So this section, to be clear, is about gaining control over what you eat, not indulging in Cher (or Sonny)-related recipes. There’s a whole other Cher Scholar section on Food about that. This page is about creating a diet to lose weight and then maintaining your healthier weight.

The 1960s

From 16 Magazine:

Dear Cher, I am FAT. That is a fact—and I can’t lose weight as I have no will power. My mom won’t let me wear mod fashions or hair-dos, because she says I don’t look good in them (she’s probably right). Please help me find out how to lose weight… Desperate, Thornton, Col.

Dear Desperate, If you have really tried everything, I think there is hope for you in only one direction now. I think your mom should take you to see your family doctor. You should have a check-up and (if it is not harmful for you) you should be given some kind of medication that will help you to control your appetite. When you start to lose a few pounds, by all means get some mod gear—as that will inspire you to stay on your “diet” and give you pride in the fact that you are reducing … Best of luck.

Dear Cher, I am 14 years old and I have always been thin—skinny, to be honest… Frustrated, Glen Allen, Va.

Dear Frustrated, If I were you, I would look at the bright side of things. It is easier to gain weight than to lose it, for instance. I suggest that you eat a well-balanced diet of three big meals and day, and then help yourself to between-meal snacks. You can eat pizza, popcorn and ice cream—all those groovey goodies that most teenage girls have to say “no” to. I would advise you to avoid chocolate, coconut, soda pop and sundaes, as these can cause acne…  Good luck.

Dear Cher, [Question missing from online copy]

Dear Overweight, First, you should have a simple physical checkup by your family M.D., just to make sure that you do not have a thyroid problem (or any other condition). Your problem is probably just that you [overeat]. That normally is the problem with people who are too fat. On the righthand page you will see an ad for 16’s Popularity & Beauty Book. This booklet is a gem of information for “fatties.” I suggest that you try it. Good luck!

The 1970s

To begin, it’s not PC to call people fatties or fatsos anymore. Just a heads up if you hadn’t heard. The old Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour had some fat-suit skits that are now unfortunately problematic, but they were also funny (if you can find them). People who watched the show remember one of the memes of the skits where a fat-suit character would say a metaphorical food word like “that’s easy as pie” or “pie in the sky” and the other characters would rub their hands together and say excitedly, “Pie!”

Here is a picture from the first skit in the theme, a skit called Detective Fat which made fun of the show Cannon with William Conrad. They also had Jim Neighbors as a guest once and they similarly spoofed Gunsmoke.

In Sonny & Cher, A Family Again (1977), there’s a picture of Cher in the kitchen ostensibly tweaking the nutrition of the recipes.

The magazine says Cher experimented with diet and weight until she found a 1970s weight she liked. (Super thin.)

Cher Superstar (1975) explains that super-thin means 107 pounds at 5’7″ (She lists a different height in Forever Fit.)

In the article “The special look of all-out glamour, Cher (date unknown)

Cher says, “I like really good food but I also like junk food. I hope it gets balanced out.”

In another article from my scrapbook: “The Other Man In Cher’s Life” (date and magazine unknown, first CBS show era with Sonny) – Daniel Eastman, “the world-famous beauty expert.” says “a good diet should consist of vegetables, lean meat, fowl and fish.” His other clients, Shelly Winters and Yvette Mimieux “have very good complexions because of their diets.”

The 1990s

In 1992, between the Lori Davis and skin-care infoEqualmercials, Cher did commercials for Equal sweetener. They began airing in February. A PRNewswire press release stated that “Cher has used Equal in place of sugar for years. She requests it in restaurants and has even published recipes using Equal in her 1991 bestseller Forever Fit. Cher also tied the Equal commercials into a promotional offer for her new exercise video CherFitness Body Confidence.”

Later a December PRNewsire release stated, “according to NutraSweet’s marketing director, Dave Tuchler, the company saw a boost in sales directly related to the 1992 Cher television ad campaign. ‘Cher really works for Equal,’ says Tuchler. ‘People find her credible.  She wouldn’t advertise a product she didn’t believe in or didn’t use.’”

In one ad, Cher sports good skin, curly hair and wears a tan brown sweater. She says, “someone asked me ‘have you ever tasted it?’ I thought that was a stupid question. This morning I thought I could do that.” [She dips her finger in a pile of Equal and sticks it on her tongue.] “It tastes good. And then I made everybody try it.”

In another ad, she wears a white off-the-shoulder top. She says, “Americans eat 40 pounds of sugar a year.” Of the sweetener she says, “It’s there. I use it. I like it. I choose Equal.”

ForFit

Tips from Forever Fit(1991)

This book is so much more wordy than the other 1980s beauty guru books were, which at times makes it feel like a slog when Robert Hass goes deep into body and food chemistry. Food science seems like frontier science, constantly evolving. So recent reviewers have noted that some of the advice is dated. But the book wants you to understand food science so you won’t get caught up in the diet fads that come along with eternal and predictable regularity. And for that the book has earned some lasting respect.

The book talks about the dangers of being overweight, how it causes cancers, Type-2 Diabetes, heart disease, digestive diseases and orthopedic problems. Thin people get promoted more and earn 4K more a year.

[I wondered if this was still true. It is. According to a summary of a 2011 Forbes Magazine article thin women earn significantly more than overweight women, while the dynamic is reversed or neutral for men. Research indicates that very thin women earn approximately $22,000 more per year than average-weight women, whereas very heavy women earn $19,000 less. In contrast, overweight men tend to earn more than thin men.”]

Haas advises you to get bloodwork done before embarking on this diet, along with a general physician’s exam. You want to find out your blood cholesterol count, which should be 150 or below. Limit yourself to only water 12 hours before test to get an accurate result. Don’t get tested when you’re sick or stressed, and check which meds are OK to take before the test.

Haas says there are many opinions on cholesterol. He recommends you eat 0-150 milligrams of cholesterol per day, which is 10-20 % of your total calories from fat. The information is complicated when it gets into HDL or good cholesterol. To lower your cholesterol, eat chicken without skin, lean beef, fish and opt for things like nonfat frozen yogurt.

Cher says don’t put cheap gas in your car. And cheap gas is overprocessed food. Your body has enough problems with air and water pollution. Don’t pollute your body with food. [That means no more junk food, or rarely junk food.] Cher says she wants to be a happy, active at 75 year old, like her grandmother Lynda. Well, she is now 80 and is clearly healthier than many of her rockstar contemporaries. At her Hall of Fame induction she was skipping around the stage during her performance and at least three other inductees had to be assisted to the stage. So mission accomplished.

Cher admits, “I love to eat” and she lists her vices. She says her worst addiction is sweets.

  • Häagen-Dazs coffee, strawberry and chocolate ice cream
  • M&Ms
  • Dr Pepper soda, at one point 4 a day
  • Perrier, for a while she was drinking this all the time
  • Mounds bars
  • Junior Mints
  • Dove bars
  • Jack in the Box tacos
  • Cherry cokes
  • Anything chocolate

She says she can’t do coffee because her body is sensitive to that much caffeine.

“I try to avoid foods with a high fat content because they make me sluggish and keep my weight up”

“Dairy products are not good for us. I weaned myself from whole milk to nonfat milk–if I’m having milk at all. I think cheese is one of the worst things for the body. It doesn’t digest well, and most cheeses are too high in fat and cholesterol.”

“I don’t do drugs. I never drink coffee and almost never drink alcohol or eat red meat, so I’m way ahead of the game.”

When she started to work with Robart Hass, he did a sweep of Cher’s kitchen. They also determined tempting foods Cher just shouldn’t bring into the house. She learned about the trickly labeling around low fat and organic. They focused on basic good foods: pasta, rice bread, potatoes, vegetables fruit and high-quality protein.

Haas taught Cher a trick of adding shredded parmesan cheese to flavor her meals. An example listed was a dish of broiled eggplant with oregano, sweet basil and parmesan.

A day should include two solid meals with two fresh fruit servings or as snacks. Vitamins and meal replacement shakes are fine to supplement but you need solid foods, protein, fiber and carbs to lose weight. Haas explains how the body stores fat first and how important carbs and protein are to losing weight. He says you need to train your body to burn fat first.

Hass insist complex carbs are good if you exercise because carbs control appetite and that “fat burns in the flame of carbohydrate.” He talks about glycogen and there is a table of proteins with their biological value. The egg is at the top of the list but the Haas diet doesn’t recommend eggs due to the cholesterol. You should eat complex carbs after exercising.

Haas says vitamins are like insurance when you are not getting all your nutrition in solids, or if heavy exercise means you need a boost or becuae of depletion due to air pollution, stress, and aging (less absorption as you age). He recommends Twin Laboratories’ Aerobic Pak. He says you also need extra fiber which helps reduce the risk of colon cancer and bowel cancer, and helps with Crohn’s Disease and diverticulosis. He recommends Twin Laboratories’ Fiber Booster.

Haas says popular diets recommend less than 800-1000 calories a day or alternatively all-liquid diets. But the human body needs more protein, he says, and a fat burning diet. Everyone on fad diets always gains the weight back. Oprah’s yo-yoing weight fluctuations is given as an example of fad diets, which work short term but if you starve yourself, your body will respond and burn calories more slowly and then when you start eating normally again, you’ll be working with a slower metabolism and then, as Cher says, “you’re screwed.”

Haas recommends 1,000 calories a day for women (at least) and13,000 calories a day for men for losing weight. You need energy during a diet.

If you’re losing 5-20 pounds this diet will work, Haas says. If you have more than 20 pounds to lose, you need a physician-supervised plan.

They say this diet is portable and easy.

A sample daily menu:

Breakfast: Fruit or a meal replacer shake made with skim milk. Most breakfast cereals, even those claiming to be healthy ones, are not good for you. Same with diet bars, which are often just disguised candy bars. (200 calories)

Lunch: Split pea soup or spaghetti with marinara (and two teaspoons of parmesan) and fresh fruit. (432 calories)

Dinner: Chicken breast with a salad and steamed veggies. (636 calories)

Beverages: Start drinking water first before your first coffee. Tea is ok. You need one cup of water per each 15 minutes of exercise. Haas says water has been the best beverage for 1 million years of active humanity but, he says, high-tech water with electrolytes and minerals are on the cutting edge. He recommends Twin Laboratories’ Body Quench or Ross Laboratories’ Exeed. The book recommends 4-8 glasses of water a day. Equal or NutraSweet drinks are okay but stick with water. Pick fruit over fruit juice. Limit yourself to one cup of coffee a day. Limit 12-oz sugar soda to a few times a week.

A serving of vegetables or fruit amounts to a half of a cup or 2 tablespoons of raisins, 3 prunes, 1 apple, half of a banana.

You can have two servings of a starch which amounts to 1/2-2/3 of a cup or 1 slice of bread per serving.

Stick to no-fat yogurt  or 2 ounces of 1% cottage cheese.

Eat salty foods and your body will retain more water.

You can replace breakfast with a meal replacer shake which uses 2 cups of skim milk. The meal replacer shake satisfies Cher’s daily chocolate craving and they recommend a powder mix called Feelin’ Fit made by Twin Laboratories. [They recommend a lot of products from Twin Laboratories, now Twinlabs, a supplement company.] Cher says she adds water and ice to make her shake more frosty-like. She also uses skim milk and two packets of Equal and some unsweetened coco powder. The shake has protein, carbs, Maltodextrin, Molybdenum, manganese, chromium, selenium, fiber made from oat bran and psyllium husk and guar gum (all worth Googling to learn more about).

A total day should not exceed 200 grams of complex carbs (800 calories), 75 grams protein (300 calories), 20 grams of fat (180 calories), 40 grams of fiber, 0-150 milligrams of cholesterol.

[This is a good time for a message from Cher Scholar: If you’re ready to start any diet, go see a nutritionist. They’re not that expensive and visits are likely covered by your insurance. Everyone has very specialized dietary needs these days. Especially with all the food allergies that humans have developed in the last 20-30 years. For example: I have chronic fatigue (not Epstein-Barr though) and I’m a vegetarian so a nutritionist helped me with ways to get more protein. A nutritionist can set up a diet plan for you in one or two visits. Plus food science is constantly evolving. This book (and others from the 1980s and 90s) are a good basic source of knowledge. But you could use some affordably-expert help.]

Avoid canned pasta, bottled sauces, bottled drinks and canned soups. Avoid frozen diners too. Even Triscuits are bad for you. And the book is discouraging of peanut butter and eggs. [My nutritionists varied on that.] Tuna is the exception to food in a can. But stick to tuna canned in water because tuna packed in oil has double the calories and tons more fat.

This diet says no to seltzer waters and dairy (except skim milk), Most yogurt is fattening with tons of sugar.

Cher says she sticks to brown rice, lentils, beans (pinto, navy, lima, kidney), veggies, pasta, fruit (bananas, papaya and nectarines are good). Cher avoids red meat. She says she has only two hamburgers a year and eats shrimp, lobster, halibut, swordfish and tuna steaks. From time to time Cher says she goes lacto-vegetarian.

There’s talk about calcium supplements for osteoporosis. At the time the issue was that supplements weren’t getting absorbed into the body. Haas recommended some kind of vinegar test for supplements but the book gives no recommendations on good ones to try. Hass just says that you cant rely on dairy products to get enough calcium.

Haas says that when you cheat, go for sugar versus fat. Pick a popsicle and a sugar soda versus ice cream. This diet recommends you give yourself a treat once in a while or you will obsess about the food you’re missing. Cher allowed herself two cherry rondos a day.

They talk about the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico and their healthy low-meat, high-carb diet. Later, we will get into “Blue Zone” diets from around the world with similar diets.

Cher has some general dieting advice: She said she needed to convince herself that food was not “disappearing from the face of the earth. “You can eat it later [the of scarcity driving appetite]. And she talks about emotional eating (which she says she does) and food being a psychological crutch. She says she tries to get on a treadmill instead.

This was interesting: Cher talked about love being dispensed through food and how our mothers, when we were sick, always made us comfort foods. From this we learned to be comforted by those foods.

Cher says she was an active teen and had access to healthy food at home.

But she talks about her life stressors, how she went on the pill in the 1960s and went from 106 pounds to 121 pounds in a month. She gained 30 pounds with Chas, but then was sick for three weeks after that birth and fell back to 106. Cher said she had a totally different looking face after Chas’ birth. No more babyfat. Her face was more angular. Due to the stress of her relationship with Sonny in the early 1970s, she went down to 92 pounds right before she left him. She says she is “almost 5’8” tall. She says during that time all she could manage was one egg and one piece of toast a day.

She explains very well exactly why making movies is so stressful and how hard it is to keep from emotional eating on set.

Cher says that during the making of Mermaids she was crying all the time and not motivated to exercise. She became the heaviest she ever was as an adult, eating a lot of M&Ms and shrimp cocktails from a nearby diner. She added 12-15 pounds and needed to lose it before her Heart of Stone tour began. This is when she found Robert Haas.

Cher says she likes to have her big meal in the afternoon and then if she’s out eating later with friends in restaurants will stick to salads or she just won’t eat all of it. She says no big plates of food after 6 pm.  It’s better to eat smaller and more frequent meals.

Product Mentions

  • Prego spaghetti sauce with no sugar or corn syrup
  • Weight watchers yogurt (many brands listed in the book are not available anymore)
  • Twin Laboratories
    • Feelin’ Fit meal replacer
    • Body Quench enhanced water
    • Aerobik Pak vitamins
    • Fiber Booster
  • Ross Laboratories Exeed enhanced water
  • Metamucil fiber
  • Senokot fiber

The Maintenance Diet: pretty much you just get 500 more calories a day with this breakdown: 40% protein, 50% complex carbs and 10% veggies.

The book recommends throwing a Forever Fit tasting party to show people how yummy the food recipes in the book are. I’ll check back in after my Patti Labelle recipe party, my Olivia Newton-John recipe party and my Audrey Hepburn recipe party.

This dieting advice is all pretty common-sense stuff that has mostly stood the test of time.

A good chunk of the book is taken up by appendices (pages 171-313), which includes 59 pages of recipes, a computer program for IBM and Apple (ah computer history) that you could mail away for. (I wish I had done that at the time. ) And 80 pages of food composition tables.

In 1997 Cooking for Cher was published which includes healthy, low-fat recipes. You can see my experience with some of those recipes in the Cher Scholar Food section, which includes recipes from both Forever Fit and Cooking for Cher.

The 2010s

In a 2018 Harper’s Bazaar article, the writer lists a compilation of diet things Cher had said to Hello! and Closer magazines in 2013 and in her book Forever Fit.

The author says Cher doesn’t eat ham or red meat. [Ham is kinda red though.]…I’ll only drink three or four times a year.”

Cher admits that sometimes on film sets she’s binged on unhealthy treats from craft services:

“I have had some bad binges while making movies. At the end of The Witches of Eastwick, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon and I really went crazy. We’d go from one of our trailers to the other stuffing ourselves with Pepperidge Farm Cheddar Cheese Goldfish, M&Ms, Cokes and Hershey’s Kisses,” she wrote. “Then Michelle and I found out we could microwave sweet potatoes in four minutes and that changed our entire lives. We lived on sweet potatoes, baked potatoes and Caesar salads.”

Excerpt from Forever Fit: “‘I’ve been concentrating on eating the foods that Robert [Haas, her co-author] has stressed as being terrific: brown rice (not white rice), legumes — lentils, pinto, navy, lima and kidney beans—vegetables, pastas, fruit,’ she wrote. ‘Pastas give me a lot of energy, and so do fruits like bananas, papaya and nectarines, because they have a lot of sugar but it isn’t refined.'”

The 2020s

An article in VegNews (2023) interprets the Cher diet as a Blue Zone diet. “79-Year-Old Cher Has Eaten Like a Blue Zoner for 30 Years. Is That Her Secret?…the music legend Cher, now 79 weaned herself off dairy more than 30 years ago. She also prioritized plant-based foods, a dietary pattern that is similar to Blue Zone residents known for their longevity.”

There are quotes from Forever Fit: “I try to avoid foods with a high fat content because they make me sluggish and keep my weight up” and “Dairy products are not good for us. I weaned myself from whole milk to nonfat milk–if I’m having milk at all. I think cheese is one of the worst things for the body. It doesn’t digest well, and most cheeses are too high in fat and cholesterol.”

And “I don’t do drugs. I never drink coffee and almost never drink alchohol or eat red mean, so I’m way ahead of the game.”

These Forever Fit quotes are still hangin in there 32 years later!

Blue Zones refer to countries where people have a longer lifespan due to their diets primarily (but also other cultural factors around the value of elders in a society): Ikaria, Greece, Barbagia, Sardinia in Italy, Okinawa, Japan, Nicoya in Costa Rica and Loma Linda, California.

Other Stuff

See the Cher Scholar section on Food.