Sometimes, Celebrity Diets Are Too Good to Be True

Raw Food, The Zone and Baby Food: Celebrities are trying them, but should you?

ByABC News
March 26, 2010, 5:20 AM

March 26, 2010— -- Spring has sprung and summer is almost here, which means that the teeny-weeny bikini sitting in the back of your closet once again is ready to make an appearance.

The question is, are you ready for its appearance?

For those fearing stepping out in swimwear, the allure of a quick fat-loss program or a celebrity diet can be too much to pass up. But the truth is that not all of them deliver the results they claim to.

Dr. Marc Lawrence, the self-proclaimed celebrity diet doctor, studied at Cornell Medical School and trained in emergency medicine at Stanford and general surgery at Harvard. On his Web site, celebritydietdoctor.com, he breaks down celebrity fad diets into fact and fiction.

"This is my way of reaching out to people," Lawrence told ABCNews.com. "A lot of people are interested in celebrities and their nutrition, so I take that and I add real nutrition advice to the celebrity plans."

Lawrence's main advice when it comes to dieting is to go fresh and natural.

"The way to get healthy and lose weight is to eat unprocessed foods," Lawrence said. "For example, take four ounces of corn straight from the cob. That is about 90 calories. Now mash them down into tortillas. Those are about 290 calories. Then dry those out and add sugar to make corn flakes, which are around 400 calories. Finally, press those out and add fats to get 600 calories worth of flavored corn chips. We have gone from 90 calories for four ounces of corn to 600 calories from 4 ounces of flavored corn chips.

"Everybody wants to be a part of the new diet craze," Lawrence added. "Everybody wants the secret, but the real secret is staring them in the face from the produce aisle."

Lawrence offered his opinions on today's newest, hippest celebrity diets: