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Summary: A 'must read' for good health -- 'EICOSANOIDS' RULE!!
Review: If your own good health is important to you, "The Zone" may be one of the most important 'reads' of your life! "The Zone" explains in simple language the incredibly powerful effects of the food you eat, every day, in working either good -- or bad -- consequences on your body! Dr. Sears' message is simple: you have to treat the food you eat with the same respect you would give a PRESCRIPTION DRUG. His book shows us WHY this is true and goes on to give us all the information we need to put ourselves in control of our own good health, including healthy weight loss! Dr. Sears' book is OUTSTANDING -- IF SOME MAY CONSIDER THIS BOOK CONTROVERSIAL, GIVE ME MORE CONTROVERSY!!
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Summary: Another Fad diet to avoid
Review: After "Zoning" for 6 months and initially losing weight and feeling good, I started feeling dizzy and very hungry all the time. My doctor said it was a result of my diet, and that it wasn't worth getting sick and ruining your health just to lose weight and try to look better. Since then I have educated myself a lot more. It may be necessary for some people to go through the Zone fad on their way to healthy living. But there is a huge amount of solid scientific literature pointing toward what the healthiest way to lose weight and keep it off is. I learned too late that this book had been debunked by everyone in the health and science community as being totally one man's theory with no science to support the conclusions. It's amazing that some "experts" profit off of unsuspecting people in this way.
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Summary: For the first time in my life, I'm down to 5% bodyfat!
Review: Some people don't do well on a high carbohydrate diet, despite what many of the so-called experts say. If a low protein and high carb diet isn't working for you, consider opening your mind and giving this way of eating a try. Listen to how your body responds, since you are the best expert on how food affects you if you pay attention. After changing my eating habits to follow The Zone, focusing mostly on raw produce and healthy forms of protein such as powdered soy and whey, for the first time in my life I'm down to 5% bodyfat! I have a lot more energy and need less sleep. As a bodybuilder I'm continuing to make gains of about a pound of muscle a month, something I never was able to do on lots of carbs. Open your mind, give this way of eating a try, and watch that unwanted fat melt away.
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Summary: I'm now a believer
Review: I read this book, although I have to admit I skipped over a lot of the "science" about why it works. Fruits, vegetables, lean meats? Sounded good to me. I decided to give it a try. After the first week I noticed that the mid-morning and mid-afternoon drowsies had disappeared. Completely! At that point I knew that even if I didn't lose weight I'd keep eating that way simply because I was feeling so much better. After 7 weeks of The Zone (with quite a bit of cheating here and there) I've lost 3 inches off my waist and 17 pounds. I'm still quite a ways from my goal, but I'm a big believer in The Zone. :)
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Summary: Zone Diet helps weight, mood, and joint aches.
Review: I began eating Zone-style a month ago, after picking up the book incidentally at a garage sale. (Had never heard of it before.) I had recently read about hyperinsulinemia from other sources, and Dr. Sears' book seemed to be a good way to address this problem for me. (For years, I had felt faint and had classic hypoglycemic symptoms if I didn't eat at least every two hours.) I also had severe joint pains and stiffness and was depressed. Within a couple of days of starting the Zone diet, my depression lifted. I found the mental energy and courage to look for a new job and start volunteering at our local Senior Center. In less than a month, I am having to discard clothes that are too big for me. But the biggest miracle is that my joints don't hurt anymore. They feel as supple and pain-free as they did when I was in my twenties. Before, I could not start the day without Advil in order just to be able to move. I now have to take anti-inflammatory drugs much less often and am much more active. I no longer crave sweets and can go for hours without eating without any symptoms of hypoglycemia My energy has greatly increased, and I need less sleep. From my experience, every claim Dr. Sears has made about the effects of his diet is true! Please try this book! Zone-style eating is moderate and balanced, does not cause ketosis, and can do lots of good in many ways!
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Summary: Calorie Restriction with no hunger and adequete nutrients
Review: Nearly all of the arguments against the Zone don't pan out when you actually read the book. Sometimes I think that dieticians must be the worst mathematicians on the planet. Is this a high protein diet? No. Is there too much fat in this diet? Think about it. The Zone has far fewer calories than what the ADA recommends, so the same amount of fat and protein will equal higher percentages. This is simple math, folks. The ADA recommends that an active woman looking to lose weight eat 1800 calories, 15% of them from protein. If you do the math that's about 70 grams of protein. What does Dr. Sears recommend for the same person? 84 grams of protein (12 blocks). The difference between 70 and 84 grams of protein is a half-cup of cottage cheese. Big deal. Now let's look at fat. To get 20% of your 1800 calories from fat, you need 40 grams of fat. How many fat grams in 12 blocks of the Zone? 36! So what's the big deal? Dr. Sears recommends less carbohydrates, not more fat or protein, which lowers the calorie intake without sacrificing much needed protein and essential fatty acids. The carbohydrate intake is adequate, particularly in the form of low glycemic foods such as fruits and vegetables. Anybody who feels "hungry" on the Zone is doing it wrong. Either you're not eating enough blocks, or you're not eating your veggies. You have to eat mountainsof vegetables on The Zone! Highly recommended if you want the science behind the Zone. Otherwise, you may want to read his simpler books, like Mastering the Zone and Zone Perfect Meals in Minutes.
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Summary: a few notes
Review: Having finally read this book, I'm simply amazd at the negative reaction it's gotten. Just look at the reviews below: Some are dire warnings about the dangers of ketosis from people WHO DID NOT READ THIS BOOK, as Sears warns about the dangers of going into ketosis on pages 19, 66, and 67 (in the last one, he warns about taking _too_much_ protein), and how to avoid doing so. "The Zone" is NOT a ketogenic diet, period. Given my short height (65 inches) and activity level I would be ingesting about 160 grams of carbohydrates a day on this plan; how is that even close to ketogenic? In fact, at one point Sears talks disparagingly of "fad diets" that recommended obscenely high amounts of protein and fat with almost no carbohydrates, which is _not_ what "The Zone" is. An early review also complained that having calculated his calorie intake (he uses "kcal" to be a little smug about it), it only came up to 500-600. You can only do this if you assume, say, a protein block contains 7 grams of protein and no fat or carbohydrates, which isn't the case, though one must admit Sears didn't make this clear. Once you've adjusted for this, calorie levels from all three macronutrients shoot up to the 40/30/30 levels that are recommended. That's also why his prescriptions seem "inconsistent," as when he says he would take 44 grams of fat for 100 grams of protein at one point, but later on, if you do the calculation, 14 blocks of fat seem to come up to only 21 grams. Again, make the logical deductions from other food blocks and it goes up near 44 again. Sears was certainly being confusing, but any reasonably intelligent, unbiased person can figure this out in five minutes (I did). "The Zone" is not a ketogenic diet, and it is not a crash diet. No way, no how. It is not even a "weight loss" diet per se. On the other hand, I do not like the anecdotal nature of much of the book, nor the testimonials (though I understand both of these are meant for the kind of non-skeptical crowd that reads this stuff and needs emotional boosts), nor the filler that encompassed much of the second half of the book. But the biochemical foundations of "The Zone" are compelling, if not unimpeachable, and the plan itself is not really far-out at all. In fact, I think you could go with a less "extreme" version, following, say, a 60/20/20 plan, eating mainly low-glycerin level carbohydrates and monounsaturated fats, and still lose a lot of weight. That said, the 40/30/30 is _far_ from extreme and nothing like _true_ fad diets that recommend 70% of your calories to come from protein.
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Summary: Incredulous at the negative reviews contained herein!
Review: The diet regimen described in this book's program doesn't promote a high protein or a low calorie diet as two of the reviewers stated. I don't know what book they were reading but they are dead wrong in my opinion. This is a sensible balanced diet with enough variety to supply the micro nutrients as well as the correct proportion and quality of macro nutrients, imo. I am very active mentally and physically. I am on it for health and lean muscle weight gain and I feel great even though I am post heart transplant with only about 30% kidney function.
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Summary: I lost 50 pounds but...
Review: I stayed on this diet for 8 months and lost 50 pounds but now I'm impotent. Whats the deal?
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Summary: So far I'm starving!
Review: I definitely need to recalibrate here. I'm 6ft. 5, 215 lbs. I run, and I weight lift, and so far this diet has left me hungry, with supreme energy crashes. I have bought all 3 books, so I will attempt to make it work, but so far, if this is it, I will go back to my old ways of just working out and eating whatever I want, which has left me overall thin, with just some excess weight around the midsection. The old ways were working, I really just bought this "system" to see if I could fine tune, not lose strength, and not have to spend money on more creatine, HMB, and other supplements. Maybe not. Will update later.
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