The Victoria’s Secret Angels gaze coquettishly from billboards and shop windows, posing in barely-there lingerie with out- of-bed tousled hair. Their thighs don’t meet in the middle, and you’d be hard pressed to find a tighter tummy on an elite athlete.
When the company launched its Perfect Body underwear range last year, many women despaired at the unobtainable and, some argued, unhealthy ideal these models represented. More than 16,000 signed a petition claiming the marketing was sending out damaging messages.
Not that it made a difference to the VS success story. Last year the US company turned over an astronomical £3.92 billion. Half a billion viewers watched its televised runway show in London in December.
Victoria’s Secret requires all its Angels to be 5ft 9in tall and have 24in waists, so they are genetically blessed. But that’s just the start of it. VS creative director Sophia Neophitou-Apostolou claimed: ‘It’s like being an Olympian – they have to be in peak condition.’
One of her Angels, Alessandra Ambrosio, admitted: ‘You work out as an athlete. All your mind, all your everything goes into it.’
So are they simply selling a dream? Or can a mere mortal achieve a body worthy of VS scanties? To find out if it is even possible, I agree to follow the exact same diet and exercise plan that the Angels undergo.
I am to be advised by personal trainer Dan Roberts and New York nutritionist Dr Charles Passler, both of whom work with the models.
You’ll have to judge for yourself from my picture as to whether I really managed it. As a 29-year-old fitness blogger, I’m no slouch. But nothing could have prepared me for the mental and physical challenge I had in store…
THE BODY OF AN ANGEL
The main target to get that godly VS carved-from-marble figure is sub-18 per cent body fat – the percentage of our body that’s made up of fat tissue (rather than muscle, bones, hair, water and other stuff). We need fat to store energy and protect the organs. After about 20 minutes of exercise, the body no longer draws energy from carbohydrates consumed, and it turns instead to fat stores to continue ‘feeding’ the muscles. This energy is also used to power the organs.
A healthy, fit woman will have between 21 and 24 per cent body fat. Athletes will have between 14 and 20 per cent. Below 13 per cent and you start to experience severe health problems such as confusion, fatigue, hormonal imbalances, organ failure and eventually death.
I was in good shape to start with: at 5ft 9in I’d always been a dress size eight, with a 26in waist. But my body fat was 22 per cent – and this wouldn’t cut it in the VS world.
Dan explains that I need to make my glutes ‘as solid as concrete’, my obliques ‘sharply defined for a lithe look’, build muscle in my ‘skinny’ arms to get the ‘Gisele-esque lines’ and, finally, sculpt my thighs to get ‘more definition’. But I will also need to reduce my body fat – by four whole per cent. And this will mean serious training.
MY UN-HEAVENLY PLAN
Weight training is to be the key and this will include squats, dead-lifts, weighted lunges, bicep curls, tricep dips and press-ups. I am to be ‘eased’ into the programme, with one weight session with Dan each week supplemented by three to four other ‘homework’ sessions – sprint interval training for 20 minutes one day, weight training on my own for an hour the next, and classes including Pilates, boxing and ‘Ballet Beautiful’ (Angel favourites, I’m told).
After a month, my sessions with Dan are to increase to four a week but I will keep doing homework. So I should exercise six or sometimes seven days a week, and on some days do two sessions.
Having been a runner all my life, without so much as a peep into the testosterone-dominated weight-room, my first session results in back injury, meaning I need total rest for a week.
BRING ON THE PAIN
Once I get back on my feet and into the programme, I spend the first month completely physically and mentally exhausted, require an hour’s more sleep than usual and succumb to several bouts of sniffles, catching three colds.
Dan is always there spurring me on, whether it’s in a session, with a text (‘Have you done your 50 press-ups?’) or an email with some more homework. As the second month progresses I’m able to work out for longer without feeling tired. By month three, I’m dead-lifting 72kg – more than I weigh.
Sometimes, I have to lift a lighter weight as many times as I can in a minute. Others, it’s the heaviest weight I can manage three times before becoming totally fatigued. I am used to enjoying exercise but weight training just hurts. It’s a huge challenge to stay motivated.
No wonder they have to pay the Angels so much – last year, Ambrosia’s body earned her a mind-blowing £3.2 million, while her comrades Doutzen Kroes and Adriana Lima both took home about £5 million.
I have a weekly sports massage with Sarah Dewey, just like the VS girls do. It can sometimes be sore but it’s effective in soothing my aching limbs, and I don’t think I’d have been able to keep up the intense programme without it.
RUNNING ON EMPTY
In 2012 Adriana Lima revealed she’d been on a liquid-only diet for nine days pre-show to help shed her baby weight. There was, justifiably, a mini-uproar that led to Lima having to issue a warning to girls not to follow her example. Although he refuses to discuss her case, Dr Passler does tell me: ‘If you’re properly supervised, 1,000 calories per day on a liquid-only diet is sufficient, provided you have enough amino acids, protein, fat and minerals.’
I’m relieved that the initial stage of my nutritional plan comes (mostly) in solid form. But my eyes pop at the powders, pills and protein supplements Dr Passler sends me, all costing a small fortune.
There’s a vitamin and mineral complex, digestive enzymes and BCAA’s (branched-chain amino acids – to ensure my body burns fat not muscle for fuel) and even SeroSyn, a supplement designed to support ‘positive mood’.
I’m put on a high-fat, high-protein, low-carb diet. That means chicken, fish or beef with almost every meal. If I can’t face meat, I have the equivalent amount of protein in eggs (three equals about a portion of chicken). Anything with sugar in it is out, including fruit.
For the first month I can eat vegetables. Mostly those ‘that grow above ground’, such as courgettes, leaves, sprouts and broccoli.
But then I graduate to the ‘pre-catwalk’ diet, where it is just proteins and fats. To keep my energy up, I have two tablespoons of oil or butter with every meal. Eating out becomes near impossible and celebratory dinners, birthdays and weddings difficult. I end up constantly leaving food on my plate.
I have a post-workout whey protein shake made with coconut water or unsweetened almond milk, plus a protein bar as a snack. I’m to train on an empty stomach, apart from black coffee and water mixed with the vitamin and mineral powder. Some research shows this forces the body to burn fat for fuel and spikes hormones that will encourage muscle growth. I struggle to get through a training session without yawning at least a dozen times.
My last meal of the day is at 6pm – to prevent laying down calories as fat – and there’s no alcohol. So long social life. I never feel starved, just unfulfilled before bed. I also find I’m not quite so, er, regular due to the lack of fibre in my diet.
MAKING THE CUT
As well as her post-baby liquid diet, Adriana Lima revealed to a newspaper in 2012, that for 12 hours before a show there’s ‘no liquids at all so you dry out; sometimes you can lose up to eight pounds just from that’. It’s an old body-builder trick: dehydration contracts the skin, making muscle definition more prominent for a leaner, more sculpted and ‘cut out’ look.
I test it and detest it – it makes me feel cold and tired and gives me a headache. Dr Passler is vehemently against this, saying: ‘When you’re dehydrated, every cell in your body is stressed.’
READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP
At the start and end of my programme I have my vital statistics measured by experts at the University of Westminster.
My weight hasn’t changed but I’ve dropped at least a dress size and my waist has shrunk. My bust has also shrunk, by a whole cup size. My cholesterol levels dropped too, despite all that meat and oil – apparently the result of a very low-carb diet. The hours and dedication required to be VS catwalk-ready require a military mind and athlete’s performance – impossible to maintain if you have a job and family or want a social life. The VS girls admit they don’t live like that all the time. If they did, it would be called an eating disorder.
Doctor Passler warns: ‘No-carb diets are not for long-term use. The potential long-term negative effects are nutrient deficiencies and an imbalance of normal gut bacteria.’ He needn’t worry – I’m going back to my normal balanced diet, with lots of veg.
So, on paper, I did what I set out to do – I achieved the Victoria’s Secret body and I’m proud I managed it.
But health matters to me more than appearance and I’m happy with the way I look. I’ll probably keep doing weights but I’ll give heavy dead-lifts a miss. And despite the fame and fortune they enjoy, I’m happy to be back in my old routine – and not having to worry about how I look in my underwear.
Culled
No comments:
Post a Comment