Leave it to Victoria Beckham to be the one mother who refuses to use the "I just had a baby excuse" to let her body ease back to its pre-pregnancy weight. Posh Spice is supposedly hellbent on recovering from baby number four before she has to endure the indignity of showing a wee bit of pooch during fashion week in New York. Hey, she's the one who is torturing herself after having major surgery to deliver Harper Seven via C-section -- that's her own darn fault. But is it possible the woman who once claimed she'd lose two to three pounds in one Pilates session is actually on to something the rest of us can use to lose?
Banned from doing any major workouts because she needs to recover from the C-section, Mama Beckham has holed up in the family's Malibu pad (because God forbid we see her out with all that poundage, right?) where she is eating -- get this -- five handfuls of food a day. The "eating plan" comes with a ridiculous name: the Five Hands diet. Sounds more like a game the kiddos play at the local library's story hour to me.
But growing up with a nurse practitioner for a mother, I can tell you she always advised the amount you should take in of any one particular item was ... wait for it ... the size of your hand. Or, to be more exact, your fist. That's because your stomach is not the huge gaping hole that it appears in a standard anatomy book. Proportionally, the tummy itself is about the size of your fist. So eating that much is supposed to fill you up.
Of course you need to eat good stuff. Victoria is sticking to a high-protein diet, eating the likes of smoked salmon or scrambled eggs, and she supplements it with water and green veggies. The benefits of all that protein are still up for debate -- the new USDA food "plate" advises protein represent only about a quarter of your intake.
But balance it out, and the Five Hands may not be so bad after all.
What do you think? Would you try something Victoria Beckham is doing to lose weight, or are you wary of anything the celebs try?
Image via Tawny Rockerazzi/Flickr