Hey Susie!
I can't say I read the Zone, but I know a couple of low carbers who do the Zone and love it. I think it is a bit difficult to start, a bit confusing. But once you practice the diet it becomes easy and very fulfilling. If you are looking for simplicity in your eating world, that may not be the best starting place. But if you have read it already and like it, go for it.
Certainly Dr Atkins' diet is not a good choice, since he really does have his low carbers watch their carb grams closely. Of course, once you get the hang of it, it is not very hard. But then he has you to watch ketones in your urine to see if you are eating few enough carbs (ketones are not the same as ketosis which brittle diabetics get into trouble about). At any rate, Atkins diet is very popular but also very strict about what you can and cannot eat.
Dr Nancy Schwarzbein has a book out that has good information as to why we all should do a balanced diet. She does her meals with a small amount of carbs at every meal, and even with snacks. But "balanced" has nothing to do with the (very harmful, by the way) low fat/high carb diet which has been promoted by the media. The original diet was supposed to be low fat/high carb/HIGH FIBER diet, but the fiber part got lost in the works and the food manufacutrers just put out lots of low fat stuff. If you read a few of the low carb diet books, you can see why the low fat diet is actually harmful. Schwarzbein in her book, The Schwarzbein Principle gives a very good explanation about that.
The Hellers also explain why low fat diets are harmful in their book, The Carbohydrate Addicts LifeStyle Plan. Their diet is the easiest low carb diet to try. In fact, if you really don't want to obsess over food, check out their plan. You don't count calories, carbs, or anything. You just balance your diet according to size of servings. Their diet is a bit more complicated than that, but it is really very easy to do. Some people don't like it because they can't control themselves (read, ME!) when given some leeway.
There are actually quite a few different low carb plans out there. All are doing the same thing in different ways. They are all helping us to eat wiser, more healthily (okay, sometimes I just make up words that SHOULD exist!). And that means to eat carbs that are full of nutrition, not just empty calories, and to eat much less of them than we have been consuming in the past two decades.
What I have suggested to people who are wondering about the low carb diets (oh, NO ONE suggests a zero-carb diet -- that would be suicidal... we all NEED carbs, but we need the good kind and WAY fewer than we have been eating)... anyway, if you are wondering about a low carb diet, read any of the more popular books. Read the book thoroughly, and try the diet exactly as written in the book, for two weeks. Most people are shocked to find out how good we feel when adhering to a balanced diet as the low carb diets are. It seems impossible to believe it is okay to eat eggs all day, and even butter, sour cream and real mayonaise. But when you read about the needs our bodies have for pleanty of protein (it is what our cells are made of, and so are hormones and neurotransmitters and such things) and fats.... yes, we need to eat fats!... it is amazing to learn why we need them and why we need to stop the insanity of the latest fad diet, the low fat diet. This may sound rediculous, to shun the very popular low fat diet. But I sincerely believe it has caused so much harm, and the low fat diet has not been proven by those scientists who promote it so much, to be a valid way to lower your cholesterol and chances of heart attacks, as well as to prevent diabetes, lower blood pressures back to normal, prevent hypoglycemia, and so on. The low carb diets are being proven to do all those things and more. Look at the bibliography at the end of the Hellers books to see how much research has been done showing the good results from the low carb diets. This is no fad. It is not a single diet by a single author. It IS a way eating that is good for you.
Eating fats does not makes us fat. Eating pasta and low fat salad dressing DOES makes us fat and very unhealthy.
Sorry, Susie. You weren't asking for a comlete dissertation on the low carb world. I get carried away.
The Zone is a great place to start low carbing. The best thing to do, after you try it for two weeks, is to read another low carb book. Then next month read one more. Knowledge is power. Low carb knowledge helps to prevent failure. This could be the last "diet" you try. After a two week trial, you will understand why I say this.
Good luck. I hope you find success with whatever road you travel toward health. And perhaps along the way you might lose a few pounds too. What a deal!
Last edited by Giggles; 01-17-2002 at 09:19 AM.
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