DOES NOT WANT TO HEAR YOUR SECOND ALBUM ABOUT THE PRESSUREZZZZZZZZZ OF FAME

Yesterday we told you about the lovely 300-calories-every-other-day diet. And now this week's red tops tell of cracks developing in the Cruise/Beckham camp, with a ‘source’ claiming that shortstop Tom is unhappy with his wife for adopting Vicky B’s Spartan food regime. "She is very thin largely because she is following Victoria's strict 900-calories-a-day eating plan. She is copying Victoria's fad of eating seaweed shakes, frozen grapes and edamame beans. She is tiny.", says the mysterious, but we assume, close personal friend.

Leaving aside whether this would actually work (and most rational-thinking diet types will tell you that any diet under 1200 calories will make you store fat, rather than ditch it), and the fact that frozen grapes (presumably chosen because they are a) largely made up of water and b) take an age to eat) sound suspiciously joyless, we at Lipster thought some serious, like, SCIENCE was in order. So, how much fun can you have on 900 kcals and what does it actually look like?

Let’s start with breakfast. Here’s a nice, well-balanced bowl of muesli with some skimmed milk and no sugar. You know, the sort of thing that the bottom-obsessed Gillian McKeith might smile upon. Good girl, Gillian would say, you will have normal poo.

And would you like a cup of tea with that? Just like a normal person, as you brush the sleepy dust from your eyes and John Humphrys barks at a naughty parliamentarian in the background?

Lovely. So, I make it exactly 08:23 am. How many calories is that so far? Let’s ask our handy, Lipster calorie calculator. 1 cup of tea (skimmed milk, one sugar) + 1 bowl muesli + skimmed milk =

Ah. Well, if we assume you skip Paxo and go to bed like a nice girl at 10:30 pm, we’ve got roughly 14 hours to go, and 446 calories to play with (or 430, if you’re sweet enough already and don’t take sugar in your tea). Off to work then, and before you know it, it’s lunch time. Yay. Let’s go to Pret for a nice sandwich. Falafel, Spinach and Tomato on wholegrain bread looks very nice, and as Pret say themselves, there’s not ‘a drop of mayo in sight’. Excellent, we’ll have that. So. How many calories now, diet robot?

Right. Should have saved half that sarnie for later, then. And no more cups of tea. Let’s stick to water, and drink gallons like a supermodel.

Now then, let’s skip forward to 18:06. Hometime. You hungry? Fancy a small bowl of pasta (cooked in salt-less water and absolutely nooooooo olive oil)? Great, give us a minute. Here you go.

Yum, that looks nice. I do fancy a cup of tea though. Let’s put the kettle on and find out where we are with our calorie stats. 1 bowl muesli + 1 cup of tea + 1 sarnie + 1 small bowl pasta equals what, exactly?

Shit.

Put the cup of tea down, for god’s sake. You’re already a fat-tastic 319 calories over Vicky B’s supposed intake. Now granted, you could have had the seaweed shakes, but they sound kind of gross, and I’m not sure how easy it is to get one’s hands on seaweed in Tesco Express. And you could have had this –

…(one each for breakfast, lunch and dinner), but you’d have to have had them without toast and even then you’d be 3 calories over, you terrible, terrible woman. As for the unspeakable evils of booze, one nice large glass of chilled pub sauvignon equals roughly 240 calories, so don’t even think about going out with your mates. Though I suspect on a diet of this kind, you won’t have any.

Now, as proper scientists, we need a conclusion. So, what have we learnt ?

900 calories = NO FUN AT ALL.