I have to admit, I get really sick of all the svelte actresses that say they eat whatever they want. Oh, and don’t exercise. And don’t have an eating disorder. Look, I’m envious of your genes, but no matter how great they are, they’ll only get you so far. I really doubt there are many women in their early forties that can eat a few different meats for dinner and still be a size two. I realize the reason celebrities probably say this is so they don’t get criticized for unhealthy choices. And to be realistic, it’s not fair to expect them to be rail thin and eat normally. It’s sort of an either or situation. While Sarah Jessica Parker has always struck me as a reasonably down-to-earth woman (Sex and the City costar drama aside), she’s jumped on the “I eat it all” bandwagon and even ticks off her last few meals to People magazine.

“I eat everything,” the actress, 43, told PEOPLE Monday night at a special screening of her new film, Smart People, co-hosted by Allure magazine’s Linda Wells and The Cinema Society. “I’m just an eater. If it’s free, I honestly eat everything.”

As if to prove a point, the Sex and the City star rattled off a list of all the food she’d consumed in the past 48 hours: “Last night I had steak and some lamb shank. And I had some roasted chicken and some cassoulet and some profiteroles and some ice cream and some cheesecake.”

And that’s not all. On Monday, “I had two different tarts from Once Upon a Tart [in SoHo] and toast and a banana and a cup of coffee and a bagel with cream cheese,” she said. Oh, yeah: “And a glass of fresh orange juice.”

[From People]

Actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus seems to have a more honest response when asked about what she eats to keep up a good figure. She says she’s relied on egg whites on the days of big events. It’s certainly not the smartest way to eat, but at least she’s honest about it.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus says actresses who claim to eat whatever they want are full of it. The “Seinfeld” star tells Harper’s Bazaar that she only ate scrambled egg whites on the day of the last Emmy awards because she wanted to look thin. “I don’t know why people thought that was so funny. I guess some people like to pretend they can eat like [bleep] and look great in their dress,” she said. Louis-Dreyfus also tried having small meals delivered to her home, but that only lasted a day. “I tried one of those things . . . I felt like it was a prison sentence, eating that crap.”

[From the New York Post]

I guess there’s a slight chance that Hollywood is overrun with women with some lucky freak gene that lets them consume all the donuts they want while not gaining an ounce. Most celebs already seem to be genetically blessed in other areas, maybe this is just one more way in which they’re superior to the rest of us. Or maybe it’s all a load of crap and Sarah Jessica Parker lives off egg whites and lettuce like I really suspect.

Header image of Sarah Jessica at the 2008 ShoWest Banquet and Awards Ceremony on March 13th. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is shown at the Costume Institute Gala at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 7th. Images thanks to PR Photos.

Kirstie Alley has once again lost her battle of the bulge. The former Jenny Craig spokeswoman has lost her contract with them after weighing in at an estimated 200 – 220 pounds. Kirstie claimed that she was 145 pounds at her slimmest on Jenny Craig. Unfortunately it seems she wasn’t able to maintain that weight loss. According to the National Enquirer, Alley is desperate to lose weight, and has turned to an alternative medicine clinic to help her achieve her goals.

Now the 57-year-old “Cheers” star has turned to an alternative medical procedure to curb her cravings and lose weight - a regimen featuring acupuncture and herbal medicines. She is going to the Chinese Healing Institute, which uses alternative medicine to treat a variety of health problems, including eating disorders.

“Kirstie has been going to the Institute a couple of times a week. She’s undergoing acupuncture to curb her cravings for unhealthy food, and receiving potent herbal medicines to suppress her appetite,” said her pal.

[From the National Enquirer, Feb. 25th 2008 print edition]

Though Kirstie claimed on Oprah that she was 219 pounds at her heaviest, friends say she’s been lying about that all along. The Enquirer claims that at her heaviest, Alley was closer to 300 pounds. At her lightest, she was at 175. That’s still a HUGE amount of weight to lose, and it’s not surprising that an actress – or anyone for that matter – wouldn’t want to admit to being close to 300 pounds. I never really bought that she was 145 though. According to the Enquirer, Kirstie is both personally and professional embarrassed by the loss of her Jenny Craig contract. They say that Valerie Bertinelli was brought in during Kirstie’s third year to act as competition for the actress, and that Alley could have been signed to a fourth year if she hadn’t gained so much weight. Queen Latifah is now the new face of Jenny Craig.

My big question is this: if Scientology rids the world of all evils, addictions, and a bunch of other crap, shouldn’t the Scientologists have a solution for all this? Alley claims they cured her drug habit over the course of one class at Narconon. Where’s Foodonon? Surely if they believe they’re the only ones who can really help, they’ve got a solution to this, right? Something tells me even if they came up with one, we wouldn’t be hearing about it. There’s several chubby Scientologists – John Travolta would be another one – how embarrassing would it be for them when whatever alien-based program they came up with inevitably didn’t work? I’m just curious to know if Kirstie Alley, who’s donated millions of dollars to the church, asks herself, “They fixed everything else that’s wrong with my life, why can’t they fix this?” Kirstie is supposedly worried about her health and how it’s affecting her two kids. For that sake, I hope she finds a successful program she can live with.

Tara Reid is the queen of bad publicity. Not in terms of volume, but in terms of the percentage of overall publicity. Sure Paris, Britney, and Lindsay get more. But once in a blue moon you also hear something about their careers. I don’t even remember what the hell Tara Reid does besides drink and flash her augmented boobs at photographers. Tara’s also gotten freakishly thin lately. While most websites have been saying she must be anorexic, I think she’s probably just cheap. The thinner she is, the quicker she gets drunk. And since that’s the only thing Tara Reid ever does, it’s must be the most important thing in her life, thus she’s pretty committed to the cause. Tara’s gotten all defensive about her behavior, and decided to bitch and moan to OK magazine about it.

“I’m not too thin,” Tara, 32, insists in an exclusive interview and photo shoot in the new issue of OK!. “I go up 10 pounds, I go down 10 pounds.”

Tara also points out that, no matter what shape she’s in, she can’t seem to please anyone. “I was thin for a movie that I just finished [the upcoming horror film Vipers]. Now they’re going to see me and say I’m too fat because I’ve gained 10 pounds… I can’t win!”

As for the constant criticism of her alleged party-girl lifestyle, Tara asks, “What have I ever really done? Dance on a table? Who doesn’t drink with their friends and have a good time? I don’t understand why people punish others for being happy. If I have a drink in my hand, it doesn’t make me an alcoholic. If I want a glass of wine, I want a glass of wine. I shouldn’t be afraid of it because of what the media might say. Anything you do, you’re screwed. That’s the lesson I’ve learned.”

[From OK magazine]

I love the whole “What have I ever really done?” The answer should be “Nothing BUT dance on a table.” Maybe if you’d ever done anything else noteworthy, people wouldn’t be so likely to comment on the fact that the only thing you do is get drunk and make a fool of yourself. Tara clearly has body issues. At last count, she’d had 283,484 different cosmetic surgeries. The first half made everything worse, and the second half was to correct all the problems from the first half. Thus she pretty much ended up looking the way she started… just a little more freakshow. Something tells me looking particularly gaunt isn’t going to help things.

Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s Tara on November 23rd 2007, and here she is on November 11th, 2006 – a year earlier. The comparison is pretty astounding. Header image of Tara and Prince Azim of Brunei party at Mahiki Nightclub in London last night. Images thanks to Splash Photos.

As sad as it is, I think it’s really good that more and more public figures are coming out and talking about their battles with mental illness. It takes the stigma off of it, and lets the rest of us know that we shouldn’t feel ashamed or alone, and that everyone, no matter how successful, goes through times of struggle. Nicole Richie’s ex-fiancé, DJ AM (nee Adam Goldstein) recently gave an interview to Glamour magazine in which he talks about his past struggles with drugs, alcohol, obesity, and depression. Goldstein says his addictions and mental illness had gotten so out of hand that he tried to kill himself, putting a loaded gun into his mouth.

Addicted to crack cocaine, overweight, and miserable, “at 24 I felt like my life was over,” the hot Hollywood deejay, who has dated Nicole Richie and Mandy Moore, tells Glamour magazine.

“I went into my living room, reached into a cabinet above my TV and grabbed my gun, a loaded .22,” recalls the now 34-year-old. “I sat back on my heels, cocked it and put it into my mouth. I pulled the trigger. The gun didn’t go off. I thought, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m such an [expletive] failure I can’t even kill myself? I dropped the gun and broke down. That was the turning point in my life.”

[From People]

After that, DJ AM went into a recovery program where he worked on his addictions and began watching what he ate and exercising. Though he relapsed three months later, he started over again, knowing that his only options were to “recover or die.” He eventually had gastric bypass surgery, and has maintained both his sobriety and his weight loss.

“I no longer needed a trophy girlfriend or drugs to feel good about myself,” he says. “It’s been nine and a half years since I’ve had a drink or taken drugs. But every day I have to remind myself that no matter how much time I have behind me, I’m still a drug addict. At any given moment, I’m five seconds away from walking up to someone, grabbing their drink out of their hand and downing it. And if I do that, within a week, tops, I’ll be smoking crack.”

[From People]

Goldstein, who is equally known for his on-again, off-again relationship with Nicole Richie (who’s no stranger to drug addictions and weight issues herself), seems to be appreciative of what he has. Whenever his ego gets a little too big, he says, “I have to remind myself [that I’m] a fat crackhead who’s lucky to be alive.”

Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s DJ AM at the Paris and Nicky Hilton-hosted New Year’s Eve 2008 Party at LAX Nightclub in Las Vegas. Images thanks to PR Photos.

Valerie Bertinelli and Kirstie Alley have shilled for diet company Jenny Craig, and now their newest spokesperson will be plus-sized actress Queen Latifah. The company says it wants to focus on a healthy lifestyle with Latifah’s ad campaign rather than go for a traditional weight-loss oriented campaign.

“We officially confirm that Queen Latifah will join the Jenny Craig program in January,” Scott Parker, Jenny Craig’s vice president of marketing, tells PEOPLE. “We are thrilled to have Queen Latifah support our mission of improving health by taking her first step toward achieving a more healthful lifestyle.”

Parker adds: “Queen Latifah joins forces with Jenny Craig to communicate the importance of how small lifestyle changes, in the areas of diet and exercise, can have positive effects on overall health.”

The Hairspray star, who has consistently celebrated her plus-size figure over the years (including a recent PEOPLE cover story), will have a “very different campaign, focused on a healthier lifestyle, not on getting onto a specific dress size,” says Parker.

[From People.com]

It sounds like they are embracing a positive body image and that’s excellent. Queen Latifah has always come across as a confident woman and if you don’t think too hard about it she’s a very good choice for a diet company spokesperson because she seems so normal and down to earth while she’s also able to be glamorous. The thing is, she also did voice-over ads for Pizza Hut in which she told us to “Gather round the good stuff” and stuff our faces, not go for a walk or eat a salad.

There was also a story last year that she attended the opening of a “Fat Burger” restaurant in Miami and sung the fast food chain’s praises, saying “That was part of my Los Angeles education. On Sundays in California everybody would come out in all these low-riders. FatBurger was, like, the centerpiece for it all.”

There’s nothing wrong with liking fast food or becoming a spokesperson for a pizza chain, but are people going to forget Latifah’s Pizza Hut commercials when she’s shilling for Jenny Craig? Maybe admitting you need a diet plan is just a natural extension of too much junk food.

Here’s one of Queen Latifah’s Pizza Hut ads. She’s the voice at the end.

Queen Latifah is shown at the American Music Awards on 11/18/07, thanks to PRPhotos.

Just in time to promote her new movie dealing with body image, Christina Ricci has come out and spoken about her battle with anorexia.

“I was a teenager going through adolescence and at one point I had a little anorexia phase and then I kind of ballooned,” she tells Entertainment Tonight in an interview to air on Tuesday. “I feel my body now is the adult Christina and it’s what I should have come to a long time ago if I hadn’t been screwing around with my body so much.”

The 27-year-old admits she used to waste many days worrying about her projected image on the red carpet, determined to look thin and gorgeous. The obsession consumed her so much that she was no longer enjoying nights out on the town.

“I was too busy thinking about my skin or my weight or the clothes I was wearing instead of just enjoying it and saying, ‘I can’t believe I get to be here. This is awesome and I’m going to experience it.’”

OK! Magazine

I think this is timely advice, separate to the fact that Christina’s new movie Penelope deals with body image. At this time of year we’re all going out and seeing colleagues at end of year functions, worrying about what to wear and what impression we might make on our work mates. Maybe just try to be nice to everyone, that’s probably going to make a better impression than great shoes. If you can’t manage nice, then maybe get a dress to go with the shoes!

Penelope, according to IMDb, deals with a girl born with the nose of a pig, which is the result of a family curse. She must find true love to break the curse, and she goes out into the world with Reese Witherspooon’s character Annie. Since this is the exact kind of film Reese Witherspoon is made for I can’t wait to see it. Forget dull political dramas like Rendition, give me a girl with a pig’s nose fairytale any day.

Note by Celebitchy: It sounds like Ricci is downplaying her eating disorder by calling it “a little anorexia phase” and then focusing on her weight gain when she was recovering. It takes courage though to let us know she is concerned with her weight and went through a period when it consumed her. For every celebrity that talks about their personal health issues, there are countless people who are helped who are going through the same thing.

Ricci is shown on 11/7/07 at the DKNY Delicious launch party, thanks to PRPhotos.

Renee Zellweger says that eating anything you want, and getting paid millions for it, isn’t fun. I think she’s just ruined a fantasy for more than one of us.

Renee gained 20 pounds for her role in Bridget Jones’s Diary and again for it’s sequel, and lost the weight quickly afterwards both times. She says she was panicked at the warnings she received about how dangerous it is to yo-yo diet, and the freedom to eat as she pleased wasn’t as much fun as she thought.

“It sounds like heaven,” she said. “For two days it’s bliss and then you’re full, OK? And you can then indulge all your fantasies about over-eating.

“Fantasies about non-stop chocolate consumption or your fantasies about ordering the pizza and the spaghetti and the garlic bread.

“Then after a week your glucose levels are going crazy. You’re up and down and all over the place. It doesn’t feel good, and no one wants to hear that, but it’s the truth.”

Daily Mail

Not only does Renee think that eating delicious junk food isn’t fun, she really, really likes to exercise. Is she being paid to say this by some kind of fitness equipment store? Because no one actually likes the treadmill, do they?

“I have a lifestyle,” she told reporters Thursday night. “It involves keeping my sanity by going to the gym.”

Zellweger, 38, cut a slim figure on the red carpet, but said she doesn’t miss her Bridget Jones look. “I don’t think my curves are absent,” she said with a laugh. “I think I’m doing alright, thank you very much.”

People

I know what Renee is saying about exercise making you feel good, when I get off my butt and exercise with some regularity I really feel like I have a lot more energy. Of course, if there is a choice between exercising and doing anything else, exercise will always be the loser.

Renee was discussing her weight gain in relation to a possible third installment of Bridget Jones’s Diary. Author Helen Feilding is reportedly working on a third novel, detailing Bridget’s move to Los Angeles and having children. I hope that this is true, I love those books.

Picture note by Celebitchy: Renee Zellweger is shown at the London premiere of Bee Movie on 12/6/07, thanks to PR Photos.

Boy the weight criticisms are really getting out of control in Hollywood lately. Ever since pictures of Jennifer Love Hewitt emerged where she had the nerve to look less-than-skeletal, everyone has been jumping on the bandwagon and trying to get their say in. Though it seems like most celebs have the common sense to only say positive things, clearly some people are thinking otherwise, or this wouldn’t be an issue and we wouldn’t still be hearing about it. Cindy Crawford got some critiques from the Daily Mail for her less-that-airbrushed (ie totally normal) stomach the other day, and now Janice Dickinson is calling Tyra Banks fat.

Tyra weathered her own fat storm a few months ago, when she was photographed looking a little “thick” during a beach vacation. I still don’t think she looked fat, per se, and a lot can be attributed to poor camera angles, harsh light, and a bad choice for a swimsuit. Tyra fought back by wearing the offending bathing suit on her show, showing she looked fine, normal, and healthy. She also compared how she looks now to how she looked as a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model years ago, and was photographed in the same bathing suit, showing that she’d changed a little, but not all that drastically. In all fairness, she was clearly retouched to within an inch of her life in the recent photo she did. She almost looked drawn. I’m not criticizing her body and I whole-heartedly appreciate her promoting healthy, realistic body images. But if that’s what she was really trying to do, she should have been secure enough to release the new photos with a normal amount of airbrushing. Showing us a cartoon and asking us to believe that’s how you really look is insulting, and it kills your argument.

Janice Dickinson – who I believe has inherited the Queen of Mean title from the recently deceased Leona Helmsley – was on the Today show yesterday to promote her reality show “The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency.” At one point, Al Roker asked her how she felt about the Jennifer Love Hewitt controversy. Dickinson was actually fairly kind.

They continued the streak today by inviting Janice Dickinson, the self-described first supermodel, and discussed whether a size 2 is fat. Janice defended Hewitt, called her “healthy” and “not emaciated.” She continued, “You want to see someone who’s fat, I’m sorry, Tyra, Tyra Banks is fat.” Banks used to be Dickinson’s boss in the early seasons of “America’s Next Top Model” and has herself been the subject of unflattering bathing suit photos.

After she was confronted by Al Roker about the remark, she sort of backed off, but it’s unclear if she was being genuine.

[From the Huffington Post]

It seemed like Dickinson just said that because she knew she’d be in a world of hurt if she didn’t. Though frankly she’s getting a ton of negative press for saying it at all. Even in the worst photo published, I think it’s unfair to call Tyra Banks fat. Our perception of how celebrities are supposed to look gets altered over time, and eventually we see a stick as normal. I imagine Tyra Banks looks perfectly healthy in real life. Last week I wrote an article about Carrie Underwood and her “healthy diet” tips. I noted that she had lost a lot of weight, but seemed okay as long as she didn’t lose anymore. Several commenters pointed out that she looks normal in pictures and normal for Hollywood, but that she would probably look alarmingly skinny in real life. And looking closer, I definitely agree. Once in a while you’ll see a photograph of a celebrity next to a regular person, and it’s shocking how tiny they are. It’s just that our points of reference get messed up, and you become accustomed to seeing a certain thing.

I appreciate Janice’s decent take on Jennifer Love Hewitt, but I hope she’ll come out and officially correct her statement regarding Tyra Banks. It’s for her own good; I would not want Tyra on my bad side.

Dickinson: ‘Hewitt is a healthy girl’

Note by Celebitchy: Someone is jealous of a former supermodel with a successful talkshow when they have to resort to reality shows and cheap tactics like this to get attention. Janice Dickinson is shown on 10/02/07 at the Fox Reality show awards. Tyra Banks is shown looking great at Fashion Week on 9/10/07 and at the CW Network Upfronts on 5/17/07, thanks to PRPhotos.

“The Sopranos” actress Jamie-Lynn Sigler, 26, was honored last Thursday by the National Eating Disorder Association for both “her fundraising and consciousness raising work for research into eating disorders.” She has drawn a lot of attention in the media to have eating disorders seen as real medical and mental illnesses and not just a “superficial disease.”

Sigler suffered from anorexia and exercise bulimia while working on “The Sopranos.” In 2002, USA Today wrote:

Sigler cut her calories to less than 500 a day and dropped a quarter of her weight — sliding from 120 pounds to 90. “I had an eating disorder,” says Sigler, who has detailed her potentially deadly experiences with anorexia nervosa (AN) and her simultaneous rise to fame in the new book Wise Girl. “I hated the way I looked when I saw myself in the mirror, but I just couldn’t stop what I was doing.”

“Going out with my girlfriends to go to the mall was out,” says Sigler. “They might decide to go to the food court and order pizza.” Excessive exercise is a common strategy in both anorexia and bulimia. “I’d begin the day with an hour or so on the treadmill,” recalls Sigler, “and then I’d put on an exercise video. I’d even figure out how to make doing laundry or talking on the phone use more calories.”

[From USA Today]

Since then Jamie-Lynn has done a lot of hard work to get healthy and stay in recovery, and has become a spokesperson for the National Eating Disorder Association.

“It’s hard for me to even recognize who I was,” the former Sopranos actress, 26, tells PEOPLE. “My reality was so warped. … I knew I had a problem and wanted to get better, but I was not able to let go of my habit.” She recalls one moment in particular – a meal with her family, when her father begged her to have some cake. “I remember rationalizing that if I had that one piece of dessert, the next morning I would wake up and weigh 400 pounds,” she says. “It sounds so wild, but for me it was true.”

[From People]

To stay in recovery, Jamie-Lyn says she tries to eat healthfully, but makes sure she doesn’t let herself make any food regulations. She noted that she used to know ” every calorie that entered my body, and I tried to measure every calorie that I could burn. So for me, any sort of regimen, any sort of ritual or rule when it comes to dieting or exercising, is bad for me.” Stars like Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Jennifer Love Hewitt are doing a great job of drawing attention to the negative effects women (and men) can suffer as a result of poor body image. Good for them for speaking up and trying to live healthier lives.

Picture note by Celebitchy: Jamie-Lynn Sigler is shown at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards on 11/5/07, thanks to PRPhotos.

On Thursday we told you that Jennifer Love Hewitt got engaged, and that most of the press about her engagement focused instead on recent unflattering pictures of her in a bikini. I thought the criticisms were a too harsh – no one looks as good as they do when they’ve got professional lighting, fuzzy lenses, and retouchers. But as a result of all the professional lighting, fuzzy lenses, and retouchers, our perception of how people are “supposed” to look becomes skewed. Though there were a few commenters who called her fat/overweight/unhealthy, it seems that the majority of you believe that Jennifer has a nice and normal body. She’s certainly put on weight in the last ten years, but who has the exact same body they did at eighteen?

In the last few years Jennifer has ignored the bad press her curvy figure has received, but finally felt the need to respond to all the hate going around about her ass. On her website Jennifer wrote:

This is the last time I will address this subject. I’ve sat by in silence for a long time now about the way women’s bodies are constantly scrutinized. To set the record straight, I’m not upset for me, but for all of the girls out there that are struggling with their body image. A size 2 is not fat! Nor will it ever be. And being a size 0 doesn’t make you beautiful.

What I should be doing is celebrating some of the best days of my life and my engagement to the man of my dreams, instead of having to deal with photographers taking invasive pictures from bad angles. I know what I look like, and so do my friends and family. And like all women out there should, I love my body.

To all girls with butts, boobs, hips and a waist, put on a bikini – put it on and stay strong.

[From safesearching.com/jenniferlovehewitt]

I’m not sure if Jennifer was saying that a size 2 isn’t fat as a general rule, or saying that she’s a size 2 and not fat. I think she just put her sentences in a funny order that makes it a bit confusing. Regardless, it’s pretty clear that she has a healthy body image and a good perspective. She points out that she’s just gotten engaged, and people aren’t even talking about that – they’re talking about her ass. I think she looks gorgeous and will make a beautiful, healthy and happy bride.

Picture note by Celebitchy: Jennifer Love Hewitt and Ross McCall are shown in Hawaii this weekend, thanks to Splash News.