With doctors telling us that a woman's metabolism starts (depressingly!) slowing down around the age of 30, the slide into the dreaded ‘middle-aged spread' is something the modern girl knows she needs to start battling the day after celebrating her milestone birthday.
And with Hollywood refusing to let its leading ladies of a certain age allow themselves even one helping of tiramisu, let alone seconds - and things have gotten so bad in Tinseltown that one as-yet-unnamed actress is actually suing movie website imdb.com for daring to reveal her real age of 40! - if a star dares to put on a few pounds, it's the unsaid rule that she can basically kiss her career goodbye.
But for every Teri Hatcher, 46, Patricia Clarkson, 51 and Marcia Cross, 49 who have all stayed LA regulation pin-thin, the likes of Carrie Fisher, 55, Nigella Lawson, 51 and Dawn French, 54, have all dared to ditch the diet throughout their careers and yo-yo in public - just like the rest of us. However, the recent months have seen these three ladies all shaping up in their fifties to shed the excess weight and have been left looking better than ever, without resorting to faddy diets or whittling down to Hatcher-esque proportions.
This week, Scene goes inside the diet secrets of the women whose slimming mantras will always be ‘the occasional chocolate bar never hurt anyone'…
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