Read I'll Have What She's Having: My Adventures in Celebrity Dieting for Free Online Page A

worried, because Madge is in such good shape. Her trainer Nicole Winhoffer said she has to put her in “really odd positions” before she even feels an exercise. Madonna actually owns a series of gyms in badass places like Moscow and Mexico City. They are called Hard Candy Fitness. The DVD series is called
Addicted to Sweat
, which I am not.
    If I am going to be honest, this is altogether the strictest diet veteran dieter Rebecca Harrington has undertaken. Will it be horrible? Or will it be as awesome as the time Madonna eviscerated Mike Myers in
Interview
magazine? (Madonna: “Would you ask me some questions that have a resonance to my life? This interview is mostly about what you’re interested in: toys and hockey.”) I simply don’t know.
     
Day 1
    I start the day with a nourishing portion of miso soup and brown rice. I was worried I would not have the stomach for miso soup in the morning, but I really enjoy it and it’s rather filling. It’s so filling that I skip lunch and don’t eat until dinnertime, which is a stew of barley and seaweed. It is not very good, and I sort of regret that I missed out on the soy meat and spiral rice pasta of lunch. But do you think Madonna engages in regrets of this nature? This is a woman who wrote a song where the chorus goes “I’m not your bitch / Don’t hang your shit on me.” In the background of this chorus, she whispers, “Handle it.” So, no, I don’t think she would.
     
Day 2
    In order to give your “stomach a break” from the tremendous strain of sea-vegetable barley stew, Mayumi suggests that you start off day 2 with a heaping portion of steamed greens and a Fuji apple. I am getting a little hungry now, I must admit. I am seeing the puritanical nature of this diet. A woman cannot survive on greens alone.
    I keep wandering around New York City listening to “Papa Don’t Preach” to take my mind off my all-encompassing hunger, and it strikes me how revolutionary Madonna was. Did you know that Madonna dedicated that song to the pope because she hated “male authorities”? And the pope is called “
il
Papa
” in Italian! (Clever!) I mean, what pop star even cares about standing up to the pope now? Or male authorities? Pop stars today are just like, “Male authorities, how am I doing? Am I the prettiest? You tell me!” or “Where is the pope? Is he on a bus? I am going to visit him!”
     
Day 3
    Today I decide to do my first
Addicted to Sweat
DVD. I am so scared. On the outside it has a massive picture of Madonna, like Stalin in Moscow, looking beautiful and addicted to sweat. She is presiding over a tiny graphic of a woman (it’s Nicole, Madonna’s personal trainer, I find out later) doing an insane move where she holds the back of her foot near her head. When I actually put the DVD on, it does not mention Madonna, play her music, or feature her in any way. The whole workout stars Nicole in what seems to be a Russian warehouse doing incomprehensibly difficult dance moves. She keeps jumping, and there are a lot of “ball changes” going on. Madonna is only implied. Handle it!
    Later that day, I make something called tofu tartar sauce, which is just tremendously disgusting and lumpier than it should be because I do not have a strainer.
     
Day 4
    One time Madonna told
Spin
’s Bob Guccione Jr. that “straight men only think about how you may dominate them in some way and make their dicks shrivel up or something.” In that aggressive yet very fun spirit, I start my day off with corn in a plum-paste sauce. It is good, actually. It gives me a sugar rush because I have not had sugar for several days, even in plum-covered-corn form.
     
Days 5 and 6
    Madonna, at least in her younger years, took time off from her rigorous dieting schedule on the weekends and ate whatever she wanted. In honor of her, I do the same, but the truth is, I am basically dying on this diet. I don’t know how Madonna lives. It is so hard to give up all those foods. Literally