FISTFUL OF FOOD


Victoria Beckham is currently flaunting a 23-inch waist, the span of a seven year old and that magical transformation from a new mother to svelte fashionista took just six weeks. Sure there was Pilates and gentle exercises in the gym but the diet that made the weightloss possible is the latest fad: the "Five Hands" diet. Style maven Victoria is rumoured to have adopted the strict diet to help her lose the weight she gained during her recent pregnancy. The diet consists of limiting one's food intake to five palm-sized portions per day. Apparently, just days after giving birth to daughter Harper on July 10 in Los Angeles, Victoria started eating "five high-protein meals a day accompanied by green vegetables, drinking gallons of water, and only snacking on goji berries and nuts. " The urgency for whipping herself into shape came from the fact that the New York Fashion Week was just a few weeks away. The 37-year-old gained about 9. 5 kilos during her pregnancy, and has by all accounts returned to her former glory, just in time for the fashion fiesta. This isn't the first time the fashion designer and former Spice Girl has tried an innovative way to lose weight. Following the birth of her three sons Brooklyn, 12, Romeo, eight, and Cruz, six, Victoria used a combination of Pilates and algae wraps - which reportedly shed 1-2 kilos a session - to regain her slender appearance. Images of her after the birth of her first son Brooklyn, in 1999 sparked concern over her rapid weight loss. At the time, she said: "I had become Skeletal Spice. What upset me was I ate like any normal person. . . I wasn't happy with how I looked. " It seems she's changed her mind now.

WHEN A SLURP DRIVES YOU MAD


If the sound of your boyfriend chewing food makes you want to slap him or the sound of someone breathing can send you screaming, you are likely to be suffering from misophonia. For sufferers of this condition, sounds of other people eating - chewing, chomping, slurping, gurgling - are enough to trigger an instantaneous, blood-boiling rage. Many people can be driven to distraction by certain small sounds that don't seem to bother others - gum chewing, footsteps, humming. Misophonia is a newly recognized condition that remains little studied and poorly understood. According to experts, it follows a strikingly consistent pattern. The condition is assumed to begin in late childhood or early adolescence and worsens over time, often expanding to include more trigger sounds, usually those of eating and breathing. Scientists believe the condition is hard-wired, like right- or left-handedness, and is probably not an auditory disorder but a "physiological abnormality" that resides in brain structures activated by processed sound. Unfortunately, there is no known effective treatment.