Customer Reviews

Suzanne Somers' Fast and Easy: Lose Weight the Somersize Way with Quick, Delicious Meals for the Entire Family!

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am very impressed by this book. As usual, the plan is laid out very well. It's made easy to understand, and the most up-to-date medical information supporting Suzanne's plan is included.

But best of all, the recipes are MUCH better than her last books. In her last books, the recipes were more gourmet and "haute cuisine". They were good, for the most part, but my husband really didn't want to eat chicken stuffed with goat cheese - no matter how elegant the presentation - and my budget didn't allow for the expensive ingredients in most of her previous books.

These are recipes that families can enjoy, and she's tried to make most of them fast & easy to prepare. I am soooo happy!

She's included fabulously "somersized" recipes for a shake & bake type mix, ketchup, barbecue sauce, tartar sauce, chicken nuggets, "fries" made from zucchini and "tater" tots made from cauliflower. She's got chili, ribs and even a recipe for "Green Eggs & Ham." She's got boston cream pie, "pink kiddie" ice cream and chocolate cupcakes. (my toddler is in heaven already!) There's even cinnamon bread with an orange icing so I can make cinnamon buns!

Thank you, thank you, thank you Suzanne! This really is food families can eat!

How would you like to drink red wine, eat rich chocolate, suck down creme brulee and still wear size S or M?
Wouldn't you love to have a thick porkchop smothered in mushrooms with creamy sauce? Or how about fried chicken wings with bleu cheese dip?
But no you can't eat any of this because you are (pick one or two or more) counting calories, counting points, drinking weight loss shakes or whatever.

Well guess what? You can eat rich fatty foods. (Fat is your best friend on this diet!) You can drink wine. You can eat chocolate, cheese, and other foods you may have given up in order to lose weight. You really CAN have your steak and eat it too!

The secret is Somersizing. Somersizing is a method of eating foods in certain combinations so your insulin levels stay on an even keel and fat is not stored. When you eat this way, you can enjoy creamy sauces, steak, and cheese and not gain weight.

"Suzanne Somers Fast & Easy" is a book by Suzanne Somers that explains this weight loss method and how it works. This book like her previous books explains in detail how to "Somersize". And like her previous books it continues to refine and develop the program. I feel that many of Suzanne's original ideas were based on the work of French weight loss guru, "Montignac". There are so many similarities in his diet and hers. But many diets are based on others and Suzanne has greatly developed the plan.

In this book Suzanne recaps the weight loss method and then gives information on how to make the program work faster and easier! To make the weight loss faster, Suzanne suggests eating fewer meals with carbohydrates. To make meal planning simpler, Suzanne includes a number of family friendly foods that are quick to prepare that everyone will enjoy. There are over 100 new Somersized recipes in the book.
"Suzanne Somers' Fast & Easy" also includes information on supplements to take to enhance health and weight loss. The book has an extended question and answer section.

Her books are carefully written with a lot of detail. The photographs are lavish. She makes the "diet" a sensuous pleasure.

"Fast and Easy" begins with an introduction by Michael Galitzer MD praising Suzanne's work. He discusses why he thinks her plan is safe and effective.

Next the book gets into Somersizing information. With Somersizing you don't have to worry about counting points or calories, you just combine correctly. Suzanne explains all the combinations. Exactly what you need to do to lose weight. She also tells you how to "cheat" once you have lost your weight.
When I started on the program it was like manna from heaven.
I never dreamed I could nibble on cheese, eat full fat dressings and suck down mousse and lose weight! But I did and so can you, if you follow the Somersize rules.

Most of the weight loss information is a repeat from her other books with some surprising updates. She now says a potato a few times a week is ok for level 2 (the level after weight loss). She also covers in detail, healthy habits to develop as a family.

The section on health supplements is written by Paul Schulick. Schulick is President of a company that will be making supplements for Suzanne. Some of the ingredients in her supplements like green tea and cola nut contain caffeine (a no no for Somersizing) so I am not sure how they will fit these in with the Somersize program.

The next chapter deals with frequently asked questions. Most of the questions deal with the nitty gritty of Somersizing, if certain foods are allowed, differences between level one and level two etc.

Suzanne has a lot of products she sells at her website and at a home shopping site.
Suzanne's products include salad dressing mixes, a bread maker, jam, creme brulee (my favorite) chocolate truffles, pasta sauces and more! These are all available as a convenience to the avid Somersizer. And Suzanne refers to their availability frequently throughout her book.

Another section in the book is the extensive recipe section. A lot of family favorites here. Mac and Cheese, Fish and Chips, Pinwheels, Chicken Nuggets and Taco Salad. More sophisticated fare is also included. Scallop Kabobs, Chilantro Lime Grilled Tuna and Raspberry Meringue Cake.
She also includes recipes for her Somersize secret sauce, ketchup and tartar sauce. These are items she sells at her website. I have been buying the delicious secret and tartar sauce and now can make them for much less.

The last section of her book includes a summary of the program for quick reference. An index is included so you can easily find information or a recipe.

Though food combining is not the way most of us are used to eating, it appears that it can be very effective for weight loss. Members of the Somersize list I am on have lost hundreds of pounds! And it's obvious that the lowfat diets Americans are following today are not working as obesity rates are higher than ever. Once you get used to the Somersize method, it becomes second nature. Many people, like myself prefer to give up some starches in exchange for the rich, creamy delights we can now enjoy.

The food combining is described in detail in her book, but a summary is below.

1. Eliminate all Funky Foods.
2. Eat Fruits alone.
3. Eat Proteins/Fats with veggies.
4. Eat Carbos with Veggies and no fats.
5. Keep Proteins/Fats seperate from Carbos
6. Wait three hours between meals if switching from a Pro/Fats to a Carbos meal or vice versa.
7. Do not skip meals.

The book is nicely bound, with lovely photographs and clear typesetting. I do think the cover could have been better. On the cover Suzanne is jumping in a black bathing suit. The back of the book includes a full index and a handy reference guide.

The bottom line is if you want to decrease your "bottom line" and you are tired of low fat diets that leave you hungry and deprived, if you want to try a lifestyle plan that offers plenty of support in the form of books, her website and yahoogroups,
if you want to eat rich, healthy foods till you are satisfied and feel fit..then you should check out Somersizing and Suzanne Somers' Fast & Easy!

Suzanne Somers's "Fast and Easy" is just that: Fast AND Easy. My husband and I love the recipes in this book. The Cheeseburger Pie, Southwest Eggs In A Pan, Cream Cheese Pancakes and others are great staples and are cheap and easy to produce. Having been raised on processed food (Hamburger Helper, Bisquick, ect.), our tastes migrated toward casseroles and anything with white bread/flour. These recipes satisfy us and can usually be stretched for two nights! The Tomato Soup (only 8 minutes) is to die for! Make a double batch on Sunday and eat all week long! Cheaper than Campbell's and better tasting, too.

In her previous books, Suzanne has really gone for the gourmet end of the food spectrum. The food was fabulous, but the budget was stretched. "Fast and Easy" takes the food down a notch, but has not sacrificed flavor or texture!

As for the constant sales pictch...it's mildly annoying. Although, I can't help but admire her tenacity. Regardless, if you're not interested in buying her products you can find most of the recipes in this book (The chocolate dipping sauce is divine). Also, the conversion chart for Somersweet to Sugar is on her website (www.suzannesomers.com). Since Splenda is 1:1 for sugar, use it once you get the conversions. I wrote them right into the front cover of my copy of "Fast and Easy" so I can look them up as needed.

I agree with a previous review on the shake and bake coating. We had such bad gas that our own dog left the room. It was really tasty, though. It's good if you're not expecting company!

After being on the diet rollercoaster most of my adult life, this program is a breath of fresh air. Atkins works wonders, but it's not for me. This is sanity! You eat practically everything, only in healthy, unrefined versions. I lost 6 pounds in the first week alone and am skipping right on down the scale.

Still, my favorite part of the program is the amazing energy I have. I haven't given up caffeine or chocolate and I've been fine. When the quality of the food improves, the portions take care of themselves. I've counted POINTS and lost weight, but always felt hungry. My microwave is running all the time, but not from a pre-packaged dinners! This cookbook is the ultimate "cook once, eat twice" way for busy people to eat well. The microwave now simply heats up my already-prepared, quality food that I ACTUALLY want to eat. There's reason enough to buy!

This is a great book and I recommend it highly, especially to those trying to eliminate carbs and feeling like they're failing. Thank you, Suzanne!

This book is like MS Windows 2000 operating system - in essense, several new features, but predominately, a long list of "corrections" to the previous bug-filled version.

If you've read and followed any of Suzanne's other diet books, you'll understand that although the food-combination is a great way to consistently loose weight and not feel bloated (even while eating large portions of properly combined food) how frustrating and/or incomplete (we came to find out later) some of her instructions were, and how some of the recipes were unrealistic for an average, working person/family on a reasonable, moderate or working-class budget and/or hectic schedule.

To address the latter point, previous books contained delicious, often gourmet, yet time-consuming, ... have-to-shop-in-several-markets recipes. Roast crown pork baked for 13-hrs (yes, that's right) is wonderful I'm sure, as well as some of the other ... beef/pork entrees, but filet mignon is not a normal dinner feature for me, after paying bills after another long, hard day at work. Although I love to cook, and am handy at it, I routinely have neither the time, money nor ambition to prepare salmon with a cream/butter/wine sauce and capers upon arriving home after 8pm traffic!

This book finally, gives us working folks, the chance to make tasty and uncomplicated, quick foods like chili and burgers, of course, the Somersize way. She even lists the approximate preparation time, and most hover around 10+ minutes, from pan to plate. A bonus is that she lists her sugar-free recipes for ketchup and her special sauce for burgers, so you don't need to purchase them thru her website or TV. ...P>The former problem is addressed by a 100 question and answer section, to clear up the sometimes complicated food-combination conundrums average folks discovered after reading her books, testing the recipes, and finding out after all that they weren't loosing any weight. Why? Mainly, the correct ingredient info wasn't elaborated upon in the previous books, or mentioned at all, or in a few cases, wrong. This whole section was prompted by VERY frustrated readers bombarding her office with letters/emails asking just for clarification.

These are some of the simpler problems:

1. Was it ever mentioned that bottled ketchup, salad dressing or powdered creamer routinely contain sugar? No. She said watch out for hidden carbs, but many of us were not loosing weight because they also contained sometimes as much as 40% sugar!
2. Can you eat pumpernickle bagles? Only if they contain no sugar or white flour. Do you know this if you buy them in the bakery section of the store? No. So you must find a package, so you can read the ingredients. Now that you found the "proper" bagle in a package, which cream/cottage cheese is the right one to choose? Well, watch out for sugar in those, and also, do you eat non-fat, whole or skim?
3. Can you thicken sauces with arrowroot or cornstarch? No. They're both starches. There is nothing on Level 1 to use as a thickener.
4. Can you eat Kashi if it's made with buckwheat and lists itself as a protein and not a carb? Well, IF it has no added fat, it's a carb, if it has fat, it's a funky food, so no, you can't have it. If you can, which milk would you choose? Geesh...DO YOU SEE HOW COMPLICATED THIS CAN BE?

As I said, these were examples of the SIMPLER questions. Some of the questions were so complicated "you can have x if y is z, but not if y is zz and has sugar, or has zzz, or has starch and you're eating it with a carb", that I hit a wall and wasn't sure at all if I'd ever once properly food-combined! After 4+ months on the diet, I didn't loose any weight, but fortunately I didn't gain any either. I have now come to find, thru reading this book, that I've had hidden sugar/flour/starch daily. I need to read this entire book from cover to cover, and actually make a menu of combos for each meal, pinning it like a schedule to my kitchen wall, so I am sure what proper combination choices I have. It's very frustrating to find out that you "ruined" your food-combination, by just eating ketchup (loaded with sugar) on your cheeseburger. Or that your "properly combined" carb meal contained hidden white flour and sugar in the bread! Ugh...

With all that being said, I still recommend this book. Why, crazy woman, you ask? Because this one thoroughly covers all bases and I know that food-combination works. My sister was just such a frustrated reader, and after 3 babies, and 6 months of Somersizing, still had not lost 1-lb and in fact, gained 5, following the advice in the other books. Now, after reading the questions and answers in this book, she's lost 10-lbs in just TWO weeks, and has 15-20 more to go!

My fairy-tale wish would be that Suzanne would provide all of her previous book buyers with a free copy of this book, if we provided the barcode from one of the books. Another of life's little unpleasantries, to spend more money for the info we should have received in the beginning, but hey, this diet works, the recipes are good, and I'm a forgiving soul. Soon I'll be a forgiving soul minus 20-lbs. Hope you are too!

One last thing, as you've probably figured out, if you are new to Somersizing, just buy this book, unless you're interested in the "gourmet" recipes in the other books. In that case, sit down with a cup of decaf coffee (find out which milk/cream you can have in it first, and carry some Stevia for sweetner!) in [a book store], and just copy the recipes you want. She owes us that much, wouldn't you say?!

I have all of Suzanne's books and while this one is full of good information, she tends to go on and on about her new products and items you can buy from her. A lot of it reads like an infomercial for somersweet and other products she sells. Several of her recipes in this book call for somersweet and she doesn't offer the conversion for any of the other artificial sweeteners. So unless you plan to purchase somersweet from her (which is very good by the way, but pricey) you will need to do some homework on how much splenda, equal, etc..you'll need to make some of these recipes. Overall it's a really good book and the recipes are wonderful, just be aware that you'll be extremely tempted to purchase some of her somersweet products on her website.

Let me start by saying that I was very skeptical when I read about this "new way of eating." My first reaction was "Oh yippee, another star tells us how her private chef and personal trainer helped her lose the weight and keep it off!" I had managed to lose 15 pounds on a traditional low-fat diet, and I was convinced of two things (1) low-fat, small portions was the only way to succeed; (2) there was no way that I would be able to lose any more weight without going hungry and feeling miserable. I was wrong on both counts.

Every diet is only as effective as the dieter - what I mean is that any diet plan will only work to the extent that the dieter can stay within the guidelines of the program in the long term without "cheating." I had found that I never seemed to get enough to eat on low-fat diets. I would wind up filling up on low-fat snacks like bread, crackers and diet bars. The sugar content in these foods was so high that I kept blowing my calorie count. I do not have this problem with Somers' diet at all.

The recipies are not fast, and they are not easy. They are however very very tasty. Somers does not skimp on ingredients, so this diet will be a challenge for anyone on a budget. However, if you like gourmet food and you are willing and able to pay for it, you will really enjoy this diet. I have lost 10 pounds in one month and I feel great.

A word to the wise - you may feel somewhat dizzy or disoriented for the first few days on the diet. I think this is because you are burning through your carbohydrate reserves. Stay calm, keep your caffiene intake low, don't operate heavy machinery and wait for it to pass. It is well worth it.

on this program...I just sort of follow along...she has been very successful, losing 30+ pounds in a year and lowering all of the "bad fat/cholesterol" levels in her blood while raising the "good colesterol" levels, lowering blood pressure, and generally just feeling a lot better.

I watched her effortlessly lose weight...and finally thought that I'd better start doing something, too! Once I started this program I learned that it isn't truly "effortless" but it is easy enough to follow, and is the first diet program where, if you eat out often, you have a fair chance of finding a good meal that still meets your needs.

We both find it difficult to get the "carbos" meal into the daily routine...so usually have puffed wheat, shredded wheat or grape-nuts for breakfast. (The upper midwest is a poor place to live if you're looking for whole grain breads without sugar added...but there are some cracker/breads that have no added sugar or starch, so work pretty well.)

I love bacon and eggs...so this diet is right on target!

Giving up caffeine and my daily beer was hard...but I don't miss either (well, maybe the caffeine) most of the time, now that I'm "over the hump" and broken the habit.

For people new to the diet plan, remember when buying food in the store to read the ingredients list, not the nutritional panel, when determining what, if any, sugars/starches have been added. Once I got that through my thick skull I found a lot more food that fits into the program.

Since January, 2003, I've lost 24 pounds...I was wearing 36" waist pants (and kept having to pull them up because my belly sagged over the waistband)...now I'm wearing the 32" slacks that I last wore in February of 2000 (and they were TIGHT back then!)

So...nearly 60 pounds gone between us! If you're thinking of this plan, go for it. But I encourage you to commit, wholeheartedly, to following it for at least a month. And don't cheat! Read the labels of all food products...don't "just assume" (as others have pointed out, things such as pickle relish, catsup, barbecue sauces, marinades, etc. nearly always have a lot of sugar in them. And a warning flag should always go up when you see a product is advertised as "fat free" or "low fat" (such as salad dressings, etc.) because they for sure have starch and sugar added!

Good luck

I purchased this book in 12/02 and followed the "Somerisize" eating plan for the past few months. For those unfamiliar with the plan, Somersizing is a hybrid of controlling carbs and food combining.
THE GOOD: The food is delicious! There are outstanding recipes for onion rings, flourless pancakes and Coq Au Vin (chicken in wine.) The food is diverse and full of flavor.
THE BAD: Cooking these fantastic dishes is not cheap. Eating fresh meat, chicken and seafood really adds up. Also, without a deep fryer, the onion rings aren't as good. The Coq Au Vin will take hours without a pressure cooker. You could make her ketchup from scratch (over an hour of cooking time) or buy two bottles from [the website] for [$$]. There are plugs all over the place for everything from Somersize marinara sauce to Somersize coffee ice cream. Without her pricey products, the cooking is not nearly as Fast and Easy. It is the book's biggest flaw.
THE UGLY: I followed the plan quite strictly for two months. I jogged four times a week. I lost less than 8 pounds. I found for myself, eating tons of eggs, heavy cream, olive oil and beef was too many calories for my body. For many people like myself, the only way to lose weight is to take in less calories than are expended. It's not as chic as Somersizing but it has been a thousand times more effective.
That said, this book has helped lots of people lose weight. I'd never say it's not for everyone. I firmly believe there's no single path to dropping pounds. If you've been thinking about cutting sugar and starch from your diet this may be for you. Just be careful, you could really put a dent in the family food budget making a lot of these treats.

The recipes are so much better than the last few books. There are things my family are actually willing to eat. "Mac" & cheese, Fettucine alfredo, barbecue sauce, ketchup, even gelatin!

Somersizing is a fantastic program. My husband has lost 20 lbs so far and I have lost 14 -- in only 2 months. We're really happy and the food is great.

The only negative about this book is that the recipe cooking times seem really off for almost every recipe I've tried. Most times are way too short - for example the Ribs recipe said to cook them 1 hour in the oven. They really needed 2 hours - but tasted GREAT.

The only recipe I have tried that I don't LOVE is the "shake it & bake it" coating mix. My entire family had gas so bad after eating that, we actually grossed out the dog!

Suzanne Somers' latest book is the best yet, I think. The recipes are better, faster and easier and the book is full of useful information. Not to mention that this kind of diet does work and is much easier to adhere to. What I didn't like was the fact that this book is used to sell certain items at her website, such as somersweet, which cannot be found anywhere else. However, as revealed in another review, that can be rectified by using other ingredients.