Gwyneth Paltrow's post Christmas diet tips

I was surfing around the other day when I came across an article in the Marie Claire web site about Gwyneths post Christmas top diet tips.

The article describes the star's 7 day "healthy detox diet"

"The diet involves not eating 'dairy, grains with gluten, meat, shellfish, anything processed (including all soy products), fatty nuts, nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant), condiments, sugar and obviously no alcohol, caffeine or soda.' She adds the all important tip that you also must drinks lots of water. A typical day's diet on the Gwynnie detox includes a breakfast smoothie, carrot and ginger salad for lunch and broccoli soup for dinner. A handful of nuts constitutes the only snack."

The mind boggles. This is not a diet, it's starvation!

Gwyneth talks about the detox as not being 'pretty' or 'easy' and yet she goes on it, talks about it on her blog and struts the results up and down the red carpet for all to see. We look at her skinny frame draped in those glamorous clothes and think:

'I should look like that.'
"If she can do it, so can I."
"Surely, it can't be that hard."

How sad that millions of women will be reading about Gwyneth's approach to weight loss in magazines and on websites across the world while so few will come across Beyond Chocolate. How sad that most of them will feel pressured to imitate her in some way. How sad that these same women will end up feeling weak, shameful and out of control because they need more than a stick of carrot and a mouthful of broccoli to get through the day and end up overeating to compensate for the deprivation. How sad that this woman, who has so much money and influence and media presence is not willing to use it to spread a different message.

How sad.