Is Zone Diet a Fad?
Is Zone Diet a Fad?
How do you recognize a fad diet? When I asked myself this question, some generous people hurried to offer me free, quick, easily digestible answers. I chose the top ten from the list, and decided to match them with the Zone diet’s most common features.
Health Castle offers “Ten signs of a fad diet”:
1. It promises massive weight loss (1 – 2 lbs per week)
Dr. Barry Sears is careful when he declares a standard weight loss on Zone diet. He considers that anything between 1 to 1,5 lbs per week is satisfactory. “It will be impossible to lose more than one to one point five pounds of fat per week. Anything over that is loss of retained water”, says Sears himself on his daily “Ask Dr. Sears” column at DrSears.com. FAD.
2. It does not suggest you that you consult with a registered dietician or nutritionist
“Any change in diet (for better or worse) will affect the metabolism of the drug(s) you are taking. Always consult with a physician before starting the Zone Diet or any other dietary plan”, says Dr. Sears in various interviews and discussion lists. Not FAD.
3. It encourages you to eliminate certain food groups (e.g. “low carb diets”, “low fat diets”)
This is untrue for the Zone diet. Dr. Sears says: “No food is forbidden in the Zone.” Zone diet considers “unfavourable” mostly high glycemic foods and foods high in saturated fats. Not FAD.
4. It offers rigid menus
Difficult-to-prepare meals, plenty of measuring and counting, rules that are easy to misinterpret, Zone subscribes to that. FAD.
5. It neglects active living or lifestyle changes
The Zone diet has impressive instrumentary and regulation for dining out or for fast food. On the other hand, there’s no problem if you step out of the Zone now and then. Here are some soothing phrases from Dr. Sears himself: “The Zone diet is free of guilt” or “The Zone is just one meal away”. I’m quite UNDECIDED about this one. It is clear the man has taken some time to think about it.
6. It harshly limitates the daily calorie intake
Some dieticians claim that the Zone diet limits the daily calorie intake to somewhere around 800. I used the calculator at DrSears.com to check this (I am a 100 pound woman by the way) and my daily calorie intake resulted around 1100 kcal. I’m not pleased with it, as I don’t plan to spend my days in permanent hibernation, or lose any of my precious, hard-gained pounds… FAD.
7. It contradicts what most trusted health profesionals say
The Zone diet argues against the USDA food pyramid, which recommends grains and starches up to five servings per day. This is its most high-profile argument. The American Heart Association considers Zone “a fad diet”. FAD
8. It depends on special products, supplements and treatments
One Zone bar (or shake) is $2.50. A 45-day supply bottle of Omega Rx concentrated fish oil is $78.15. The figure for the Zone books ranges between $6 and $26 (at the Zone Labs online shop); FAD.
9. It makes miraculous claims
The Zone will help you to:
* lose up to 1.5 lbs body fat per week
* improve your insulin level (which should particulary be … “not too high not too low”)
* fight against “modern diseases” such as type II diabetes and blood vessel affections
* fight against “mental illnesses” such as depresion and alcoholism
* prevent “certain” cancers
* “restore energy”, says Dr. Sears in his book, Enter the Zone, “especially if you have CMS, PMS or even HIV infection” and…
* The Zone itself is defined as a state of well-being in which you do not experience hunger, fatigue or moodiness. Your body and mind function sharply at their “peak level”.
The Zone is a FAD diet in this respect.
10. It relies on testimonials and success stories rather than scientific proof
Dr. Sears says “Let me be a little more specific about the rewards you’ll reap from staying in the Zone” (“Enter the Zone”, p. 4). A few paragraphs later he tells the happy stories of Steve Courson (a famous National Football League player in the late 1970’s), his teammate John Corb and Dr. Chris Kyriazis, head of European Marketing for IBM. I believe these examples are not specific but unusual. Moreover, Dr. Sears’ Zone diet is mistrusted by most dieticians and nutritionists as so far he has not published any relevant, professional research to sustain his theory. FAD again.
Iulia Pascanu writes for enterthezonediet.com where you can find more information about the Zone Diet.Please feel free to use this article in your Newsletter or on your website. If you use this article, please include the resource box and send a brief message to let me know where it appeared: mailto:[email protected]
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Rating The Diets: A Mindless Exercise?
There has been a recent surge in the experts weighing in (pun intended) on popular and celebrity diets to rate them in terms of effectiveness, nutritional adequacy, and balance. Look at the latest crop of magazines, Internet news reports, and television specials.
What is a semi-motivated would-be dieter to do?
Every diet listed seems to give rise to a chorus of criticism. Either it contains too few fruits and vegetables, not enough fiber, not enough fat, or too few calories. The glycemic index is too high or too low, the nutritional content of its staples are not good enough, there is too much or too little of something.
Who rates what we are eating now? We simply pig out on everything from pizza, to fast food, to snacks (did you know that potato chips are the most popular snack food in America – accompanying 32% of our lunches?), desserts, ice cream and beer.
While it would be nice, I suppose, to have a population who ate only healthy foods, in moderation, exercised daily, and took care to ingest at least the minimum requirement of vitamins and minerals, that is not reality, my friend. We overeat on all the wrong foods, we avoid regular exercise like the plague, and huff and puff our way into enlarged bodies that are twenty to fifty pounds heavier than our frames deserve.
Any way that we can take off some or all of that weight is worthwhile. No one is going to stay on any of the popular diets for a lifetime, let’s face it. We look at them as temporary (which is part of the problem, but I digress) fixes. The last thing we need are experts who make us afraid to start because we might not be obtaining the right nutrition. Or do we take a certain degree of self-satisfaction in telling ourselves that we can’t start until the “perfect diet” is identified?
Are we eating the right way without a diet? No, our nutrition is still deplorable, it’s just that we are eating a lot of everything. Let’s have at least one expert come out and truthfully report that no matter the deficiencies of any specific diet – going on it is absolutely better than eating the way we are now!
Let’s get our collective weight down, and then start worrying about nutrition and health. Diabetes, heart attacks, and gall bladders care a lot less about what we eat than how much.
Start a diet, ANY diet, and follow through for a few weeks and I guarantee you’ll be in a much better place, physically and mentally, to start looking after your health and long term fitness than when hemmed in by too much blubber, reading scare stories from the media about how your intended diet is somehow unbalanced.
Virginia Bola is a licensed psychologist and an admitted diet fanatic. She specializes in therapeutic reframing and the effects of attitudes and motivation on individual goals. The author of The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual, and a free ezine, The Worker’s Edge, she recently completed a psychologically-based weight control book: Diet with an Attitude: A Weight Loss Workbook. She can be reached at DietWithAnAttitude.com
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