The Zone Diet, developed by Dr.
Barry Sears, does initially capture the imagination of those wanting to lose pounds by using the word diet.
Indeed it is a potential weight loss program, but quickly you understand the message is much deeper.
The Zone means cultivating an attitude towards weight loss until ideal weight is achieved, but then, and much more importantly, a change of behavior towards more fit daily living habits.
So what is the Zone Diet? From the research that Dr.
Sears has done, he theorizes that your eating habits influence your whole body's physical and mental health.
This doesn't sound so unique; eat badly, get fat and lazy, feel badly, isn't something we haven't all heard before.
Knowing the right way to eat, though, is something quite a bit more elusive.
Calories were, of course, at the forefront of all diet information for well over half a century.
In recent decades, every weight loss diet imaginable has been devised, incorporating low calories, yes, but now utilizing the properties of specific foods thought to accelerate weight loss.
From grapefruit diets to ones that even feature the consumption of alcoholic beverages, all have been tried in the name of getting thinner.
This trend eventually evolved into the thinking that whole food groups were to blame for gaining too much weight and, if eliminated, would result in weight loss.
You remember low-carbs and no fat diets.
Depriving your body of proteins was thought to trigger the body to burn up its fat stores as well.
The Zone Diet takes the food groups idea to a new level with a new approach.
Backed some scientific hypothesis, and new evidence that there are good and bad versions of carbohydrate and fatty food sources, 3 food groups are the focus of this diet.
Interestingly enough carbohydrates, in the specific form of low glycemic fruits and vegetables, are the main eating component.
Proteins, and fats (monosaturated) comprise the rest of your food intake on a daily basis.
Balance is the key to this Diet with nothing singular or extreme to the idea.
To really make this Diet stand out, among so many other diets, the emphasis is shifted far away from the weight loss properties of the plan.
In fact there is little mention of weight loss per se in all the literature.
Instead the Zone Diet is meant to be what people need.
In recent times one stark fact about weight loss has been revealed.
It was rarely addressed because it meant making hard choices, and doing some soul searching, to accept.
It is never good enough to simply lose excess weight.
After that, the trick is not to gain it back, and have to lose it again over and over.
The only way this can be done is, after the pounds are lost, is simply that you cannot go back to eating the way you did when you got fat in the first place.
The Zone Diet is a diet; in the sense that a nutritionist might say you need iodine from salt in your diet.
As nothing about losing weight, your diet is your long term eating habit.
The main goal is to establish a healthy eating pattern for the rest of your life.
The grand motivation being to peak energy levels, more alert mental processes, and an overall feeling of wellbeing.
The Zone Diet combines a balanced plan of attack on daily meals and the message that the healthy eating habit must be established and adhered to religiously.
The reward of high energy translates into a more fulfilling life.
This is actually not about weight loss; it is a lifestyle wake-up call and a strategy to change.