Talking as Fast as I Can

by Lauren Graham

I worry about this chapter because I’m pretty sure it’s the only one I’ll get asked about when I’m promoting this book on the Today show. (Hi, Matt!) No matter what else public figures accomplish, we just seem to want to know what they eat for breakfast and what their beauty routine is. Next up: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on being a Supreme Court justice, and how she successfully tackles a bad hair day! You at home can be the judge! In our next segment, President Hillary Clinton (it’s only March as I write this, so I’m just guessing) shares her State of the Union highlights and her red-carpet slim-down secrets!

  I wish we could all stop worrying about it so much, but that’s probably unrealistic. So, rather than tell you not to worry, I’m going to tell you some of the Top-Secret Hollywood Secrets I’ve learned, and save you a ton of money instead!

  Here’s one: diet books are worthless. Don’t spend one penny more on them. Not one more. I’m serious. They all tell you a version of the exact same thing: eat less, work out more.

  Now, I’m not a doctor, and I’ll probably never play one on TV, because can you imagine? During the original series, Gilmore Girls table reads were held in the same conference room where the crime procedural Cold Case had theirs, and sometimes I’d pick up one of those scripts and try to read the lines out loud with a straight face—not making fun of them, but really trying to sound convincing. Anyone who happened to be in the room would inevitably fall down on the floor holding their stomach and laughing. The lines weren’t bad; I was.

  The problem is, I’m physically incapable of sounding at all convincing as a police-type person or a private investigator. In fact, I’m not even sure that the job of the character on Cold Case was either of those things, because while all those jobs are of course distinct and challenging and incredibly impressive in real life, on TV I find they all blend together, and all I hear is “I’m extremely sincere and competent.” As an actor person, as well as a person person, I don’t think I naturally exude competence. I exude more of an “I’m kind of winging it here, but isn’t this fun?” type of a vibe. Which is probably not what you’d want coming from the person driving your ambulance. Or a doctor. Or Dexter.

  Speaking of fake doctors, my sister worked for a literary agent for a while, which is how I learned the interesting fact that early drafts of the scripts for doctor-type shows don’t have all the technical medical jargon in them yet. While writers of a medical show probably have some sort of general doctor-ish knowledge, there are experts whose specialty it is to make sure the lines are accurate. The writer and the accuracy person don’t necessarily work together every day, so an early draft of a script might have the major story beats and the personal juicy character stuff that the writer of the script is in charge of, but instead of medical jargon, there’ll be placeholder words. In the case of the medical show my sister told me about, the words, aptly, were “medical, medical.” As in “Yes, Dr. Jones, I’d love to meet you in the supply closet, but first I have to administer forty ccs of medical medical to my patient’s medical medical or he may go into medical medical, and then we’ll really be in trouble.”

  “Medical, medical” immediately became a sort of “yada, yada, yada” for my sister Shade and me. Its origin was as a placeholder for what’s to come, but it quickly became an even more general placeholder for us. It could mean anything from “You know what I’m talking about” to “Ugh, why is this purse so expensive?” If my sister was at work and didn’t have enough time to tell me about a date she’d gone on, she’d say, “He talked about himself the whole night, his shoes were weird, medical, medical,” and I’d know exactly what she meant.

  So I’m not even a good fake doctor. I’m more comfortable saying “medical medical” than spewing any actual technical jargon, and therefore the extent of my health advice is this: just don’t eat a lot of crap, take walks, thank you for buying this book, the end.

  But Lauren, you live in Hollywood, where the most incredibly attractive, healthy-looking people are! Can’t you give us more insight than that?

  Okay, fine. Here are some more of the Top-Secret Hollywood Secrets I’ve learned from years of talking to the best nutritionists, personal trainers, Eastern and Western medicine practitioners, and famous skinny people. Every bit of advice below was actually given to me by a fancy person, or someone who knows a fancy person and the methods they use to stay fancy.

  Over the years, I’ve been told that meat is an important protein; meat is bad for you; the best way to lose weight is to eat a high-protein diet; the best way to lose weight is to eat a vegan diet; juicing is good for you; juice cleanses are pointless; someone with my blood type should eat only lamb, mutton, turkey, and rabbit, and avoid chicken, beef, ham, and pork; bacon is okay; bacon is bad for you; consuming fat helps you lose weight; all fats should be avoided or used minimally; yogurt helps your digestion; yogurt has no impact on your digestion; calcium from dairy is good for you; dairy is bad for you; gluten is no problem for people without celiac disease; everyone should be gluten-free; kale is a superfood; too much kale can actually result in a thyroid condition causing you to gain weight; and using non-natural toothpaste can cause bloating of up to five pounds. Just eating fruits and vegetables? Sure, that sounds like a good plan, as long as you aren’t sensitive to nightshades (eggplant, tomatoes, peppers), like some people are. You could probably be fine if you ate nothing but spinach all day, unless it’s the spinach that was part of the recent salmonella recall. Fruits are okay, but some fruits, like bananas, are so high in natural sugar you might as well eat a piece of cake. What’s that? You’re still eating regular, processed sugar, the kind that’s actually in cake? AHMAGAH, how are you still standing? Should I call an ambulance? If indeed you do end up at the hospital, just remember you shouldn’t eat grapefruit before taking medications because it can block their effectiveness. So enjoy your new diet of berries and water, people—unless you’re allergic to strawberries, that is, as many people are! And don’t forget to also be very very very worried about GMOs! And don’t drink just any water either: tap water is obviously poison, but beware the BPAs in your bottled water too. Also, try to get the type of bottled water that addresses your imbalanced pH levels, because while you may not know it yet, most of us are too acidic and not alkaline enough! Well, there you have it! Make sense? After all, I’ve given you the secret to everything. It’s obvious what you should do now. Could it be any clearer? You’re welcome!

  What’s that? Huh? My editor, Jennifer E. Smith, has just informed me that my book is late. Wait, no, that can’t be, because you’re reading it! I got confused, since that’s what she’s calling me about 99 percent of the time. Oh—it’s something else! She thinks the above list may be a little confusing for readers. Um, okaaaay, Jen, my ladies and gents are pretty sharp, and I’m fairly certain it isn’t confusing to them, but fine, just in case, I now give you the extremely easy-to-read food/diet chart, which is given out only in Hollywood. DON’T TELL ANYONE I GAVE THIS TO YOU!

  Wow! I cannot believe you guys got me to give you the Top-Secret Hollywood Secrets food chart! I am going to get in so much trouble!

  Now, moving on to working out. You may not believe this, but some of the ways regular people stay in shape are actually the same here too! I’ve been told that non-Hollywood people run or walk outside or on a treadmill, attend classes, and do yoga. Well, we here in Hollywood also do those things. But in Hollywood, clinical trials have shown that you burn more calories if you run while being photographed by paparazzi. Also, spinning classes are proven to be more effective if you spin while being motivated (read “screamed at”) by someone who is ten years younger and ten times more attractive than you. Yoga must be done in a studio where the temperature is at least 411 degrees. Oh, and you should probably start working on your ensemble now for the workout class you have in three days. As a person, you are worthless without a high-fashion workout ensemble. These are the only basic differences between Hollywood and you.

  Also, I’ve learned it’s not enough to just work o
ut vigorously three to five times a week, because your body is smarter than you are and quickly adapts to any athletic activity you do repeatedly, rendering your efforts almost useless. To combat this, you must constantly change up your already vigorous routine so that you “trick” your body in order to keep it guessing. This sounds strange, I know. In fact, just this morning while I was driving to spin class I was thinking about how odd the concept is, and it occurred to me that BWAHAHAHAHA, the joke’s on YOU, Body, ’cause I was taking your ass to PILATES, ha! See what I did there?

  A Japanese healer once told me that because I don’t breathe properly, most of the exercise I do does not even register with my physical self. Sometimes you have a body that just won’t quit. But in this case, I’m stuck with one that refuses to listen. Hollywood has taught me you must never relax with regard to your body—it is out to get you! You must stay at least one step ahead of your body at all times.

  That makes no sense, you say. How are you supposed to do that? Guys, it’s all in the chart. I mean, come on.

  But you all have personal trainers who do all the work for you! It’s not fair!

  When I can, I work out with Michelle Lovitt, an incredible person who is an excellent trainer and friend. Michelle is positive and knowledgeable and encouraging and also happens to be a super babe. From Michelle, I’ve learned useful information: you have to be consistent, and it helps to wear a heart rate monitor to keep track of calories burned and make sure you’re in the fat-burning zone. Of course, it is enormously helpful to work out with a partner who knows her stuff, but as another trainer I know says: “We aren’t the dry cleaner—you can’t just do whatever you want during the off-hours and expect to pick up your clothes an hour later looking like new.” You are the clothes in this scenario—does that make sense? Maybe we need another chart?

  I think part of our frustration/fascination in this arena is because we’re always holding out hope that there’s a secret combination of elements that will make something that isn’t easy a little easier: “I started putting lumps of grass-fed butter in my coffee and the pounds just melted away!” But I’m sorry to tell you that, in my experience, there’s no secret to accomplishing almost any goal worth pursuing.

  And what is the goal exactly? To make it to the Smucker’s salute on the Today show? (Hi, Natalie!) My grandmother is turning ninety-six years old in a month, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything labeled “organic” in her refrigerator. She’s a woman of deep faith and intelligence—maybe we should try bottling that? (Someone call Shark Tank!)

  I know it’s frustrating, but don’t despair. I have a few more Top-Secret Hollywood Secrets for you.

  1. If you’re trying to lose weight, you’re going to be hungry most of the day, fairly cranky, and irritating to your friends—or maybe it’s your friends who are irritating; it’s hard to tell because you’re so hungry—and you need to be like this every day for about two weeks to see results.

  2. I lost the most weight once right after a bad breakup, and then again while rehearsing a Broadway show. Try to arrange for these things to happen at the same time and then you’ll really be looking good!

  3. Most successful diets involve eating very clean, healthy foods in small quantities, with very few carbohydrates, almost no sugar, very little alcohol, and a ton of physical activity. This combination appears in almost every diet book out there. You can combine foods, count points, or act like you are French, Greek, Spanish, or Beyoncé. While each diet varies slightly, I’ve read every single one of them and I can assure you they all have the above in common.

  4. Bell-bottoms will go in and out of style every few years for the rest of your life. This is a bit off topic, but just another thing I keep meaning to tell you. They’ll change them just enough to make you think you need new ones. You do not. Keep the ones you already have.

  Stars may or may not be just like us, but generally I’ve learned it’s a mistake to think anyone else has the answer to pretty much anything. When I hear Kim Kardashian lost her baby weight on Atkins, I’ll eat steak for three days straight until I remember that, oh yeah, I’ve tried this before and it didn’t make me feel that great. You have to find what works for you, not what works for someone else. I kept trying to be a vegan until I realized that part of my motivation was that I wanted to be able to go on the Ellen show and bond with her over it. I respect and adore Ellen so much, and she’s always been so supportive of me as an actor, writer, and producer. Because of her, I got to turn my novel Someday, Someday, Maybe into a pilot script for the CW, and I co-wrote another half-hour pilot for her company as well. She gave me opportunities I’d never had before, and it’s like I wanted to repay her by being more like her, which, if you think about it, is also the premise of the stalker movie Single White Female. It’s great to look up to people you admire, but you can’t make life decisions motivated by the hope that you’ll be invited to Ellen and Portia’s to eat lentils and watch Scandal.

  Anyway, if you’re truly fed up and confused about all this, good news! For you, we have Soylent, a sludge-colored meal replacement concoction invented by people in Silicon Valley to enable them to cut out the pesky time that eating requires (lunch, pah—what a waste of brainpower!) and devote more time to creating new face-swapping apps. Meals including food? What are you, some sort of time-wasting East Coast pizza eater?

  Every morning my father eats half a loaf of bread with butter, a giant smoothie, maybe an omelette with cheese, and then he has breakfast. I just want a piece of toast once in a while—is that so wrong?

  Plus, I think it should be against the law to feel down on yourself regarding any issues that Oprah is still working on, and OPRAH IS STILL WORKING ON THIS ISSUE. She has rubbed elbows with heads of state and every celebrity in the universe, opened a school in Africa among other accomplishments, made millions of dollars, and helped scores of people live a better life, but, by her own admission, she is still working on diet-related topics. So to sum up: let’s all chillax about it and spend more time being kind to ourselves and doing truly useful things like trying to resuscitate words that were never cool, like chillax.

  Good news! My accountant has just informed me that by imparting all these Top-Secret Hollywood Secrets to you, I’ve now saved you at least one zillion American dollars! Just make sure to mention me when you talk about it on the Today show (Hi, Kathie Lee and Hoda!).

  I don’t know if we’ll ever live in a world where sixteen-year-old boys will throw their PlayStations in the trash because they’ve discovered they’d rather sit in the movie theater watching Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 12, but I’m guessing it probably won’t be in my lifetime. Most movies are made for people who want to watch Jurassic World over and over. Hollywood is mostly for young people, and young people mostly like to look at other young people because that’s who they relate to. The people who pay for movies and TV to get made are mainly making them for young people too. In television, “young people” are people ages eighteen to forty-nine. You may have heard of these people—they’re sometimes referred to as the “key demographic.” They’re the ones whose attention advertisers most want to capture on television and in the movies, and I’m going to tell you why: paper towels.

  I was recently at the house of a friend who’d just made one of those trips to Costco where you feel really smug about all the money you saved until you get home and can’t fit the twenty-pound jar of generic peanut butter in any of your cupboards because you forgot about the ten giant jars you already have. So she was trying to get rid of some stuff. She offered me one of those twelve-packs of paper towels that can also be used as an air mattress if you have a guest over, and I was pretty psyched to take it off her hands. I happened to actually need paper towels, and I was like, wow, what a great coincidence. Then I looked at them a little more closely, and I realized they weren’t my brand of paper towels.

  I always feel guilty when I use paper towels, but what makes me feel slightly better is getting the kind that are perfor
ated at narrower intervals and can be ripped off into smaller sections. I feel better because at least I’m not using a whole towel. So I turned down these free, non-perforated paper towels, which my friend thought was crazy, and that’s how I suddenly realized I was out of the key demo.

  To some degree, I get why our business likes ’em young. Advertisers want people they can convert, people who haven’t yet made up their minds about things like what their favorite paper towels are or what car they like to drive—people who might change their minds and switch to a different brand because of the ads they see. But as consumers get older, they decide what they like to use and they hardly ever deviate, which means advertisers need to move on to influence the next batch of potential paper towel devotees. Which is why there aren’t more older people—especially women, who apparently have a tendency to pick their paper towel preferences earliest—in movies and television.

  “But what about Betty White?” you ask. You’re right! Betty White is hilarious, talented, and still working. That is so incredibly rare that she is literally the only person anyone ever mentions when challenging my paper towel theory. No one ever says “What about Betty White and Bathsheba Phlellington?” because Bathsheba Phlellington stopped getting work years ago, and that’s only partially because I made her up. There simply isn’t a ton of work for women in her category, and therefore there isn’t one other example of a Betty White type other than Betty White herself. There are a handful of women who are slightly younger than Betty that I could cite as examples, it’s true, but I dare you to name five who aren’t Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton or who don’t also have the word “Dame” in front of their name.

  Carrie Fisher is one of my favorite actors and writers. I’ve enjoyed her films, seen her on Broadway, and read everything she’s written. When I was writing my novel Someday, Someday, Maybe, I kept her Postcards from the Edge on my desk the whole time, and when I got stuck I’d pick it up and reread sections I’d already read a dozen times. Our books are very different, but the fact that she is an actress who wrote a novel—one that was loosely based on her own life—and became a successful screenwriter was a big inspiration to me.