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Every one of the three glossies I’ve checked out for February has concentrated on diet, but InStyle has devoted four hefty pages to it.

Page 166 - Cool Change

All Saint’s actress Allison Cratchley has a gorgeous red Smeg fridge, and she’s letting dietician Geraldine Georgeou check out what’s inside. While the idea of letting anyone look in my fridge gives me palpitations, Allison is either extremely well organised, or someone styled her fridge for the photos … I’m tipping the latter.

At first glance she’s doing awesomely - organic meat, heaps of berries, and veggies, so the fact the dietician had five suggestions for improvement was interesting. They’re great suggestions too.

Over the page, there’s a run down on sections of the fridge, and what’s best stored where. There are lots of suggestions for things to keep in the freezer in order to have easy to prepare meals at the ready, some suggestions are fantastic (my favorite involves bacon)

This is a truly excellent article, and one I will implement several things from. ****

Detoxes are obviously ultra chic at the moment, since Cleo’s also pitching one on their cover - but thank God, it’s a celebrity detox, because who wants to read about boring ordinary people?

Page 150, Cleo body makeover - “The celeb detox Gwyeth, Kate and Kylie swear by”

The lesser headline on this article is “want clearer skin, more energy, plus a leaner, sexier bod? Coming right up!” In my mind, that makes it sound super easy … but after reading just about every celebrity detox in existence, what I’ve discovered is the more celebrities love something, usually the harder it is for mere mortals to complete it.

This is Dr Nish Joshi’s detox, and if it’s so easy, I’d like to know why it has a giant book devoted to it - one I’ve flicked through more than ten times, thinking “I should buy this, and do this detox”, yet always putting it back on the shelf because I knew there was no way I could give up:

wheat, gluten, yeast, fruit (except bananas, which I despise with passion), no red meat, no dairy (I could actually do that), no chocolate or sugar (what!), no coffee (even decaffeinated, and that’s just insane), or tea. Sorry, if I have to do all that to look good, it’s just not worth it.

It also promises you’re going to feel like crap for the first 48 hours, and may experience headaches, stomach pains, nausea, fatigue, even mild palpitations, but apparently, the worse you feel, the more your body was in need of a detox. Ironically, one of my friends used to say the same thing about heroin.

I think it’s necessary to really think about how sane it is to go through a hard core cleansing plan, when 99.9% of people will just go back to their old ways. I’m probably (definitely) cynical, but unless you are a celeb, who has someone to shop and cook for them, and make sure they’re not cheating on their detox, this is an almost unsustainable regime. If you’ve done a detox and managed to maintain the lifestyle, please leave me a comment, because I’d love to hear about your experience.

Sadly, Dr Joshi doesn’t ignite my passion the way a celeb workout does. And maybe I’d be better off if he did. Now excuse me, I’m going to have a cup of coffee and chargrill a giant steak … My rating - for usefulness * - for degree of difficulty *****

Page 78 - Have you got a food hangover?

Dietician Susie Burrell lists four types of food binges and how to avoid the terrible feeling of overdoing certain types of food. They range from potato chips to ice cream and chocolate. Great advice. ***

Page 82 - What’s in your drink?

Half page article listing five popular drinks, listing their kJ’s and sugar content, and giving a healthier/lower calorie option. Some of the kJ listings are quite terrifying, and if you’re having a grande Starbucks frappuccino every day and can’t lose weight, you might suddenly discover why. Since this is listed as one of the better options, just choosing a latte might be a little bit smarter … and not that hard to work out. Disturbing, but fairly obvious ***

This is the first review of a glossy monthly mag in a while, and the first for 2007. This month, Cosmo’s Health, Food, Fitness and Wellbeing section is devoted to one topic - detoxing! Let’s examine, shall we?

Page 135 - New Year “Cosmo Tests” Special

Seven different “disciplines” which allegedly help your body in various ways are tested out by members of the Cosmo team. They range from the pleasant (Ionic foot spa to wash away toxins) to the not-for-everybody (colonic irrigation).

There are some fairly outrageous claims made - again, I’m pointing to you, Ionic foot spa, but also the LBD diet, which is supposed to work in 24 hours. Even Cosmo is careful to point out experts don’t recommend such drastic short term fixes, but it apparently got a thumbs up from nutritionists (no names are mentioned), so they pressed ahead with the test. They rate it 3/5, but the big thing to remember is it only works short term, and the moment you put anything substantial in your mouth, kiss goodbye to that flat belly.

As a total aside, I was talking to one of my (male) clients a couple of days ago about bodies, and what’s considered sexy. He’s a very urbane and spunky guy, and rates a curvy belly on a woman as a massive turn on. So maybe the idea of a totally flat stomach isn’t as gorgeous as we’re led to think?

Back to the article … my top rated pick would be the herbal liver fix to re-energise - mainly because your liver is the organ responsible for fat burning. If you’re looking to lose some weight, sorting out any liver issues is a great way to go. Not only will you feel far healthier, but you’ll look better too. If you’re interested in finding out more about having a healthy liver, Dr Sandra Cabot’s book, The Liver Cleansing Diet is an excellent (and easy to use) resource. Some of the testimonials are pretty amazing.

Second: the inner core workout to resurrect your abs. As long as the exercises are appropriate for your body and done with good technique, you can’t go wrong with strengthening your core.

Third: acupuncture for helping cure sugar cravings. If you read the book I mentioned above, you might not need to get jabbed to cure your sugar cravings, but acupuncture works really well for some people when they’ve exhausted other avenues of help. Other ways to beat sugar cravings are to increase your intake of fibre when you eat sugar (easily translated as fruit) which will satisfy your hunger for longer. Eating more regularly, and choosing more complex sugars rather than quick releasing ones will also help.

This article was okay, but for my money had more of a novelty factor than really useful information. You might find something here that works well for you though. My rating is ***

Against my will, over the last twenty four hours I’ve learned more about computers and the internet than I’ve ever wanted to know. It stems from putting a flickr album in the sidebar of my homepage which replaces the images I had there previously. Seemingly easy with the plugin I downloaded … but then my site disappeared at the hands of a fatal error (the worst kind of error), and I was left dumbfounded and more than a bit freaked out.

Luckily, I used a combination of luck and thinking like a computer nerd to access my files through another route and deal with the problem, though not without a multitude of expletives. Anyway, if you scroll down to the bottom of the homepage, you’ll see my spunky new collage, which will have more photos in it tomorrow after flickr approves the new images I’ve uploaded.

I’ve also put a plugin which chooses the most recent photos on flickr for a certain tag. I mucked around with random words, but here’s the one I most enjoyed:

smelly

So I’ve written heaps of html today, used an FTP client for the first time, CHMOD’d files, and rescued my site from impending doom. Thank God yoga was there in the middle of the day to help me cope. Even better, my gorgeous friend Janet came as well.

Today I’m loving: the random word is smelly

Miss M is officially a grade three. No longer happy with the trappings of youth, she’s a big girl, dammit. Ironically, she’s come home exhausted from her first two days of school, and been reduced to angry tears - only momentarily, but it’s strange to see her behaving so much like a little kid when she actually is quite mature - and giant - for a seven year old.

Apart from discovering the canteen isn’t open tomorrow and having to conjure up a nutritious lunch from seemingly nothing, the last couple of days have been uneventful. Lots of work (good), not much sleep (bad), week nearly over (good), Mr Dog rolled in something repulsive (bad). Nicely balanced.

Buddhist yoga starts again tomorrow, can’t wait. Four weeks is a long time to go without it.

Today I’m loving: deep breathing in the face of adversity (!)