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nineteenth-century bodybuilder would eat.
    For lunch, I continue on the boring-food train with a recipe Cameron concocted of brown rice, lentils, quinoa, and kale mixed in a bowl. This may sound easy, but I screw it up terribly. I invite a friend to my apartment for lunch because audiences are really better for feats of spectacular healthfulness. After we talk for a while, I dump the rice and lentils into a pan and proudly leave the room to take a phone call. When I come back, the rice smells sort of awful, like it’s burning. “Do you think the rice is burning?” my friend asks. “No,” I say, and go over to check on the rice. It is burnt so badly I have to open a window, throw the rice in the trash, and take out the trash. Eventually, however, I remake the dish, and the end result is a bland bowl of rice with lentils. I do put Cholula Hot Sauce in it because Cameron is a big fan of Cholula Hot Sauce. My friend seems rather unimpressed by that.
    Later, however, I am very productive at the gym. I deadlift far more weight than I did the day previous, and by that I mean I actually lift weights this time as opposed to just the bar.
    For dinner for my final night of the Cameron diet, I decide to get Cuban food. It’s Cameron’s “ideal comfort food.” I have shrimp tacos. They are unbelievably delicious, and again the magnitude of what Cameron gave up appears before me. How could she end all her years of eating delicious stuff for all this kale? Merely for muscle?
    Still, you have to admire her; Cameron is trying (gamely) to be actually healthy and not propagate some odd gospel of weight loss. In fact, after the Cameron Diaz diet was over, I had actually gained weight, but I felt stronger and my skin was better. I guess life is all about small victories.

I Tried Madonna’s Diet
    I t has been exactly thirty years since Madonna exploded into the public consciousness with her debut album
Madonna,
and what great years they have been. Is there a woman out there more impressive than she is? Madonna is the top-selling female artist of all time. She has a son named Rocco. One time she was interviewed by Norman Mailer and he kept wanting to talk about feminism and its discontents and she subtly made fun of him the entire time and he did not seem to get it.
    However, being Madonna is not easy. And how does she do it? She is fifty-six years old and she had to wear a crucifix on her butt at the Met Ball. Literally no one has ever done that before, and perhaps no one will ever do it again.
    So, while Madonna’s actual accomplishments are too much for the modern human to even contemplate, it would be nice to have her biceps at some point in my life. In that spirit, I decide to attempt Madonna’s apparently draconian fitness and nutritional regimens. There is no time like the present to do something truly ambitious with your life.
     
Preparation
    Madonna follows a very strict macrobiotic diet that abolishes the consumption of wheat, eggs, meat, and dairy and extols the benefits of something called “sea vegetables.” You were expecting this woman to mess around? She does not mess around.
    In order to follow Madonna’s actual diet as closely as possible, I buy a cookbook written by Madonna’s former private chef Mayumi Nishimura (who now is a sort of public apostle of macrobiotic living). It is called
Mayumi’s Kitchen
and details various macrobiotic meals she used to serve Madonna and Madonna’s starving passel of backup dancers. Madonna even wrote the foreword to the book. I am going to follow Mayumi’s “10 Day Detox Diet.” I hope it won’t kill me. Some of the recipes, like “Tofu Tartar Sauce” and “Sauerkraut with Thyme,” sound a little suspect. I plan to do some of the recipes out of order for this reason. I want to save the sauerkraut until the bitter end, for example.
    I also purchase Madonna’s series of workout DVDs, as one cannot be the queen of pop without a punishing fitness regimen. I am a little