Diets Don’t Work
You’ve heard it a thousand times. Most diets fail because they are based on deprivation. After depriving yourself for a period of time, you will eventually want to reward yourself. During the reward time, you will probably gain back the weight, and then some. The statistics are depressing: 95 percent of those who go on diets gain back all the weight they lost.
We’re obviously doing something wrong.
It has to do with your metabolism: the rate at which your body burns calories for fuel. Some lucky people have a naturally high metabolism and can eat whatever they want and can still stay thin, while others with a low metabolism eat like birds and continue to have weight problems. Is it possible to change your metabolism? Of course. Yo-yo dieting can change it—for the worse. Going on and off diets can actually dangerously disrupt your system and lower your metabolism. Diets that restrict your calorie intake will help you lose weight, but only temporarily. The human body is a complicated and remarkably adaptable machine.
When you start eating fewer calories, your body will initially burn off your fat reserves to make up for the missing fuel source. But as your fat stores are being depleted by dieting, your metabolism actually slows down to keep you from starving to death. It’s the survival mechanism. Your body adapts to survive on fewer calories than it needed before.
It is at this point that your weight usually plateaus. Even though you’re still faithfully sticking to your diet, you’ve stopped losing weight. That’s when frustration sets in, and most people go back to eating the way they used to.
Here’s the worst part. You now have a lower metabolism than before you started the diet, so your body needs fewer calories to survive. When you go back to eating the way you used to, not only will you gain back all the weight but you’ll probably gain a little extra on top of it because of your newly lowered metabolism. Appetite suppressants create the same scenario: diet pills kill our appetite, so we eat less food. Eating fewer calories jump-starts the weight-loss process, but our bodies adjust to eating a smaller amount of food by lowering the metabolism to keep us from starving to death. Once again, the body’s natural survival instinct swings into high gear. As soon as you go off the diet pills, your appetite returns … and so will all the pounds you lost.
Don’t despair. Somersizing can actually increase your metabolism, so you can eat more food and still lose weight. My friend Maria Hoksbergen has spent most of her life starving herself in order to lose weight. She would eat only a couple of crackers for breakfast, a salad with no dressing for lunch, and a very small, bland dinner. She exercised three or four times a week; she took dance classes; and yet she could not lose those last ten stubborn pounds. Her doctors said she should be losing weight because her calorie intake was small, and she was burning off plenty of calories from her activities. They assumed she must be cheating and binge-eating in the closet. How could she eat so little and still not lose weight?
The problem was her metabolism. She had starved herself for so long that her system had actually adjusted to eating fewer calories. Her body never knew when it was going to get any food, so it got used to operating on many fewer calories. It held on to each nibble as future fuel, storing it as fat rather than burning it to provide her with immediate energy. When I suggested she try Somersizing, she said, “If I ate like you, I’d be as big as a cow.”
I’m using the words diet and weight loss a lot. But what Somersizing can really do—at the heart of it all—is help you learn to love food again. Food is one of the greatest pleasures in life. It is not your enemy! Yet most people approach the meal table with tension. I look forward to each and every meal. I know I’m going to eat wonderful food and enjoy the company of my friends and loved ones. I want you to be able to have this same healthy and happy outlook toward food.
After I explained how food combining works, she decided to give it a try. She started eating three times as much as she used to, but in the proper combinations. In a couple of weeks, she had lost the ten pounds, and even a few more. She had more energy to get through the day, and she could not believe she was able to eat so much rich and delicious food and still lose weight. She had reprogrammed her metabolism—another Somersizing success story!
Chances are, if you’re reading this book, you, too, have had less than successful results with diets. With Somersizing, you never have to diet again. This is a new approach to eating—no starvation, no bloating or cramping after meals, and increased energy.
My son Bruce, daughter-in-law Caroline, granddaughter Camelia, me, and Alan on the set of Somersize.
In the last decade, fat has been portrayed as the major villain leading to poor health and excess weight. We’ve all been watching our fat intake so we can lose that weight, right?
When you Somersize, you can eat fat and still lose weight.
Well, this may come as a shock. In the last decade, we Americans have cut our intake of fat from 38 to 34 percent of our daily calories, and yet we’ve each put on an average of eight pounds. How can that be? Isn’t a reduced-fat diet supposed to help us lose weight? Doesn’t less fat in our diets mean less fat on our bodies?
Not necessarily. There are other factors involved, such as whether or not you’re exercising, and your energy intake versus energy expenditure. Scientists tell us that heredity and environment play important roles.
One of the first things people challenge me on when they hear about Somersizing is the fat issue. When you Somersize, you can eat cheese. You can eat a juicy steak with a mushroom cream sauce. You can eat chicken with lemon butter sauce. You can eat a taco salad topped with salsa and sour cream. You can eat tuna salad or egg salad with mayonnaise.
We’ve been trained to think that a diet low in fat combined with increased exercise is the only way to lose weight. And it’s often effective. But I’m telling you that a low-fat diet does not guarantee you will lose weight. What you are eating in place of that fat will have a lot to do with determining how much weight you lose. Fat-free pastries, fat-free cookies, fat-free cakes, low-fat potato chips, reduced-fat crackers, fat-free caramel rice cakes, fat-free licorice, nonfat frozen yogurt—less fat? Yes. But are they your ticket to weight loss? Maybe not.
Junk food is junk food, whether it’s fat free or not. It’s nearly impossible to lose weight if you’re filling up on these so-called healthy snack alternatives. Most of these products are empty foods that leave your body nutritionally unsatisfied and hungry for a decent meal. And the culprit in all of these fat-free products is … sugar! Too much sugar makes us fat. Besides the sugar, these products often have white flour and a host of chemicals that your body does not need or appreciate. I have a friend who used to eat a large nonfat frozen yogurt every day. She figured it was basically a “free food,” since it was low in calories and had no fat. She couldn’t figure out why she was gaining weight. I explained that it was the sugar. In my opinion, sugar is the body’s greatest enemy—and is an even worse culprit than fat when it comes to weight loss. You’ll learn all about it in the next few chapters.
Believe it or not, you can have fat in your diet in moderation. I think that’s the main reason Somersizing has been so successful with everyone who has tried it. You can incorporate rich, flavorful foods into your healthy diet and still lose the weight you want—and that helps people stick to the program.
Please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. I’m not suggesting you go out and gorge on fat. Quite the contrary. I watch my fat intake carefully because a diet low in fat has many health benefits, including a decreased risk of heart disease and some types of cancer. I choose lean meats. I cook in olive oil. I watch my cheese intake. Every now and then, however, I treat myself to a cheese soufflé, a butter sauce, or a piece of brie—without guilt. How wonderful not to feel deprived when you’re trying to lose weight.
So if you’re tired of the diet roller coaster, Somersizing will get you off that ride forever. It works for me. It can work for you, too.
