Untitled DocumentCheri Sicard Interviews
Suzanne Somers
Page 2
Suzanne Somers: I started dieting. I dieted, dieted, dieted and tried all the diets and I would lose and then I would go back to normal eating and would put it on and then some. It was that merry-go-round. I would have to hide from the public when I gained weight because I just didn't want to be photographed like that. I was too young, I felt, to move into character work.
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Suzanne Somers: For years I have been going to the South of France to cool out. I am not as well known in France and I can kind of meld in. Sometimes, when you are in the public eye, you just really need to just be part of the crowd, and look at other people rather than other people look at you. I was always going over there. I made a lot of friends over the years and I would always look at what they were eating. All of them were skinny. I would think that I would like to eat like that. Why can they eat that and I'm being good and I'm the one who is gaining weight? Then I would look more closely at their plates and I realized that they naturally don't, as a general rule, have carbohydrates with protein. And if they do, it's a very teeny little -- some little potato concoction that the chef layered. What we used to call scalloped potatoes and our mothers put two huge spoonfuls on the plate, they do about the size of a quarter, a little pyramid of scalloped potatoes. So, I started paying attention to that.
I did trial and error on myself and it took two months. I eliminated all the sugars, obvious sugars, and I ate carbohydrates separate from protein. It took two months and I thought this is not working for me. I saw no success at all. Then at the two-month mark, one day I woke up and the melt had happened.
When I came home, right before I wrote Eat Great Lose Weight, I started looking into food combining. I started reading and talking and interviewing nutritionists and a thread was starting to form for me which is -- a protein digests in a different rate of speed than a carbohydrate. When you put them together it creates a halt in the digestion. If you have a perfect metabolism it can metabolize it and flush it through, but when your metabolism slows down all the energy you need to get you through the day is now being used to metabolize these foods that don't want to be together. That's what the gas is about, that's what the bloating is about and that's what the fat storage is about.
I did trial and error on myself and it took two months. I eliminated all the sugars, obvious sugars, and I ate carbohydrates separate from protein. It took two months and I thought this is not working for me. I saw no success at all. Then at the two-month mark, one day I woke up and the melt had happened. It was as though a whole me had dropped off. Now I understand what was happening. I don't particularly gain water; I don't have water retention. The people that have water retention are the ones that call me and say, I lost 12 pounds in two weeks. I say, okay enjoy that success, but when you think you've plateau-ed you are not really plateau-ing.
What's happening is your body is starting to eat off your own fat reserve. That's what was happening with me during those two months. I was eating off my own fat reserve. So, it wasn't visible until all of a sudden. It felt like it was overnight. I am sure it was a gradual thing, but one night it was just like my neck was thinner, my chest, my arms, my abdomen, my hips, my legs and my clothes were loose. Now I know that that is just the phenomena of eating this way. Most all of my letters say I hit a plateau and then one morning I woke up and the melt had happened.
Cheri Sicard: That's great. That gives people hope because plateaus are one of the hardest things to get to.
Suzanne Somers: Yes, once you hit a plateau you think it's not working and then you start to say, oh it's not working and think I'll have this piece of cake.
Cheri Sicard: The other time is stress. For a lot of us stress really sets off eating binges. I know you have gone through some very stressful times in your career. How did you handle that?
NEXT: Suzanne on Stress, Aging and the Importance of Hormones and the Fountain of Youth.
Cheri Sicard Interviews Suzanne Somers, Page 2Baby Corner, Where Parents Click!
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