Senegalese Peanut Stew with Spinach and Sweet Potatoes - Makes 6 servings

Ingredients:

Nonstick spray
2 medium onions, roughly chopped
1 medium green bell pepper, cored and roughly chopped
1/2 pound sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1/2-inch cubes
2 medium carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, minced

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Mediterranean Fish Fillets in Packets - Makes 2 servings

Ingredients:

Two 4-oz skinless snapper fillets
6 cherry tomatoes, quartered
4 pitted black olives, halved

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Fennel Orange Salad

Makes 2 servings

Ingredients:

One 10-oz fennel bulb, stalks, fronds and outer leaves trimmed, then thinly sliced (about 2 cups)
1/2 cup canned mandarin orange sections packed in juice, drained
1 small red onion, halved and thinly sliced (about 1/3 cup)
2 Tbsp white wine vinegar

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Baked Ziti with Turkey Sausage - Makes 8 servings

Ingredients:

3/4 pound mild turkey sausage, casings removed
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium green bell pepper, cored, seeded and chopped

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Who can forget those photographs of a skeletal-looking Teri Hatcher jogging through Hollywood with weights in both hands and bones protruding-through her skin? Actress Kate Hudson, in a quest to shed the five stone she gained while pregnant with son Ryder, admitted to working out up to three hours daily for three months.

To prepare for her role as the sexy Daisy Duke, Jessica Simpson worked out for two hours a day, six days a week. Justin Gelband says: “You can get addicted. Unless you’re a professional athlete, you don’t need to do more than one-and-a-half hours a day to get a great result.”

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Paparazzi shots regularly show Hollywood’s skinniest actresses, such as Renee Zellweger and Mary-Kate Olsen, sporting giant sunglasses and regularly coming out of Starbucks clutching gigantic cups of coffee.

This is a trend in Hollywood, where many believe coffee not only speeds up their metabolism but also keeps them from eating. “One client I had would eat almost nothing all day, she just drank coffee constantly,” says trainer to the stars Peterson. “She’d have some lettuce in the afternoon, and drink coffee instead of dinner. Working out was a waste of time because of the state she was in.”

Marc David says: “Coffee and caffeine can actually make you fat. If you’re drinking too much, the caffeine mimics the stress response in our bodies and your cortisol and insulin levels rise. These elevated levels of stress hormone signal the body to store fat.”

Grey’s Anatomy star Katherine Heigl looks to have lost a stone in the last year. She may be following a healthy eating plan, but she appears to have a secret weapon - she smokes constantly.

A few days ago, the beautiful blonde was spotted having lunch in Los Angeles. She ordered just a salad, but spent the meal chain-smoking. Nowadays she is rarely photographed without a cigarette in her mouth, and when she isn’t smoking, she is clutching a pack.

Marc David, nutritional psychologist and author of The Slow Down Diet says: “It’s a choice, really. You are choosing possible lung cancer and death over treating your body with respect, all in an effort to be slim.”

Britney Spears has never been shy about her love for junk food and engages in all kinds of behavior to counteract her taste for Taco Bell. She smokes, drinks coffee and Red Bull, has diet pills in her bag and takes Adderall. She has also been seen hitting all-night drugstores, shopping for laxatives.

And she is certainly not alone. Today, many actresses are taking laxatives in the form of “dieter’s tea”, which has a mild laxative effect. Some starlets are drinking up to ten cups a day.

Trainer Gelband says: “The latest trend among models is mixing laxative tea with the master cleanse diet. All they drink is master cleanse and laxative tea.”

One of Hollywood’s dirty little secrets is the “IV diet”, in which celebrities check themselves into hospital to get put on an IV so they can avoid eating altogether. Peterson says of the IV diet: “This is beyond ridiculous. If you’re doing this you’re not fat, you’re crazy!”

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. 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.”

Then there’s the master cleanse, otherwise known as the lemonade diet: water mixed with maple syrup, lemon juice and cayenne pepper. Beyonce admitted following it for two weeks to drop one-and-a-half stone for the film Dreamgirls, and Jared Leto used it to shed the two stone he’d gained to play Mark Chapman in the film Chapter 27.

Gunnar Peterson calls it the “You’re an idiot” diet. “I had a client who did it and I thought he was ill,” says Peterson. “His skin was grey and his eyes had terrible dark circles under them. He was shuffling when he walked, and this was after only ten days!”
Suzanne Peck is the director of programs at Homefield Grange Retreat, a cleansing spa in the UK that relies on juice-fasting. She says: “Fasting is designed to rest the digestion, hence allowing clarity of thought, cleansing of toxins and healing of the body in general; not to fit into a size-zero dress.”

Have you dreamed of the celebrity super model body and have you considered eating nothing but boiled eggs?

During the filming of Cold Mountain, there were rumors 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. And apparently she is not alone. Celebrity trainer David Kirsch says: “I had a client who was getting ready for the Oscars and all she ate was one meal a day - of two boiled eggs! I was able to persuade her to add some almonds and a protein shake and some vitamin supplements.

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