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Suzzane Summers

     Suzanne Somers diet offers many choices in its meal plans, menus and recipes. With the goal of eliminating sugar and white flour from your diet, her suggestions revolve around combining fiber rich and natural foods in a certain way to accelerate calorie and fat burning. She recommends natural beverages such as water and decaffeinated tea and coffee. Soft drinks and other chemical-laden beverages are discouraged. There are two levels to her plan: Level One for initial weight loss and Level Two for weight loss maintanence. The book begins with a foreword by a registered nutritionist and author, who introduces Ms. Somers. Curiously, the author fails to openly endorse "food combining," the basic theme of Suzanne Somers' plan. She does encourage the reader to follow the recommendations of the food guide pyramid, the universally endorsed food plan for basic nutrition.

     The book is not so much a guide to weight loss, but a recipe book focused purely on food. The goal is to eliminate sugar and white flour, which is clearly the focus of Level One, but the loosening of restrictions in Level Two often contradicts the recommendations of Level One. The theories of food combining are similar to other low carbohydrate diets like Sugar Busters and have little scientific basis.

     This narrow view of weight loss neglects the importance of exercise, which is the one trait in common with those who lose weight and keep it off in the long-term. Ms. Somers de-emphasizes exercise, stating she rarely goes to the gym, but any person with common sense can see that she does an enormous amount of exercise to look the way she does at her age.

     The Somersize plan, even at Level Two, recommends the consumption of 1200 calories a day, which is right on the line of a starvation diet, based on the guidelines of the USDA and other consumer health organizations. At this calorie level, you could eat virtually anything and still lose weight.

     The bottom line: this is another diet marketed by using a famous face, based on a way of living that worked for her. Without Suzanne Somers, the diet would be just another of the many diets that are similar and much more obscure.