The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss

That's right: no magic potions, pills, herbs, or mantras. The truth is that every time you open your mouth to eat, you're applying for a passport to the Zone. To get that passport, though, you must treat food as if it were a drug. You must eat food in a controlled fashion and in the proper proportions—as if it were an intravenous drip. Reaching the

Let me be a little more specific about the rewards you'll reap from staying in the Zone. One is loss of excess body fat. If you have a weight problem, the real problem is excess body fat. Even if you're only slightly overweight, the dietary technology

This means that, in effect, human growth hormone is the most powerful fat-burning hormone in the body. So release of human growth hormone from the pituitary gland is the crucial hormonal change that occurs with anaerobic exercise. That hormonal change gives you two crucial sweat benefits: it burns fat, and it allows you to build new muscle at the s

All well and good. The problem is that insulin is essentially a storage hormone, evolved to put aside excess carbohydrate calories in the form of fat in case of future famine. So the insulin that's stimulated by excess carbohydrates aggressively promotes the accumulation of body fat.

Diets based on choice restriction and calorie limits usually fail. People on restrictive diets get tired of feeling hungry and deprived. They go off their diets, put the weight back on (primarily as increased body fat), and then feel bad about themselves for not having enough will power, discipline, or motivation. Weight loss has little to do with

So how do you maximize growth-hormone release during sleep? Eat a Zone-favorable snack before you retire. That snack will set in motion the hormonal foundation to allow maximum secretion of growth hormone. On the other hand, if you eat a carbohydrate-rich snack before you go to bed, you've done everything in your power to inhibit growth hormone rel

Hold on; it gets even worse. Not only do increased insulin levels tell the body to store carbohydrates as fat, they also tell it not to release any stored fat. This makes it impossible for you to use your own stored body fat for energy. So the excess carbohydrates in your diet not only make you fat, they make sure you stay fat. It's a double whammy

When a carbohydrate enters the bloodstream too fast, the pancreas responds by secreting high levels of insulin. While that brings the blood-sugar level down, it also tells the body to store fat and keep it stored.

Eating fat does not make you fat. It's your body's response to excess carbohydrates in your diet that makes you fat. Your body has a limited capacity to store excess carbohydrates, but it can easily convert those excess carbohydrates into excess body fat. It's hard to lose weight by simply restricting calories. Eating less and losing excess body fa