Why Suzanne looks fabulous at 50-plus Somers - CONSUMERLINE

Back in the 1980s, she made us laugh in the TV sitcom Three’s Company. The blonde bombshell was every man’s fantasy and every woman’s envy. How we hated her for looking so fab with nary a flab! So where’s Suzanne Somers now? She’s just fine, thank you – and she’s certainly in fine form.

But Suzanne wasn’t kidding when she said that after she bowed out of the kleig lights, she ballooned to a hefty 130 pounds, a glaring reality that she found hard to face. Eat your hearts out, folks, Suzanne’s back to her old form, tipping the scales at 116 pounds – actually, her weight when she was a teenager many, many Somers ago – and eating to her heart’s content.

What’s her secret? She bares it all in her book Suzanne Somers’ Get Skinny on Fabulous Food (available at National Book Store), actually a sequel to her New York Times bestseller Eat Great, Lose Weight! She tells us, for instance, that fat will not make us fat. She digs into the meat of the issue, separating fat from fiction.

Let’s hear it straight from Suzanne:

Diets – the ultimate empty promise perpetuating the same cycle over and over again. We’ve all been victims of yo-yo dieting. We stick to some diets longer than others, but c’mon, just how much cabbage soup can a person eat? Let’s face it ... most diets fail because they are based on deprivation, and after depriving yourself for a period of time, you will eventually want to reward yourself. During the reward time, you will probably gain back all the weight, plus more. Staggering statistics show that 95 percent of us who go on diets gain back all the weight. Something is terribly wrong!

So how do we beat the statistics? I’m happy to say I have finally figured it out. If you read my first book, you heard about my battle with dieting and how a trip to France in 1992 and an introduction to food combining changed everything for me. I stopped dieting on plain, boring, unsatisfying food and started eating rich, delicious meals full of flavor and, yes ... fat. I got skinny on fat and realized I would never have to diet again. By eating a balanced diet including fresh fruit, vegetables, whole grains, butter, cheese, eggs, meat, and even cream, I went from 130 pounds down to 116, the amount I weighed as a teenager. And because I give my body real foods, my hunger is satisfied and I am meeting my body’s nutritional needs. In the last six years my weight has not fluctuated by more than five pounds.

Suzanne explains exactly what happens when we diet or deprive ourselves of food. When you cut down your calorie intake from your usual 1,500 to 1000 calories, your body must make up for the missing fuel source by burning off first your glycogen and protein stores and then your fat reserves to provide you with enough energy to make it through the day. This is why you will lose weight but what you’re actually losing is just a lot of water, not fat – glycogen is stored with water and weighs more than fat. The human body is an adaptable machine. It adapts to survive on 1,000 calories, instead of 1,500 or the fuel it used to run on. Your metabolism slows down to keep you from starving to death. That means you have less energy to get you through the day, and you end up feeling tired and listless. Feeling deprived, your body starts to hoard a portion of the fuel – it may use 800 calories and store 200 as fat for later use. That’s why even if you’re eating like a bird, you’re still putting on weight. Frustrated, you attack a bag of cookies that you see in the cupboard.

You think you’ve heard the worst? Listen to this: Now that you have an even lower metabolism than before you started the diet, your body needs fewer calories to survive. If you go back to eating the way you used to at 1,500 calories a day, your body will have an excess of fuel because it has learned to survive on 800 calories. Thus, you have an additional 700 calories that will be stored as fat for later use. That explains why you gain all, repeat all, the weight back – and some more because of your new lower metabolism.

These weighty bits of information Suzanne got from Dr. Diana Schwarzbein, a renowned endocrinologist from Santa Barbara and author of The Schwarzbein Principle.

So, are you ready to Somerize?

Suzanne’s simple plan teaches you what foods to eat and what to eliminate so you can reprogram your metabolism to burn fat.

As for what to eat, Suzanne categorizes them into four Somerized food groups:

• Pro/fats: Proteins like meat, poultry, fish, and eggs, and fats in their natural state like oil, butter, cream, and cheese.

• Veggies: A host of low-starch, fresh vegetables from artichokes to peppers to zucchini and more.

• Carbos: Whole-grain pastas, cereals, breads, beans, and nonfat dairy products.

• Fruit: A huge variety of fresh fruit from apples to peaches to tangerines and more.

As for what to eliminate, Suzanne calls them funky foods. These include sugars, highly starchy foods, caffeine, and alcohol.

To whet your appetite, Suzanne dishes out the basic guidelines of Level One of her weight loss program, thus:

• Eliminate all funky foods.

• Eat fruit alone, on an empty stomach.

• Eat pro/fats with veggies.

• Eat carbos with veggies.

• Keep pro/fats separate from carbos.

• Wait three hours between meals if switching from a pro/fats meal to a carbos meal, or vice versa.

• Do not skip meals. Eat at least three meals a day, and eat until you feel satisfied and comfortably full.

Fact is, one of Suzanne’s great joys in life is cooking good food, glorious good food, for family and friends. She remembers baking her first cake at age 6. That’s how her burning love for cakes started. And her son Bruce didn’t grow up on pizza or macaroni but on steamed clams with garlic butter or homemade chicken soup, which doting mommy Suzanne loved preparing at home. But more than the food, mother and son savored the precious moments spent together at the dining table. Bruce certainly remembers that, even now that he’s got a family of his own. Yes, Suzanne is now a grandma four times over!

The gorgeous grandma shares some really great recipes. Here, help yourself:

Whole-Grain Pasta With Candied Tomato Sauce

Candied tomatoes:

24 ripe tomatoes

Salt

Fresh thyme, chopped

1 pound whole-grain pasta

5 basil leaves, chopped

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Slice the tomatoes in half, crosswise. Place the tomatoes on a baking sheet, cut side up. Sprinkle with salt and thyme. Bake for 2 to 3 hours until the tomatoes are wrinkled on the outside, crusty on the bottom, but still somewhat moist in the center.

Place the tomatoes in a food processor and puree until smooth (or you can put the tomatoes in a mixing bowl and blend with an electric mixer). If the sauce is too thick, thin it with a little pasta water until it reaches the desired consistency.

In a large pot, bring salted water to a rolling boil. Cook the pasta according to package instructions until al dente (cooked through but not mushy). Drain the pasta in a colander, reserving a little of the pasta water to use in the sauce.

Top the pasta with the sauce. Garnish with basil leaves and serve immediately.

Drizzle olive oil over the tomatoes before you put them in the oven.And you may sprinkle a little Parmesan cheese over the top, if you like.

Asian Braised String Beans

2 tbsps. peanut oil

2 tbsps. minced garlic

1 tbsp. grated fresh ginger

1 pound string beans, ends trimmed

1/4 tsp. hot red pepper flakes (optional)

1/4 cup soy sauce

Heat a wok over high heat. Add the peanut oil and heat for a minute or two. Add the garlic and ginger and saute for 1 to 2 minutes. Add the string beans and red pepper flakes, if using, and saute for approximately 5 minutes, until the skin bubbles. The beans should be tender, but still a little crispy. Add the soy sauce and saute for another 30 minutes or so. Serve immediately.

Fried Rice With Shiitake Mushrooms

1 shallot, minced

1/4 cup uncooked wild rice

1/4 cup uncooked brown rice

1/4 cup dried shiitake mushrooms

2 cups vegetable stock

1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar

1/2 cup frozen baby peas

Soak the dried mushrooms in 2 cups of warm water. Place a large skillet over medium-high heat with 2 tablespoons of water. Add the shallot and saute until tender. Add the wild and brown rice and stir together. Drain the mushrooms and coarsely chop. Then add to the vegetable stock. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and cover. Simmer for 25 minutes.

Add the vinegar and peas. Cover and simmer for another 5 minutes.