Body Watch : Fare Minded : Carrie Latt Wiatt made her name helping stars slim down. With her new book, she lets the rest of us in her secrets.

Carrie Latt Wiatt once asked Wolfgang Puck to prepare “something healthy” at Spago for one of her clients. “ ‘No way. Tell them to go to Pritikin,’ ” she says, recalling his response.

That was way back when. These days, Wiatt can laugh about a few nasty fat grams. Now Spago serves Pritikin pasta on request (it’s not on the menu), and Wiatt, who is sort of the thin, cute, hip Dr. Ruth of dietitians, feels a tad responsible. Her largely Hollywood-based clientele, past and present--including Barbra Streisand, Julia Roberts, Rob Reiner, John Larroquette, John Davis and Sandy Gallin--depends on her for weight loss or simply “health and weight management.”

Before Ron Meyer became president of MCA, Wiatt taught his French chef to cook low-fat foods. Dennis Quaid consumed large quantities of Wiatt’s pasta Bolognese made with turkey to drop 43 pounds for “Wyatt Earp.” Kate Capshaw and Sela Ward signed up when they wanted to lose weight after giving birth; Carol Burnett, for weight maintenance.

Agents, studio executives and actors who follow Wiatt’s 10-year-old Diet Designs program would no sooner dream of ordering Morton’s lime chicken with the skin or the dark meat attached than they would of eating the Grill’s Caesar salad tossed with, well, the Grill’s Caesar dressing. Most of the “nicer restaurants,” Wiatt explains with a certain nod to her power, know about her prescribed mixture of non-oil dressing--red wine vinegar with a touch of lemon, Dijon mustard and pepper--and “keep it mixed in the back.”

At $200 per 15 meals a week, clients subscribe to her advice by ordering her freshly prepared, low-fat and nutritionally balanced meals that lean toward carbohydrates (carbs account for 65% to 70% of daily calories).

Now she has taken her message to the masses--as long as the masses do their own cooking. If a reader gets nothing else out of it, Wiatt’s new book, “Eating by Design: The Individualized Food Personality Type Nutrition Plan” (Pocket Books), reveals the recipes for many of the dishes that the rich and famous have messengered to their doors.

They include her fantastic fudge brownies prepared with cooked, pitted dates that account for a practically invisible .2 gram of fat, Caesar salad dressing and country meatloaf.

The rest of the 436-page book requires a bit of effort to comply with--and that’s just Wiatt’s point. Rather than expect everyone to be able to follow a single, cookie-cutter eating program, Wiatt enables readers to personalize a plan. She provides a test for figuring out one’s eating-personality type (including diet “lifers,” loner-eaters, Type-A power lunchers) and another for computing portion and calorie control based on body type, diet history and exercise regime.

Just as she believes that some types of people can’t go to sleep without wolfing down a brownie, a five-foot-tall woman doesn’t need the same amount of calories as a six-foot tall woman, she says. As for those Type-A power people she knows so well, Wiatt recommends large protein lunches “to fill their brains” and pasta for dinner. “Pasta releases serotonin in the brain, which causes a feeling of calmness. I like power players to unwind with pasta unless they’re going to another power meal for dinner and I would suggest more protein to keep them alert.”

Wiatt eats frequently at Toscana, a Brentwood trattoria popular with the Hollywood contingent. There’s plenty of low-fat food on the menu, including minestrone soup, grilled white fish, pounded half chicken (ordered sans skin and dark meat) and several pastas, although only those with a tomato base are OK by her.

On a recent day, she orders penne in tomato sauce--the two-cup portion is fine, she says--sprinkles it with an acceptable teaspoon of Parmesan cheese, and then barely touches it. The pizza bread arrives, dribbled in a bit of oil, but Wiatt only nibbles. A complimentary order of tiramisu never even reaches her lips. She admits that the egg-white omelet and half bagel she consumed for breakfast filled her up, “but I’ll snack again in an hour and I’ll eat dinner early tonight, at, like, 7.”

Wiatt, 37, holds a bachelor of science degree in nutrition and food science from Cal State Northridge and is studying for her master’s degree in nutrition. Working in clinics early in her career and dishing up generic meal plans to patients was an exercise in frustration, so she opened her own Santa Monica business. The Hollywood connection blossomed when a few agent and actor clients referred their friends.

In 1992, Wiatt married one of them, Jim Wiatt, head of International Creative Management, which didn’t hurt her livelihood. They are now divorcing.

“When I was married to Jim, I was out almost every night so I had the same issues as my clients: how to eat in restaurants, how to feed your body for long days. Whether it’s a movie star or a mom, you have to think about feeding yourself right. It’s planning.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Wiatt’s Ways

* Personality type. Be true to your nature and don’t try to force yourself to follow a meal plan that doesn’t suit you.

* Portion control. Calories do count. Determine the amount of calories you need to maintain or lose weight. That means there is a difference between a two-cup portion of pasta pomodoro and a six-cup portion.

* Interval eating. Eat three meals a day plus two or three snacks. By skipping a meal, you’ll only slow your metabolism instead of boosting it, and you’ll probably end up eating more out of hunger.

* Exercise. It should also be geared to personality type. A power player isn’t likely to attend aerobics classes; 15 minutes on a treadmill every day makes more sense.