Now this diet is most like the diet I invented in the early 70′s, except that the Zone Diet is loosely considered a low carb diet because it is lower in carbs than most traditional diets and it does help the body burn fat more easily. Sears had a broader purpose in mind when he developed the Zone Diet however, he was looking to use food as medicine. According to Dr. Barry Sears eating your foods in the 40/30/30 ratio will actually balance your hormones and provide greater health and improve athletic performance. If you read his book, you will see many impressive trials where athletic performance with increased using the zone.

There have been many successes, and a lot of people swear by the diet. Most of the diets critics are critical because the diet is difficult to follow, and not because of its ineffectiveness. I however, was impressed with how simple Dr. Sears made the diet. Remember, that many years before I had invented a somewhat similar diet with far less noble purposes, and people found that impossible to follow. Here uses techniques like, “make a fist”, in order to determine the size of the meat portion. He looks for approximation not precision, which makes his diet quite user-friendly. If however you get into precision in trying to keep the proportions of the fats, proteins, and carbohydrates in the exact ratios, you will go crazy.

Among the successes, the greatest has to be a man named Uribe, who lost nearly 1000 pounds using the zone diet and the assistance of doctors. Many celebrities have done the diet, but then again, celebrities are always doing diets. Below is a video of what a nutritionist has to say about the diet.

You might note, that the nutritionist and I share the same viewpoint about a perfect diet for everyone, but the zone diet is designed to be a very healthy diet that could be followed for the rest of your life. It’s drawbacks of course include having to plan each meal so that you get 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein, and 30% fat, and also there is the fact that the amount of calories you consume in one meal is limited but it isn’t terribly low, and you can always eat several meals in one day. If the diet interest you you should click the link below to go to Dr. Sears site, where you can learn more from the guy who originally wrote the book.

In 1972 Dr. Robert Atkins published a book, The New Diet Revolution, and the Atkins Diet came into being. The concept of the low carb diet was born. There have been many variations since then but the fundamentals have remained the same.
 If you ever studied biology you know that the bodies cells take sugars and turn them into energy, making carbohydrates our primary energy source.  If you eat too many carbohydrates and fats the body stores these as body fat to be used later in case of an emergency. It usually takes a considerable effort to get the body to use this fat, making weight loss a bit of a balancing act- if you eat too little the body slows down its metabolism and hangs on tighter to its precious fat stores- but in order to lose weight you must use more calories than you consume.

The Atkins diet trains the body to use fat as its primary source of energy. Initially this is done by depriving the body of carbs and giving it abundant fat.  The body adapts by adjusting its metabolism to use fat and the body seeing that there is plenty of fat stops hanging on to its fat reserves making fat loss much easier.

Now this works miracles for a great number of people making weight loss easy, where they had struggled up to that point.  For that reason many people swear by low carb diets. There is much controversy over the long term health ramifications of the diet, primarily because we are talking about changing the bodies normal metabolism and the fact that the diet has an acidic effect on the body. Traditionally a healthy is slightly alkaline and intentionally making it acidic is not seen to be a good thing.

Now I personally have lost more than 100 lbs using low carb diets so I know that they work extremely well- at least for me.  I can not say anything about the long term health effects, but I have always felt very healthy when on a low carb diet.  You never get “hungry” because your body just goes to your body fat reserves when it gets “low” on food. So I definitely could recommend this diet for weight loss though  my vote is still out for making it a life style.  Many swear by it though so it can’t be all bad.

If would like more information on this diet you can go to the Atkins.com website

The book below will help you get started if you would like to give the Atkins Diet a try. If you like meat and heavy protein it is a great diet and as I said before it is very effective.  If you are like my wife and too much protein repulses you, I would keep on looking.