WEEK ONE

Sunday

Breakfast

1 cup Kashi cereal, with ½ cup plain (or vanilla) nonfat rice milk

Lunch

3 oz grilled chicken breast -- or fresh turkey breast (no deli meat!) -- with ½ cup each of chopped cucumber and tomatoes

Snack

1 cup mixed berries (try raspberries, blackberries and blueberries)

Dinner

1 cup organic pasta with ½ cup steamed spinach

Monday

Breakfast

1 cup Kashi cereal, with ½ cup plain (or vanilla) nonfat rice milk

Lunch

2 hardboiled eggs with ½ cup each of baby carrots and cherry tomatoes

Dinner

3 to 5 oz grilled sea bass with ½ cup steamed spinach

Tuesday

Breakfast

1 cup steel-cut oatmeal made with water and ½ cup fresh blueberries

Lunch

3 oz grilled chicken breast -- or fresh turkey breast (no deli meat!) -- with ½ cup each of chopped cucumber and tomatoes

Snack

1 cup mixed berries (try raspberries, blueberries or red grapes)

Dinner

3 to 5 oz grilled salmon with ½ cup steamed broccoli

Celebrity trainer Gunnar Peterson, who has trained Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lopez, and Penelope Cruz, says: "I had one actress training with me four times a week in addition to daily exercise bike classes. When the Press asked how she'd 'transformed' her body, she said: 'Oh, I do yoga and hike with my dog.' It makes me laugh." So the next time you see a pin-thin celebrity bragging about her relaxed approach to eating, remember this: They take drugs

Eating disorder expert Carolyn Costin, who has treated many Hollywood actresses, says she's even seen a rise in "the drugs used for attention deficit being crumpled up and snorted". Some celebrities also take Clenbuterol, known as "Clen". Commonly prescribed to treat respiratory problems in horses, in humans it can cause fat loss. While Clenbuterol and Adderall create a slimming effect in the short-term, after a while, users report a sudden and uncontrollable weight gain. Having tampered with the natural metabolism, the drugs stop working. Manhattan-based trainer Justin Gelband, who works with catwalk and catalogue models, says: "Diet pills and steroids are huge right now. After Kate Moss was caught supposedly doing coke, the modelling agencies started to crack down on girls using hardcore drugs like cocaine and heroin to stay slim. "So now it's more diet pills and steroids; they are easier to hide and, if pressed, the girls can say that they have a prescription."

During the filming of Cold Mountain, there were rumours that one famous actress on set ate only boiled eggs. She would rise in the morning and eat one and then have one or two at the end of the day. That was her entire diet.

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Paris Hilton caused a stir when she walked into New York restaurant Nobu recently. When a waiter asked the heiress for her order, he was quietly told: "Mineral water." In fact, over the course of her two-hour "meal", Paris took sips of water and Red Bull - she didn't eat a single bite. And she's not alone. Super-slim Desperate Housewives star Marcia Cross was spotted dining at a restaurant a few years back with her now husband Tom Mahoney. Lifelong battle: Marcia Cross describes not eating is 'a constant struggle' According to one eyewitness: "He ordered sea bass and prawns, but she just sipped fruit juice." Marcia recently admitted to the pressure to be thin: "Not eating is a constant struggle. It's like they pay me not to eat. It's a living hell."

After lengthy negotiations, regretfully, the Jenny Craig Company and I did not come to an agreement to continue as their spokesperson.

My relationship with the Jenny Craig Company was nothing short of extraordinary. The people I worked with at Jenny were first rate. The program spoke for itself as the world watched me lose 75 pounds. The last three years have been a win-win for all involved, especially all those other Jenny clients who took the journey alongside me. Just having them there with me was an inspiration and a motivation to continue. Thank you to all of you from the bottom of my heart.

J.C. now has two talented pros on board, and I have no doubt that Valerie Bertinelli and Queen Latifah, along with the excellent products in the J.C. program, will steer the ship to continuing success. I personally wish them the same excellent results and amazing adventures that I experienced as the J.C. spokesperson.

Somehow, I've also fallen into the position of "accidental" role model for, apparently, millions of people out there losing weight by whatever means. This was something I did not bargain for, or foresee happening. Nevertheless, it is something I've grown to embrace and something I intend to continue to pursue.

As for me, I am from the school of "you may not be able to reinvent the wheel but you can sure try to better it," which has proven to be a very successful attitude for Michelin tires. Even my own mentor left a major weight-loss company when she was 51 years old and struck out on her own to create her own brand that we now know as "the Jenny Craig weight-loss program." I had not intended to make this announcement at this time, but after an online PEOPLE magazine article ran last Friday, announcing that I had stepped down as Jenny's spokesperson, I found myself bombarded with inquiries from the media and fans. So I guess it's as good of a time as any to announce that I intend to develop and pilot my own weight-loss brand that I hope to launch in 2009.

Surprising research suggests a popular artificial sweetener has the unexpected and unwelcome effect of packing on the pounds. Purdue researchers report that saccharin altered the ability of rats to control their appetites. However, the head of an artificial sweetener trade group scoffed at the findings, saying they don't necessarily translate to humans.

"We found that the rats that were getting artificially sweetened yogurt gained more weight and ate more food," said study author Susan Swithers, an associate professor of psychological sciences at the Ingestive Behavior Research Institute at Purdue University. "The take-home message is that consumption of artificially sweetened products may interfere with an automatic process."

That process, she said, involves the body's ability to detect that it will soon be full. "We often will stop eating before we've been able to absorb all of the calories that come from a meal. One of the reasons we might stop eating is that our experience has taught in the past that, 'After I eat this food, I'll feel this full for this long,' " she explained.

It seems to be a subconscious process based on automatic estimations of how much energy certain foods will provide, she said. For example, a sweet taste might be a sign that "calories are coming, and I should prepare my body for the arrival of those calories." However, when the sweetness is not followed by a lot of calories, the body's digestive system gets confused, and the metabolism rate does not gear up as much the next time sweetness is tasted.

"I've also adopted a tip from Richard Giorla, nutritionist for Carmen Electra and Jennifer Lopez, to carry around a vial of grapefruit oil,' she added. 'He says that the oil lets out an aroma that affects your liver enzymes, which activates the nerves that cause fats to be broken down and burnt off. We spoke to doctors who backed that up but, from my point of view, I can only say that it noticeably and definitely reduces my appetite.'

Pearlman has picked up a few diet tricks of her own from the stars: 'Asparagus, parsley and dried prunes are a staple in many celebrities' cupboards - and now my own - because of their ability to repress hunger and reduce bloating. I've also started following the lead of Heidi Klum and Cindy Crawford by taking a few sips of vinegar before going to dinner because the vinegar kills your hunger pangs,' she added. 'I have to admit the pounds have dropped off me since I picked up these tips.' Klum also claims putting Epsom Salts in her bathwater helps reduce bloating.

John Cusack, meanwhile, stays away from everything white, including flour, sugar and wheat and, more conventionally perhaps, Oprah Winfrey swears by Wulong Slimming Tea for weight loss and a healthy lifestyle.

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Some of the tales in Pearlman and Douglas's book detail bizarre behaviour by celebrities seemingly driven to near-distraction by their diets. 'I can't name her, but there is a young starlet who goes into Jerry's Deli in Beverly Hills every week and orders their famous three-storey chocolate cake,' said Pearlman. 'She looks at it for half an hour, then she drinks some water and leaves.'

A-LISTERS are renowned for their bizarre eating fads but a new diet book to hit celebsville claims to cut out the "crap" and tell it how it is. Sales of Skinny Bitch soared by 674 per cent on Amazon after Victoria Beckham was spotted with a copy in Los Angeles at the weekend. While it sounds like a guide on how to become a size zero lollipop with the bitching skills of Cheryl Cole, it's actually a vegan diet with a bit of attitude thrown in. Written by ex-model agent Rory Freedman and former model Kim Barnouin - both self-confessed skinny bitches - it is billed as a guide for "girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous."

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But first, TV nutritionist and Sun diet expert Amanda Ursell gives her views. The Skinny Bitch eating plan is basically a vegan diet, according to Amanda. She says: "The authors want us to give up milk and dairy foods like cheese and yogurts as well as eggs, meat and fish. In a nutshell, it is a vegan diet. As with any diet, if you follow it to the letter then you will lose weight but for your average woman it's not particularly easy to follow and you would have to be incredibly dedicated. While much of the no-nonsense advice is good, the diet is quite extreme."

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So what can you actually eat?

Unrefined carbohydrates: This means wholegrain foods like oats, brown rice, brown pasta, brown pita bread, couscous, barley, granary and wholemeal bread because they are great for slow-release energy, vitamins, minerals and fibre.

Fruits: Unlike the Atkins diet, the Skinny Bitch diet encourages us to eat fruit because it is so rich in vitamins, minerals and supernutrients. Preferably organic to avoid pesticides.

Vegetables: Again, preferably organic, to give us vitamins, minerals and fibre.

Pulses: Filling pulse vegetables like soya beans, red kidney, butter and cannelloni beans. Great for vegetable protein and fibre.

Soya: Around two servings a day of soya food, including soya milk, for protein.

Sometimes, you can't stop your weight-loss secrets from leaking out. Dieters have been flocking to drugstores to pick up Alli, the first over-the-counter weight-loss pill to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, despite the scary warning: Stray too far from your low-fat diet and you just might poop your pants.

The drug's maker, GlaxoSmithKline, has been up front about the pill's side effects, suggesting that first timers wear dark pants or bring a change of clothes to work until they get used to the diet pill's potentially yucky consequences.

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The diet pill works by blocking 25 percent of fat from being digested. Alli users take one pill with every meal, and to avoid an "Alli oops," they should eat less than 42 grams of fat a day, or about 15 grams per meal. But those fat grams can be sneaky. One grande Starbucks Caramel Frappuccino contains 15 grams of fat, and if an Alli user adds even a low-fat muffin to that meal, it could get icky.

"It's so important to understand that you must adopt a low-fat, healthy lifestyle," Jones says. "We call them treatment effects — that's a signal for you that you're not staying in the guidelines. What Alli will not do is make up for not living a healthy lifestyle."

In an elaborate series of experiments on mice, researchers showed that the neurochemical pathway they identified promotes fat growth in chronically stressed animals that eat the equivalent of a junk-food diet. The international team also showed that blocking those signals can prevent fat accumulation and shrink fat deposits, while stimulating the pathway can strategically create new ones, possibly offering new ways to remove fat as well as to mold youthful faces, firmer buttocks and bigger breasts.

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"There is a lot of uncontrollable stress right now in our societies. There's also a lot of inexpensive high-fat food," said Mary F. Dallman of the University of California, San Francisco, who co-wrote a commentary accompanying the research. "This could help explain the obesity epidemic."

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To explore this, Zukowska and her colleagues conducted a series of experiments in which they subjected mice to chronic stress -- either standing in cold water an hour a day or being caged with a more aggressive alpha mouse for 10 minutes a day -- and then gave them standard feed or a high-fat, high-sugar diet similar to the junk food fare many Americans consume. After two weeks, only the mice that were both stressed and fed the junk-food diet gained a significant amount of weight, accumulating about twice as much fat in their bellies as non-stressed mice that consumed the same diet.

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When the researchers examined the animals' fat tissue, they discovered sharply elevated concentrations of a substance called neuropeptide Y (NPY), a chemical messenger produced by nerves in various parts of the body, including fat. They also had far higher levels of a molecular partner NPY needs to work, known as the neuropeptide Y2R receptor. "This tells us that NPY and this receptor trigger the whole process of stress-induced obesity," said Zukowska, noting that other recent studies found that humans with defective NPY receptors are resistant to obesity, while those with excessive NPY are prone to it.

After confirming the role of NPY in fat formation in additional studies in genetically engineered mice, the researchers showed in laboratory experiments that NPY induces the growth of immature fat cells, coaxes mature fat cells to get bigger, and promotes blood vessels necessary to sustain fat tissue. The researchers also demonstrated that injecting a substance that blocks NPY prevented mice from accumulating fat even if they were stressed and ate a high-fat diet, and could shrink fat deposits by 40 percent to 50 percent within two weeks. "It just melts the fat. It's incredible," said Zukowska, noting that the technique could offer an alternative or supplement to liposuction.

On the flip side, when the researchers inserted pellets containing NPY under the skin of mice and three monkeys, they were able to stimulate fat growth, suggesting the approach could replace skin fillers and other cosmetic and reconstructive surgical techniques. "This has tremendous potential applications for both cosmetic and reconstructive surgery," said Stephen B. Baker, a Georgetown professor of plastic surgery who helped conduct the research. Detailed studies of the mice and preliminary findings from the monkeys found no signs of any adverse side effects.

"The first time, you are horrified," she tells Harper's Bazaar in its September issue. "It's all lovely when you are pregnant; but when you are not pregnant and you haven't been for a couple of months and you are still carrying tons of extra weight and everything's all hanging and sagging, you think, How is this ever going to go back? But it does. If you do a lot of working out."

Both times she was expecting, Paltrow, 33, says she gained 40 lbs., and lost 20 by the time she came out of the hospital. "With Apple I kept the extra 20 pounds on until she was three months old, and then it came off," she says. "And that's exactly what's happening now." She's been working out, "but not dieting, because I am a milk machine." But should anyone think her figure is perfect again, Paltrow says, "They should see the cellulite on my thighs right now."

Still, the woman once known for her alcohol-free macrobiotic diet has loosened up. Her vices, she says, are "California and New Zealand pinot noirs." Once the kids are in bed, "I come downstairs, pour myself a glass of red wine and sit in the garden" of the London home she shares with husband Chris Martin.