Hollywood's Deadly Diet Dangers

Tom Venuto
Burn the Fat

I admit it. I bought the National Enquirer. I know, I know, you should never admit you bought the Enquirer, but the headline GOT me! "Hollywood's Deadly Skin And Bones Diet: Stars Risking Their Lives To Be Thin." Not to be outdone, IN TOUCH magazine's cover story was remarkably similar with the headline: "SCARY SKINNY!"

Actually, I wasn't "reading" the Enquirer at all, I was, ahem, "Doing professional research…"

And besides, you have a lot of time on your hands at the checkout line when your weekly grocery list includes:

7 grapefruits, 4 packs of blueberries, 6 apples, 12 dozen eggs (yes of course, I throw away most of the yolks, thanks for asking), 9 lbs of chicken, 2 lbs of lean top round steak, 3 packs of salmon, 4 cans of tuna fish, 2 tubs of quaker old fashioned oats, 7 bags of broccoli, 7 bags of mixed vegetables, 4 bags of spinach, miscelleanous salad vegetables, a big giant bag of sweet potatoes, several bags of brown rice… uh.. and that's just in the first shopping cart, LOL!

TABLOID TELL-ALLS!

Anyway, on the cover of the Enquirer there were photos of a "bony skinny" Angelina Jolie at 5' 7" 100 lbs, Anna Kournikova at 5' 6" and 110 pounds, and Cate Blanchett at 5' 8" and 106 pounds, among others.

After I flipped past the picture of Sharon Stone's butt cellulite circled and enlarged for detail (no, I'm sorry to say, I'm not joking about that!), the feature story inside discussed an issue that's really quite serious:

Dr. Stanley Title said that "The skin and bones diet is extremely dangerous and can cause serious health implications. Literally, they are starving themselves to death."

Dr. Title said that Hollywood celebrities know that they look 10 lbs heavier on camera so they've almost all at one time used extreme measures (often including diet drug abuse), to the point where even casusal observers notice the protruding bones and rail thin bodies and wonder if they've gone too far.

People are dying to be thin, and unfortunately, that cliche has proven to be literally true on more than one occasion in the case of severe anorexia.

SKINNY DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN HEALTHY

All too often, people forget to include "health" when they're setting their goals. It's just "x lbs" or "size X" or "X% body fat," but seldom a mention of health, energy, nutrition and quality of life.

There's a side to this "scary skin and bones diet" that's even more alarming than what the Enquirer alluded to.

I am privy to this only because I'm a fat loss coach who has taken thousands of body composition tests over the years, which is why most people don't know about this.

Dr. Title, in the Enquirer story, said that these diets "leave the dieters looking skeletal with bones protruding under the skin." True. And many clearly are flirting with eating disorders.

But something else I've noticed from my experience is that starvation dieting can often produce the opposite of the intended result. Instead of improving your body composition…

YOUR BODY FAT TO MUSCLE RATIO CAN ACTUALLY GET WORSE AND YOU BECOME A "SKINNY FAT PERSON!"

That's right. Not only does skinny NOT = healthy, skinny also does NOT = lean, and skinny certainly does NOT = muscle.

Starvation dieters become victims of "skinny fat syndrome" and they diet off lots of "weight", but the weight consists of more muscle than fat, so they end up with almost no muscle left, but a lot of the fat still remains!

Too bad they're dieting off all their muscle, because MUSCLE is the engine that drives your metabolism.

Sometimes it's not the "skin and bones" diet at all, it's the "Bones and Fat diet."

I've measured the body composition of some women who at a casual glance looked thin or even down right skinny, and to my absolute shock and dismay, I found they were carrying body fat in "worse than average" range!

One woman I took a test on was about 5' 7" and 121 pounds. On any height weight chart or by any other standard that would be thin.

And this shows the flaw of thinking only in terms of "skinny," "thin" or even just "bodyweight": Her body fat measured an astonishgly high 28%!

That's 34 lbs of fat out of 121 lbs, leaving only 87 pounds of lean body mass and fat free-tissue!

Imagine for a moment an arm bone, with a one inch pad of fat surrounding it, kind of like foam insulation around a pipe. That's what her arm was like, only the insulation was pure fat!.

When I grabbed the back of her (very thin) arm- it was just one giant fat fold! Literally no muscle - just bones and fat.

Are you now starting to see the problem we have here with the way most people are dieting and thinking?

Do you realize how slow your metabolism would be if you only had 87 pounds of lean body mass? How about how weak you would be? is that what you really want?

I used to think "fat" was bad. Then I found out about "skinny fat" - nothing worse than skinny-fat, right?

Not so fast, How about "skinny-fat, malnourished, unhealthy and weak?" NOW THAT'S BAD!

People are so fixated only on the pounds of bodyweight and the outward appearance of "skinny" or "thin' they are paying NO attention to health, energy, strength, function, muscle and vitality - the things that count!

Your friend and coach,

Tom Venuto, CSCS, NSCA-CPT
Burn the Fat


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