The Zone Diet

It may come as no great surprise to learn that there are plenty of people who are in the process of trying to lose some weight at any particular given time. It also may not surprise you to learn that the already vast number of plans, strategies and methods to achieve this aim are becoming ever more abundant as the media jumps on them with undisguised relish.

All that makes life pretty confusing for everyone who is constantly bombarded by the media's relentless pursuit of every latest greatest fad diet or magic pill for losing weight, so we can all look like the stick thin models the glossy magazines and TV fashion shows portray as being what we should all look like.

Sifting your way through all that media garbage is no easy chore! However, it helps a lot if you at least know what one or other of the weight loss diet plans are all about, especially if you are planning on spending your money on trying them out.

The Zone Diet is one such popular diet plan that caught the media's attention for long enough to make it a well known brand in the world of weight loss. So let's take a look at what The Zone Diet is, exactly.

What is The Zone Diet?

The Zone Diet is more than a simple set of diet rules for you to follow. It is actually more of a combined diet and healthy lifestyle plan which was created by its author, a former researcher for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Barry Sears, PhD along with its co-author, Bill Lawren. It promotes a healthy way of living which means taking regular, daily exercise as well as eating a balanced, healthy, nutritious and low calorie diet.

The exercise side of the Zone Diet plan is obvious enough and really entails maintaining a daily exercise routine that is enjoyable to do while making you work hard enough to burn off those excess calories.

The diet side of the Zone Diet is a common sense combination of the three main types of food. They are fats, protein and carbohydrates and are set out in an average meal ratio of 30% fats, 30% protein and 40% carbs.

This means that you don't actually exclude any major food group from your diet, which ensures you maintain the consumption of all the nutrients, vitamins and minerals that your body needs for its normal healthy functioning directly from the food you eat, which when you think about it is the way it should be!

When you combine a healthy, low calorie diet with plenty of daily exercise, you really should be able to burn off more calories than you are consuming, which satisfies the law of successful weight loss. That law, which may or may not really exist in name but I just thought of it, basically says that if you consume fewer calories than your body burns, you will lose weight over time.

Of course, there are conditions to that. Don't forget that in the early stages, you will be building muscle mass while using up your body's store of fat and that muscle weight more than fat. So to begin with you may not notice any actual weight loss, although you will notice your waistline getting a little slimmer and your body generally toning up.

But after sustained daily exercise and low calorie, full nutrition balanced diet, your weight will begin to drop as the fat store is noticeably reduced while your body will look tins better!

Does The Zone Diet Work?

The Zone Diet will work if, like any combined diet and exercise plan, you stick to it and do not cheat!

That means no sneaking biscuits or potato chips when you think no one is looking!

Remember, when you place yourself on a diet, you are doing it because you want to lose weight and improve your general health. If you then go ahead and cheat, you are cheating no one but yourself!

You might think its all right to cheat and then blame the diet for failing you, or whining and complaining about a certain diet's failings when really, deep down inside you know the only reason it failed was because you couldn't keep your pudgy hands out of the cake tin!

So yes, the Zone Diet works when you work with it and stick to it like you mean it. At the end of the day, if you are really serious about losing weight, then you owe it to yourself to be honest and stick to the rules!