Sexy Forever: How to Fight Fat After Forty (21 page)
Read Sexy Forever: How to Fight Fat After Forty Online
Authors: Suzanne Somers
Tags: #Health; Fitness & Dieting, #Aging, #Diets & Nutrition, #Diets & Weight Loss, #Weight Loss, #Women's Health, #General, #Diets, #Weight Maintenance, #Personal Health, #Healthy Living
In addition to the list of weight loss products I reference at the beginning of the chapter, here is a more expansive list of supplements I take each day. This amount may be too overwhelming to some, but I believe this antiaging cocktail will lower your C-reactive protein, increase your ability to lose weight, and build your immune system.
| NUTRIENT | DAILY DOSE | WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW |
| Curcumin | 400 mg | Use only specialized forms of curcumin documented to fully absorb into the bloodstream. |
| R-lipoic acid | 150–300 mg | Don’t confuse R-lipoic acid with cheaper alpha-lipoic acid supplements. R-lipoic acid is twice as potent. |
| Carnitine | 2,000 mg | Use only acetyl-L-carnitine, glycine propionyl-L-carnitine, and/or acetyl-L-carnitine arginate, as these forms are better utilized. |
| Coenzyme Q 10 | 100–200 mg | Use only the ubiquinol form of CoQ 10 , as it is much better absorbed into the bloodstream than conventional ubiquinone. |
| Gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) | 200–600 mg | Make sure 10 mg of sesame lignans are included with each capsule to facilitate formation of a powerful anti-inflammatory substance called prostaglandin E1. |
| Resveratrol | 250 mg | Make sure your supplement label states you are getting 250 mg of trans-resveratrol. Ideally it should be combined with pterostilbene and quercetin for optimal results. |
| Magnesium | 500 mg | Take with food to minimize the potential for diarrhea. |
| Vitamin E | 200 mg | Make sure to take at least 200 mg of the gamma-tocopherol form of vitamin E in addition to the alpha-tocopherol form found in your multivitamin. |
| Vitamin D | 5,000 IU | Most multivitamins contain only 400 IU of vitamin D. New studies show this is woefully inadequate to regulate inflammatory factors in the body. |
| Vitamin K 2 | 100 mcg | This anti-inflammatory nutrient is deficient in many people. Make sure that your vitamin K contains 100 mcg of the MK-7 form of vitamin K along with vitamin K 1 . |
| EPA/DHA | 2,400 mg | If you choose to get EPA and DHA (omega-3s) from fish oil, make sure the fish oil has been purified to remove contaminants. |
The Eating Plan
and Recipes
WEIGHT LOSS PLAN
Now that you understand how you have arrived at your current state of health, you can take the necessary steps to improve your life by detoxifying your body and restoring it with proper nutrition, and in the process find your ideal body weight. I know good health should always be the motivation for how we live our lives, but let’s face it—many of us really decide to get on top of our health only when we don’t like the way we look. It’s shallow, and I am just as guilty when it comes to vanity, but I’ve now embraced good health and quality of life as key goals. It used to be easier, and when I think back on my past, during the periods when I was slim and looking good, I realize I used to eat and drink anything and everything, no matter its health consequences. I paid a big price. I would freely eat pasta with cream sauce, drink as much wine as I wanted, and the desserts—oh, my sweet tooth! It wasn’t until I gained some weight that I really cared about what I was eating. Of course, cancer changed all of that for me. It made me recommit to my health in a way that would keep me on course for life.
In this chapter, we take all the general steps you’ve learned to date in the book and apply them in the Sexy Forever three-phase action plan:
- DETOX PHASE: Days 1 to 30
- LEVEL 1—WEIGHT LOSS PHASE: Days 31 through reaching your goal weight
- LEVEL 2—LIFESTYLE PHASE: Maintaining your weight and health for the rest of your life
All readers should start with the Detox Phase. In the Detox Phase, you will clean out your pantry and fridge. In addition, I ask you to stay within fairly strict guidelines for your daily meals. What you will love about this phase is that you will see results quickly! But it’s not just fat you are losing—you are eliminating toxins stored within the fat, with the goal of a clean, healthy system that is working at its peak.
After the Detox Phase, you start the Weight Loss Phase. During this time you will eat within the outlined nutrition guidelines, which comprise a variety of proteins, healthy fats, whole-grain carbohydrates, lots of fresh vegetables, and fruit. You will continue to avoid sugar, chemicals, processed foods, and alcohol.
Once you reach your goal weight, you will live the Level 2—Lifestyle Phase, a simple plan to maintain your weight and good health forever. When you find your ideal weight and your body is detoxed from the chemical onslaught, you’ll learn here how to make everyday choices to continue this lifestyle for the long, healthy road ahead of you.
This goal is within your reach. This new body is yours for the taking. This level of optimum health is achievable! Let’s get started.
Those of you who are familiar with my Somersize program will recognize the basic tenets of the Sexy Forever nutrition plan. As always, I upgrade and improve my philosophies based upon the new knowledge I gain from the experts I am fortunate to have constantly feeding me information.
Even more importantly, I learn from
you
and the experiences you pass along to me at
SuzanneSomers.com
, on my Facebook page, and at
SexyForeverPlan.com/book
.
Many of the millions who have used my weight loss plan understand that to truly change your lifestyle, you must eliminate processed foods and retrain yourself to eat the foods you find at the perimeter of the grocery store—fresh produce, healthy fats, clean protein, and whole grains. If you adopt this notion, you will see most of the other questions you have will answer themselves. That being said, I am barraged with questions like this: “I have a bottle of salad dressing that contains guar gum, sucralose, and modified food starch … is that okay to eat?” In most cases, if you ask, you already know the answer. While some of these products may technically comply with the guidelines of my weight loss program, you are always better off avoiding packaged, bottled, or processed foods with preservatives, chemicals, and fillers. The Sexy Forever plan embraces this commitment to clean, real food at a new level. I have always recommended eating real food, but the damaging effects of the alternatives are now clearer than ever to me.
At the back of the book you will find a Food Reference Guide suitable for each phase, as well as things to avoid.
S
EXY
F
OREVER:
T
HE
B
ASICS
- Eliminate Insulin Triggers (foods that raise insulin levels: sugar, refined grains, starchy vegetables, and alcohol) and bad fats (such as trans fats).
- Commit to clean, real organic food. Eliminate chemicals, toxins, fillers, and preservatives. Eat organic whenever possible.
- Combine Proteins with Healthy Fats and Vegetables. Eat from the Sexy Forever list of Proteins and Healthy Fats, in combination with Vegetables (low-starch).
- Watch those Carbohydrates. Eat approved, nutrient-rich Carbohydrates, in specific portion sizes, at select meals.
- Eat Fruit on an empty stomach, to maximize digestion and nutrient absorption.
- Eat three meals per day. To increase metabolism, you must not skip meals.
- Hydrate. Drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water each day.
- Wait two hours between meals or snacks if switching from a Carbohydrate to a Protein/Healthy Fats meal or vice versa.
To succeed in detoxifying your system, you need to start by cleaning out the fridge and the pantry. The first foods you need to eliminate are the ones that trigger a large insulin response; these are foods that are high in sugar or starch. This knocks out obvious foods, like cakes, cookies, candy, pies, muffins, and pasta or bread made with white flour, and it also includes foods with hidden sugars, like carrots, corn, potatoes, and bananas. Why is this essential to losing weight? When you eat sugars or high-starch foods, your blood sugar rises. It is then the job of the pancreas to release insulin, a hormone responsible for balancing blood sugar. When we are young and everything is working optimally, we eat sugar, then insulin is released to balance the blood sugar, and the sugar is burned off as fuel. As we age, problems arise when our systems can no longer process the amount of sugar or starches we are regularly ingesting.
Let’s recap what we learned about insulin earlier. The reason insulin is called the fat-storing hormone is that it is solely responsible for deciding if the sugar you eat is needed for energy or if it should be stored as fat for later use. If you don’t need energy, the insulin will place that sugar into your fat cells, particularly those around the midsection. If you are thick through the middle, it’s probably because you are ingesting too many sugars and starches.
Since insulin is such an important factor in deciding if food is burned off as fuel or stored as fat, a major part of the plan is controlling our insulin levels. What happens when you eliminate Insulin Triggers (sugars and starches) from your diet? When your body needs an energy source, it first looks to the food you eat. If there are no quick forms of energy, such as sugar and white flour, your body will need to look for the next available supply of energy—your stored fat! Your body will then rely upon burning off your stored fat to fuel itself with energy. And unlike the ups and downs in energy you get from eating sugar and processed foods, your fat reserves supply a steady source of slow-burning energy. This is how we supercharge your metabolism and transform you from a carb-burning machine into a fat-burning one.
Insulin Triggers are those foods that have the most detrimental effect on blood sugar levels, and are easily determined by looking at the food’s glycemic index. (Lists of the glycemic index of various foods can be found online at
SexyForeverPlan.com/book.
) For example, beer ranks higher on the list than pure sugar—meaning it is absorbed very quickly into the bloodstream, causing a spike in blood sugar and a subsequent spike in insulin. Now it should be pretty clear why those who drink too much beer end up with a beer belly! Other foods high on the list include sugar, white flour, honey, carrots, potatoes, and bananas.
The Food Reference Guide contains a list of Insulin Triggers to eliminate. The big ones are sugars (sugar, corn syrup, honey, etc.), white flour (white bread, white pasta), white rice, high-starch vegetables (potatoes, corn), high-starch fruit (bananas), and alcohol. (Sorry! I know you love that white wine. Me too. Sigh!) For the Detox Phase, you will avoid these foods completely. No worries—we have all-natural sweeteners to replace sugar, and you will learn to love whole grains in place of the white-flour breads and pastas. During the Level 1—Weight Loss Phase, I have substitutes for these foods that will make you feel like you are cheating, but you will continue eating low-glycemic-index foods to release all that stored energy in your fat cells. Once all the stored sugar is cleaned out of your cells and you have reached your ideal body weight, you will enter Level 2—Lifestyle Phase. This is how you will live healthfully for the remainder of your days—even while you splurge on select special occasions.