Looking like a star is the goal of the Beverly Hills Diet. First created by actress Judy Mazel in the 1980s, Mazel updated it in 1996, calling it the "New" Beverly Hills Diet. The goal: What Mazel called "Conscious Combining," a theory based on the contention that maintaining a healthy weight--or losing weight--is dependent on what times you eat and how you combine various foods. Put them together in an unhealthy way and you set yourself up for obesity and indigestion, Mazel wrote.
Her Los Angeles weight-loss clinic won over the likes of Engelbert Humperdinck, Jodie Foster, Sally Kellerman, the former Miss America Mary Ann Mobley and Linda Gray of "Dallas."
What to Look for
At the top of your shopping list are three stars of the Beverly Hills plan: papaya, which the author alleges will softens fat; pineapple, which Mazel says burns fat; and watermelon, which supposedly flushes it out of your body. You'll be spending a lot of time in the produce section looking for new fruits on at least the first 10 days. It may be best to start this diet in the summer, if possible, so your choices of fruits are much greater.
Go ahead and add potatoes, steak, and surprisingly to many followers of other diets, champagne! Apparently the celebratory bubbly falls into the "neutral" category, according to Mazel, so help yourself.
You won't find caffeine allowed on the Beverly Hills plan, so skip the coffee, tea and soft drink aisles. Other than that, most foods are allowed on this program, but you'll need to be vigilant about how much time you need to wait between food groups. For instance, you start the day with one type of fruit. You can switch to another type of fruit but only after an hour has passed. Then you can eat carbohydrates. Then protein. And after you make the switch to protein, 80 percent of you food intake for the rest of the day must be protein.
Common Pitfalls
If you like fruit and you dislike counting calories, this may be a good plan for you in the short term. But many nutritionists express concern about the basics of both the old and new versions of The Beverly Hills Diet for its concentration on a single food at a time. It's not hard to see that an entire day spent eating only grapes may not give you the nutrients you need. In the long term, that may be dangerous to the body.
But since in the end, what causes weight loss is consuming fewer calories than you expend, this could work for you for a while. If you put numbers to the menus, it's likely to add up to less than 1,000 calories a day--the amount of many successful weight-loss plans.
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