Welcome to the fifth week in the series 52 Diets 52 Weeks, where Laura test-drives exactly that in exactly that.
Diet 5, Day 1: Overview of the Victoria Principal Bikini Diet
This absurdly Hollywood-centric starvation diet attracted my attention with the promise to drop 5 to 10 pounds in one week. Not healthy. A supremely superficial “bikini” goal. Surely not even possible, at least for me. I’ve never tried a crash diet so maybe that’s the challenge. Even if I did drop 10 pounds in a week … I still ain’t getting into any bikini, at least not on any continent that is populated by other humans.
The Bikini Diet is found in her 2001 book The Living Principal: Looking and Feeling Your Best at Every Age, which also includes the Diet for Life (weight maintenance) and the 30-Day Diet to Lose. The Bikini meal plan includes eating steamed celery. Ouch. On Day 5, the breakfast is 1 glass prune juice, slice dry wheat toast, hot tea or decaf. Triple ouch!
Principal says that this one-week-only diet is a serious undertaking and should only be tried once a year for something along the lines of a getting-into-that-dress event. She also insists on doctor’s permission. Even though there are a lot of fluids being consumed on this calorie-restricted diet, I will presume the poundage loss is muscle mass and water weight.
And if you are a betting person, please place your entire life savings on this sure thing: I will not be able to stick with this diet even one day this week.
