Panni,
I've tried the Aktins, South Beachy thing twice...where you're supposed to be able to jump-start your diet by losing 13 lbs in two weeks. The first time I only lost six or seven. I just ended my second time for two weeks last week and went to my doctor who said I weighed a pound more than I did a month ago. It doesn't seem to work for me. My exercise has been sporadic (always is on deadline situations) too.
The most effective diet I started when I was in Bratislava on location with Draognheart. My I ate breakfast at the hotel, usually cereal or eggs. Had a big meal with the Caterer at noon (my main meal), and usually ate pasta at Raffaella DeLaurentiis' at night or went to the pub and had the usual eastern European fare...pork and Pivos (beer...getting sloshed with Pete Postlethwaite is an experience. Given the amounts he drinks, the man should be dead by now.) I kept up the regimen at home. Two meals. One around eleven or twelve...breakfast or lunch...some form of pasta (sometimes with chicken or something else). Despite the carbos, weight fell off of me, I got back to my college weight of 175 at one point. Of course, I was walking 4-6 miles every morning and working out three times a week too. The real key is exercise, I think.
RE: Sophia. I thought this date stuff was a fantasy situation where there were no consequences. My lovely wife understands my drooling obsession with Sophia...and I don't care how old she is. I actually encountered her a few years back at the Century City Mall and I could not believe it. At first, I didn't think it was her, because she just seemed too young. I followed her discreetly down the mall into Macy's or one of those department stores until I finally had to leave for fear I would be arrested for stalking. I got on the escalator and she'd come around the other way and was suddenly right in front of me again. Even the back view was nice. It was amazing the command of presence she had. She was by herself, no entourage at all and strode boldly everywhere she went. Passers-by jaws dropped and but everyone gave her wide berth and no one accosted her at all.
I'm rarely in awe of movie stars at all. I go in awe if I'm in England and see someone like Michael Gambon toddling home after a performance or encounter Simon Callow at Orso's or Derek Jacobi on a street corner or Peter Brook coming inside a theatre before a show to check out the place, or Ian McKellen coming into my local bistro (in his pre-Gandalf days) those kinds of artists make my jaw drop, but not movie stars...Well, Cary Grant and Laurence Olivier and Kim Novak...but no one else. I've rubbed shoulders with guys like Stephen Spielberg at Disney parties and could care less. But Sophia, well she's on a level all her own.
