Gwyneth Paltrow: The 36-year-old mother of two has dabbled in the Master Cleanse program, in which you can consume nothing but water, lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper for a minimum of 10 days.
Paltow's was the most unhealthy on the list. Why? There are such things as essential nutrients. Essential amino acids and essential fatty acids (interestingly, there is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate). These are essential because your body cannot produce them itself. It must be consumed. Essential amino acids are found mostly (but not exclusively) in animal protein (if God wanted us to be vegans, he wouldn't have made animals out of meat). So if you eat meat and/or dairy, you're probably OK on this. Essential fatty acids are found in many sources (flax seed oil is a good one), but the best source is in fish oil.
In addition to not supplying the essentials for life, Paltrow's diet is insufficient in calories. It is not much different than determined starvation. The body, after about 17 hours of fasting, will begin to cannibalize its own tissue to survive. If only it would just take the fat. but such is not the case. Some fat will be utilized, but much protein (lean tissue) will be broken down also for a variety of reasons I will not go into here. In addition, minerals will be leached from bones and internal organs to maintain a health ph level in the blood (I don't think it would have hurt her to eat veggies). This is NOT good.
The goal should be maintaining lean tissue while shedding fat. Such selective use of tissue is a tricky maneuver. To maintain lean tissue, extra protein must be consumed, such that if any is broken down (into things such as blood glucose), it will come from the diet and not the lean tissue in the body. Secondly, resistance exercise must be employed to keep protein synthesis positive in the lean tissue, making it less likely to be cannibalized. Fat energy can only be utilized at a certain rate, which translates into a maximum 'healthy' weight loss of about 1-1.5 lbs per week. Any more, and the chances of lean tissue cannibalism increase dramatically. This amounts to about a 500 calorie/day deficit (to be made by either eating less, exercising more, or a combination of both).
Sure Paltrow lost weight, but I'd guess at least 50% of it was from lean tissue. From the freep article above, Elisabeth Hasselbeck appeared to have the best:
The 31-year-old credits fierce workouts at New York gym La Palestra, where they boast a staff of nutritionists and psychologists along with trainers... Hasselbeck has stayed the course on a wheat-free diet (she has celiac disease), and noshes on lean protein, vegetables, nutrition bars and nuts.That sounds about right in general (minus the psychologists). Britney Spears and Halle Berry seemed to have mostly reasonable plans, but without more detail it is hard to judge.
For more information on recomposition of the human body in a scientific (and sane) way, here's a very good resource (albeit not exhaustive) of articles: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/articles
