ABSTRACT
This chapter provides health practitioners a knowledge of the Zone Diet (ZD) composition, current research evaluating the diet, typical weight loss results, the pros and cons of the diet as well as which patients would most benefit from each diet plan. The ZD is based on Sears' research efforts to create a diet he posited would encourage a metabolic state of hormonal efficiency, purporting satiety, increased energy and physical performance, heightened mental focus, and productivity. Despite the relative promising success of lower carbohydrate diets like the ZD and the Atkins Diet, it is important to consider the possibility that the weight loss produced by these diets may be attributable to other causal factors, such as overall calorie restriction. Requiring daily food measuring and macronutrient counting to ensure diet loyalty, following the ZD can be relatively time consuming and tedious, necessitating the majority of meals to be prepared from scratch.
