Look 'Slim And Sexy Forever'

It's hard to believe it's been almost 30 years since Suzanne Somers first charmed TV viewers as the loveable Chrissy on "Three's Company." Since then, she has beaten breast cancer, become an entrepreneur with her own line of cosmetics, clothing and fitness equipment and written 12 books.

On Thursday, she visited The Early Show to discuss her latest book, "Slim and Sexy Forever." Click here to read an excerpt.

"Women have been banging their heads against the wall because you reach a certain age, and they're eating right, exercising, but they still can't get rid of the weight. And I have the answer." Somers tells co-anchor Rene Syler.

The answer, she says, is to follow her Somersize diet, and keep hormones in check.

"I really think it is the best way to eat; it's real food; it's fabulous food. If you're losing your hormones, like me, in the aging process, you put them back exactly to balance with bioidenticals. But burnout adrenals is something you could probably very easily experience.

Burnout adrenals?

Somers explains, "You're a career woman. You've got a big career. I don't know if you have a family, a husband and kids. If you have kids, you're the soccer mom and car pool…Women are working like crazy. So are men. What happens is your adrenals get burned out."

The first symptom she says is you get really skinny.

"You don't want to eat very much. You can't sleep very well but you get a million things done, you can check things off your list," Somers says. "But if you keep going at this pace, you go to adrenal fatigue. Then you gain weight even if you're not eating. Everything slows down. Even mailing a letter is too much work. And here is the danger thing. Adrenal fatigue can lead to a heart attack. You hear about 45, 50-year-old men who drop dead of a heart attack and they're in great shape? That's because they're burning it at every end. Adrenals are the orchestra leader of the entire system in your body."

Somers knows about the subject first hand. This week is her five-year anniversary of being diagnosed with breast cancer. Today, she says she is feeling "blissful."

She says, "I feel it will never come back. I feel like I've that's another one I can tick off the list -that's cocky; I know that. Because you never know what tomorrow brings. But I know so much about the hormonal system and so much about keeping hormones balanced. I really understand it's an environment of balanced hormones that prevents disease."

During her breast cancer treatment, Somers took an unconventional route. She had a breast-conserving surgery or lumpectomy and radiation, but she refused to have chemotherapy.

She says, "I think there are two ways to approach cancer, either to build up or destroy. Western medicine standard of care is to destroy it all. And then you hope the good comes back. And it works. I mean there are a lot of people who have survived and are doing really well. And it wasn't an approach that appealed to me, so I decided to prevent my cancer from coming back by keeping my hormones absolutely balanced with real bioidentical hormones."

Bioidentical hormones are different from what's considered conventional hormone replacement therapy.

She explains, "Women really need to know this, that all of these reports about hormones that are so alarming - and they are - are done on synthetic hormones. They've not done any studies on these bioidentical hormones. And yet, I feel very hopeful because doctors are oozing out of the woodwork, they're coming to my Web site -- these are western doctors who have been doing bioidentical hormones for 10 years, 20 years, 25 years.

She says she believes that in 10 years bioidentical hormones will be the way to go for everybody.

But promoting her book is not the only thing she is doing these days. Somers will open in her own one-woman show this summer at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in New York.

Entitled "The Blonde in the Thunderbird," Somers' musical entertainment performance will begin July 8. It is scheduled to play a limited engagement through Sept. 3.

"My one-woman show is the thrill of my life," she says. "It's a comedy that will make you cry."

The title comes from Somers' appearance as the mysterious young woman in George Lucas' classic 1973 film comedy, "American Graffiti." In her theater show, written by Ken and Mitzie Welch, Somers talks about her troubled childhood and her struggles as a performer.

"The Blonde in the Thunderbird" will play the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto, June 16-26, before coming to New York.

Among her other books are her best-selling autobiography, "Keeping Secrets," as well as "Suzanne Somers' Eat, Cheat and Melt the Fat Away," "Suzanne Somers' Get Skinny on Fabulous Food" and "Suzanne Somers' Fast and Easy."