[.ca] Suzanne Somers' Eat, Cheat, and Melt the Fat Away (ISBN 1400047064)

Nice recipes here:
Suzanne Somers did her homework when she went looking for a diet to beat middle-age spread, and enlisted the help of California endocrinologist Diane Schwarzbein. The "Somercize" diet is low-carb but not no-carb like the Atkins program. The major benefit here is two-fold: Want to reduce refined starches and sugars in your diet? Look no further. The recipes here are mostly low carb and low sugar. You can use saccharine or "Somersweet" --a mix of fruit fiber and fructose that is still sugar but lower in simple sugars than sucrose or corn syrup. Unfortunately, it's only sold on Suzanne's website, but she does provide the alternative of artificial sweetners. The second benefit is that if you don't care about sweets, you can ignore the desserts and head for the main dishes, which are all thoughtfully created with delicious vegetables, meats and seasonings to please the most discriminating palate. The Somercize diet is a combination of the fad for food-combining; here fat and protein are ok, carbs like vegetables or whole grains are not eaten with fat or protein, and fruits go alone. Some foods are "funky foods" --that is, a mix of carbs and fat or carbs and proteins, and they are verboten until you lose sufficient weight. Will it work? Possibly. Some people do report great results. But the value here is probably more in the cookbook, which really does have very nice recipes for low sugar, well-prepared meals. And if you do get Somersweet or use saccharine, there are ice cream recipes...so how bad can this be? An attractive book, possibly useful even to Atkins dieters who can navigate those recipes with carbohydrates. And certainly if you are editing sugar out, you won't suffer with this plan.

Too much Somersize marketing-early books are better:
Suzanne Somers' diet is a good idea and it works. However, based on her earlier successes, Ms. Somers' has started marketing a series of products to help follow her diet. This book is filled with recipes that all require her new products. Buy her old book where she still focused on using what is in your kitchen. These recipes are merely marketing for her products.

Resource for food combining:
Last Christmas, I became ill with a "mystery" stomach ailment. I began to experiment with different types of diets to see what I could tolerate until the docs could figure out what the problem was. I came across Suzanne Somer's book which discussed food combining. I had been researching this topic and I was intrigued by her approach to this type of lifestyle so I went ahead and purchased the book. I enjoyed her simplicity in her writing and her candid sharing of her personal experiences with her own efforts in weight control (although I can't remember seeing her overweight in any pics!). I do agree with some readers that some of her recipes could send a heart patient into cardiac arrest but they are quite delicious and can easily be adapted to individual tastes and dietary needs. In my house, I am the only one who chooses to follow a food combining diet, so I am constantly adjusting the ingredient measurements in the recipes to make 1 to 2 portions for myself. It would be nice to see future books adapted to smaller portions instead of the 6 to 8. Overall, I am satisfied with this recipe book and I would definitely consider purchasing future editions. As a side note, I am better now and I continue to follow the food combining "rules" with much success.

Just plain delicious!:
Whether or not you follow the somersize program, you will love the recipes from Suzanne Somers! They are very tasty! And for anyone looking to find delicious ways to include more vegetables in your diet you'll find lots of ways to incorporate them.

I Enjoyed The Family Pictures:
I have had several years of success on low-carb diets, and I have always thought Suzanne Somers brought a valuable perspective to the issue because she's NOT a scientist or a doctor, and explains things in the plain language used by the rest of us. As the latest medical research is showing us, the science behind this diet is very solid, and she provides plenty of reference for people who want to explore that further. But her goal in this book is to speak as one dieter to another. However, I must say I can't understand all the readers who have said they could do without the photos and references to Suzanne Somers' large and happy family. There are so many people who succeed at work but not at home. It's rewarding to meet in print somebody who balances both. Aside from learning more about what Suzanne Somers really believes about the priorities of family and friends, there is the obvious point that high-protein/high-fat/low-carb diets are the ones that give people both the energy and emotional well-being to write books, spend time with their families, and entertain their friends.