Ever since she appeared driving a T-Bird in American Graffiti, for which she earned exactly $136.72, Suzanne Somers has been the boomers blonde bombshell. With a career thats spanned three decades, she may be best remembered as the deliciously ditzy Chrissy Snow in Threes Company. But she also starred in a couple of other giddy sitcomsremember Step by Step and Shes the Sheriff? And shes been a Vegas headliner and a Playboy centerfold.
In recent years Somers, to use a favorite boomer word, has reinvented herself as an authority on womens health. Shes now the author of twenty books, including eleven New York Times bestsellers, and has written, with great success, about her unique and unorthodox methods of coping with menopause and with breast cancer.
Her newest book, Sexy Forever: How to Fight Fat after Forty (Crown Archetype), manages to combine in its title and subtitle two of the concerns that many women have. ThirdAge spoke to Somers, who is still blonde and alluring about staying thin and vital.
TA: When did you first start focusing on health and why?
Suzanne: It happened when I entered menopause and I couldnt get answers from my doctors to help me handle my symptoms. All they wanted to do was to give me medicationsProzac for depression and Ambien to help me sleep and Lipitor for cholesterol. And when I looked into taking synthetic hormones, I thought there must be something better than this. Finally I went to a doctor who said, I understand why you are feeling the way you are feeling. You have zero estrogen. Thats when I found bioidentical hormones and started taking them. It took me about a year to reach the sweet spot and feel good again.
But getting breast cancer was the real wake-up call. I began to wonder what I had done to be a host to this disease. I had the tumor removed and I had radiation, which I would not have now. But I realized I had never thought about nutrition. I refused chemotherapy, refused any drug therapies, and told the doctors I wanted to balance my hormones and eat healthily and that way I would manage my cancer. TA: You really would advise women with breast cancer to not have standard treatments? Suzanne: I never tell anyone what to do. I just offer options. Because I am a celebrity, I realized that people listen to me. When I called a hospital, the doctors would speak to me. So I want to share what Ive learned with women and then let them make their own choices. Women used to go to doctors and be like children and do what they were told. Im just trying to tell them about the different ways of handling medical problems. TA: Youve written diet books before. Why have you written another one?Suzanne: Women over forty kept telling me that they were dieting, they were eating salads, they were exercising, but they couldnt lose weight. They were stalled and they were bloated. When you are young, you can lose weight quickly. If you wanted to wear a dress on Saturday night, you didnt eat much for a couple of days and you could zip it up. Well, I began to connect [the difficulty in losing weight] with the fact that we are now bombarded by toxins in our environment, in the food we eat, in the cleaning products we use, in the plastic we touch, even from the mattress we sleep on. As we get older the hormone that helps us get rid of these toxins decreases and so the toxins are stored in our fat. The more toxins, the more fat.
TA: Then how do you get rid of the toxins and the fat? Suzanne: My Sexy Forever action plan has a detox phase, a weight-loss phase, and a lifestyle phase. First youll clean out your pantry and fridge, and eat organic foods that will help you eliminate toxins and move toward a healthy system working at its peak. Then [on the weight-loss plan] you will eat the most delicious food of your life including desserts within nutritional guidelines. In this phase, you will continue to avoid sugar, chemicals, processed foods, and alcohol. Finally youll learn how to continue to make healthy lifestyle choices TA: You also talk a lot about food allergies in the book.Suzanne: Yes. Ive just learned I have an allergy to eggs. I gave up eggs and dropped twelve pounds in a week. Because of the toxins, many of us have food allergies or are gluten intolerantboth my husband and my granddaughter areand that can also make us bloat and give us a variety of problems. TA: The diet you suggest is a fairly standard one focusing on protein and fruits and vegetables. You also suggest taking a lot of supplements that you sell on your website. If you just follow the diet will you lose weight?Suzanne: Absolutely you will. And you can buy supplements wherever you want if you want to take them. I sell supplements because readers have asked that I do as a service. On my website sexyforever.com there is a charge for personal coaching while on the diet. On my site suzannesomers.com I also recommend doctors and various testing services, but I get no financial benefit from that. And those doctors and testing services give my readers a break on the price. TA: What will your next book be about?Suzanne: About aging. Im working on it already. You know, Im 64, going to turn 65 this year, and this is the happiest time in my life. No B.S. It really is!
