Celebrity Diets

“If It Makes You Healthy: More Than 100 Delicious Recipes Inspired by the Seasons”

More personal and more enlightening than the typical celebrity cookbook, this health-focused collection from Sheryl Crow and her personal chef is a refreshing addition to an increasingly crowded field. When the singer-songwriter was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006, she reassessed her eating habits, which consisted of on-the-run tuna sandwiches and catered dressing-room food. The self-admitted non-cook consulted with a nutritionist and hired chef Chuck White to cook for her on the road.

This collection of recipes represents his greatest hits—a warm hummus soup with cilantro pesto and garlic pita chips, and a tuna salad freshened up with green apple. Though Crow has not adopted a vegan lifestyle, many of these dishes are meatless, emphasizing colorful vegetables and fresh preparations. Exotic inventions include a sophisticated spin on peanut butter and jelly that incorporates cashew butter and fruit. Other dishes swap out ingredients to make comfort foods more wholesome and nutritious: a vegan reuben made with “corned beef seitan” and a chocolate mousse made from whipped avocado. Crow’s nutritionist, Rachel Beller, offers tips throughout to educate readers. White’s easy-to-follow recipes, coupled with Crow’s down-to-earth narrative, make their collaboration a successful duet. -–Publishers Weekly

 
—-

Suzanne Somers is an entertainer, actress, and author of 20 books, ten of which are New York Times bestsellers. Her latest addition, Sexy Forever: How to Fight Fat After Forty, offers readers “a new approach to staying slim and looking great later in life”.

Sexy Forever is designed especially for women over forty who want to lose weight as well as addressing the role of menopause and hormonal balance. It includes an eating plan and lifestyle guide that will allow you to achieve permanent weight loss by resolving the obstacles that may be blocking your capacity to experience health and vitality.

Sexy Forever Diet Basics

Suzanne Somers says, “If you want to stay Sexy Forever, first and most important, you must eat real food — in other words, foods that come from nature, not man-made foods, not fake foods, not any foods with chemicals.” She believes that TV dinners played a large part in our transition from eating real food to toxic, chemical-filled food and the associated rise in obesity, heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Somers provides information regarding good and bad fats and explains how the wrong fats can seriously interfere with your health and capacity to lose weight. Foods high in omega-3 fats are emphasized including perilla oil, flaxseed oil, and fish oil. Animal fats from grass-fed cattle are also acceptable in moderation.

High quality protein from sources that have not been contaminated by chemicals, pesticides, growth hormones, or antibiotics should be included at almost every meal. Carbohydrates with a low glycemic index are acceptable. Foods to be avoided include all sugars, starchy vegetables, bananas, refined grains, beer, wine, caffeine, trans fats, food additives and preservatives.

The Sexy Forever eating plan involves three phases, commencing with a 30-day detox. This is followed by the weight loss phase, which is adhere to until you reach your ideal weight. The program concludes with the lifestyle phase, designed to help you maintain your weight loss forever.

Sexy Forever outlines five major steps to help you stay sexy forever:

Step 1 – Clean Up Your Act

Suzanne Somers says that the first step to successful weight loss is to detox. If you lose weight without eliminating the toxins you will gain the weight back and more.
This step focuses on avoiding chemicals in your food, cosmetics and household products. Includes tips for cleansing the liver. Organic food is recommended.

Step 2 – Balance Your Hormones

Hormones help the body feel good and have energy and “without enough hormones you can’t feel sexy”. Somers identifies the relationship between stress and hormonal balance. Also included in Sexy Forever is a guide to bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.

Step 3 – Use Your Gut To Lose Your Gut

This step involves identifying food allergies and intolerances that may be interfering with your ability to lose weight.

Step 4 – All The Right Moves

Exercise is an important component of Sexy Forever and a healthy lifestyle especially as we age because it helps to maintain our metabolism and keep us feeling youthful.

Step 5 – Supplement to Speed Weight Loss

Suzanne Somers outlines a variety of nutritional supplements that may potentially enhance fat loss.

Recommended Foods

Fruit, vegetables, salmon, shrimp, organic chicken and turkey, grass-fed beef, beans, whole grains, cheese, butter, olive oil, flaxseed oil, mayonnaise, avocado, nuts, olives, coconut, green tea, dark chocolate, red wine.

Pros

- Provides advice and recommendations specific to women over forty.
- Includes unique information about bioidentical hormone replacement therapy and natural skin care products.
- Sexy Forever includes a meal plan and recipes.
- Encourages a balanced fitness program.

Cons

- Sexy Forever will probably not appeal to male readers and younger women.
- Encourages the use of hormone replacement therapy, which may be associated with health risks.
- The effectiveness of nutritional supplements for weight loss is questionable.
- Suzanne Somers does not adequately address the psychological factors involved in weight loss.

Read an excerpt from the book here.

—-

Jenny Craig

As Princess Leia, Carrie Fisher’s enemies included storm troopers, Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt. These days the biggest villain in Fisher’s life is closer to home: her expanding waistline, People Magazine reports.

“I’m fat,” says Fisher, 54. “All the clothes in my closet belong to another chick. They have to make a new alphabet for my bra size.”

Carrie Fisher waves hello to all her fans

Jokes aside, as the newest spokesperson for Jenny Craig, the 5’1″ (and a ½”) actress and author is opening up about her humiliation over gaining weight – she was 180 lbs. at her heaviest – and her determination to slim down.

Fisher, who weighed around 105 lbs. when she starred in the Star Wars trilogy in the late ’70s and early ’80s, says her weight crept up over the years and grew out of control three years ago when she went on the road with her one-woman show Wishful Drinking, thanks to no exercise and an unbalanced diet.

“I would just graze, but I didn’t do it healthy – it was like putting on the feed bag,” says Fisher, the daughter of ’50s movie sweetheart Debbie Reynolds and crooner Eddie Fisher. She lives in L.A. with her daughter Billie, 18.

For Fisher – whose conquering of drug and alcohol addiction and mental illness became fodder for her best-selling books – food was one of her last great comforts. When her father died in September, she recalls turning to Häagen-Dazs ice cream bars. “That was bad,” she says. “I was in denial.”

Adding to her humiliation were comments from bloggers. “I look on the Internet and they say, ‘Whatever happened to Carrie Fisher? She used to be so hot and now she looks like Elton John,’ ” she recalls. “I was really hurt.”

But now Fisher has reason to be hopeful: Since joining Jenny Craig in late November, she has shed 12 lbs. by eating only plan-approved meals and getting back to exercising five days a week.

Good for Carrie! I personally lost 20 pounds on Jenny (gained it all back the second I stopped eating their boxed cuisine, by the way). I guess if someone’s throwing you a bunch of cash, it may be a tad easier to shed some pounds — with all the media buzz a person is held to a ridiculous amont of public scrutiny. Can you imagine if the entire world knew you were on a diet and kept track of your progress? Or how about if you failed and it was the headline story on Entertainment Tonight? What a nightmare! Make no mistake, highly paid spokesperson or not, Carrie has a long road of sensible eating and tough exercise ahead of her. Just ask Oprah. But that’s a whole other conversation…

—-

NV

What do top celebrities secretly use when they need to lose weight fast? They use NV – the breakthrough diet pill that helps you lose weight fast!* NV truly is Hollywood’s weight-loss secret.