Diet Review for Somersizing

Last summer my daughter and I started the diet that Susanne Somers created, called Somersizing.  It has been around for a long time.  I remember Susanne Somers promoting it in the 90’s when I was young and thin.  It is an easy diet to understand.  The rules are simple and easy to remember.  You can have carbs, but you can’t have them with protein or fat.  Eat your meals and snacks 3 hours apart.  She also has a list of funky foods to avoid.  

 

Pros - Suzanne Somers is a wonderful cook.  Our family loves her recipes.  I would buy the books for the recipes alone.  We haven’t made anything that we didn’t like.  They are full of flavor.  The diet is easy to understand and easy to follow once you learn the rules.  We never got hungry, because we didn’t have enough to eat.  We could eat as much as we wanted.  It also helped get rid of the sugar addiction that I had. 

Cons - We ended up cheating.  I would get false hunger pains 20 minutes after I finished eating a large meal.  I knew it wasn’t real.  Later on I realized that adding fiber like flax seed or chia seeds would have solved the problem.  It was hard to follow when I was running around town.  There are options for eating out, but temptation of watching someone eat fries would drive me crazy and so I would cave.  Another thing – I am close to menopause and without the soy, my hormones were out of wack.  I had hot flashes day and night and insomnia.  I talked to the doctor and she recommended putting soy back into my diet to see if that works.  It did. (So I get to wait on the natural estrogen and progesterone supplements for a few more years.)

Results – The first time we both lost about 15 lbs each in about a month and then we stalled for another month.  We started back up again in January, but didn’t lose anything.  I blame my husband for derailing us with too many cheat days.  I had a harder time stabilizing my sugar addiction, because of the over indulgent of sugar during the holidays.  I also remembered why we didn’t stick to Somersizing.  My daughter likes this diet better and so we follow with the rules modified, by adding in some of Trim Healthy Mama additions. 

Our modifications - We limit the funky foods as much as possible.  Some of the funky foods we avoid all together.  We allow nut flour in moderation and a small amount of nuts or almonds as a snack. We allow beets in moderation, because of it’s ability to cleans the liver. We limit carrots, because I thought they are more beneficial.  We limit banana’s to ½ a banana up to 2 times a week, because of the potasium. We allow the whole milk to be used when a large amount of cream is called for in a recipe, because it was too expensive to use cream.  Sorry, no one better take away my chocolate and so we enjoy cocoa to make sugar free chocolate, heavenly treats or desserts.  And we just can’t give up coffee.  We allow fiber and allow it with the carbs or protein/fat. Hello bread in a mug.  Another thing, I drink ½ cup of soy milk per day to level out my hormones.  I use stevia for the sweetener. I guess you can say, it is no longer Somersizing. 

With any diet, you have to make it work for you.  Read the books, research why so you have a clear understanding.  Adapt it if needed.  Look to see if there is support groups on Facebook, Pinterest, and any other social network.