most of them have just gotten used to doing it. It's their job."

"And," he continues, after I protest that maybe it would be different if he were monitoring me every day, long-term, "I don't think many people work out with a trainer every day. You don't need to - the trainer is there to provide guidance and keep the workout changing, so nothing gets stagnant. My pageant girls live out of state, for the most part, so I only get to see them every so often - the rest of it they carry out on their own."

I'm feeling good and guilty as I do my little tap-dance on the step. Sensing my chagrin, Justin tries to be encouraging, as he sets the weights on another machine.

"Look - how many days have we been meeting," he says, "and you're already a lot stronger. I mean, you're complaining, but I'm telling you that you're doing a lot more with me than you were two days ago. Just imagine what would happen if you did this all the time."

I'm feeling a little better by the time I leave