After being featured in Playboy and on The Girls Next Door, Holly Madison's used to having her figure scrutinized. Still, that doesn't mean it didn't hurt when executives from Peepshow, the Las Vegas burlesque show she starred in, told her she needed to lose weight—ASAP.
The news hit her hard—far worse than learning her ex, Hugh Hefner, had gotten engaged—and she found herself going through five stages of grief, feeling a "cocktail of shame, embarrassment and sadness," she writes in her new book, The Vegas Diaries. "I felt like I had let myself down. After finally regaining control of my own life and achieving all my goals, how was it that I couldn't even control my own body?"
At the time, she lost weight by crash dieting, eating just fruit and salads. "I wouldn't recommend this now, but I did that then because I wanted to see results so quickly," she says. "It wasn't until I got pregnant with my first baby a little over three years ago that I really started to get into nutrition and eating healthier."
Since then, the way she eats has shifted dramatically—no more crash diets, period—which still allows her to enjoy all of her favorite foods. It all comes down to a few simple guidelines.
She Starts the Day With Something Other Than Coffee.
Madison has a green juice or smoothie just about every morning, to get a quick fix of veggies and vitamins. It's something she picked up in Kimberly Snyder's The Beauty Detox Solution, which she calls her "food Bible."
Given that Madison's about seven months pregnant with her second child, she's focusing on healthy weight gain, and says her green juice habit is harder than ever to keep up. "I've just been kind of grossed out on everything, so I have to force myself to drink green juice, but I'm just not that into it," she says.
She Has An Appetizer Before Every Meal.
Having a salad before lunch and dinner helps Madison fill up on fiber and greens, so she can make or order whatever she wants as a main course without worrying about overeating.
"It's good to have something to coat your stomach first," she says.
Still, that doesn't mean she's going buckwild for every meal. Most of the time, she has pasta, veggie burgers or a recipe from one of her favorite cookbooks, the Game of Thrones-themed A Feast of Ice & Fire. She's a huge fan of the show, often hosting themed dinner parties to enjoy before watching that Sunday's episode.
"I started buying it out of novelty, because I was doing those Game of Thrones dinners, but the recipes are really good, and a lot of them have become staples for me," Madison says.
The book's oat bread, rack of lamb and honey chicken have become go-to meals in her household.
She Plans Out Her Plate.
Madison isn't a meat and potatoes girl—at least not anymore. "The way you combine foods is really important, so you're not eating carbs and protein together," she says. It's a principle she picked up from reading Snyder's books, which essentially argues that it's harder for your body to digest starches and meat at the same time.
If Madison's having chicken and craves mashed potatoes, for example, she might make mashed cauliflower instead.
"It's really easy, and so good," she says.
Making these changes means she doesn't have to worry about counting calories, like she did in her early twenties. "At the [Playboy] mansion, I was always on a diet," she says. Now, she can have her cupcakes—as the star recently did when she competed on Cupcake Wars—and eat them (in moderation), too.
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