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With the New Year comes the guaranteed resolution for most people to lose weight. That always that resolution is usually abandoned some time in February. Part of the reason is that we really don't know what we are talking about when it comes to weight loss. Weight loss is composed of three separate components: water loss, muscle loss, and fat loss. If you restrict calories, you are going to lose weight. What that weight loss might consist of (water, muscle, or fat) is a very different question.
There are no health benefits to water loss (i.e. dehydration) or muscle loss (i.e. protein deprivation), but there is something magical about fat loss. If you can lose excess body fat, then you are virtually guaranteed to lower blood sugar levels, blood lipid levels, and blood pressure. Not surprisingly, drugs used to reduce blood sugar, blood lipids and blood pressure are the biggest sellers in the country.
Considering the continuing outcry to reverse our obesity epidemic, no one seems to bother to measure fat loss in any clinical trials. This is why you see a lot of research studies published stating it doesn't matter what diet you follow because if you restrict calories, you will lose weight. I agree with that statement. But if you want better health (not to mention looking better in a swimsuit), then you want to make sure that you are losing fat at the fastest possible rate while conserving muscle mass at the same time. The published clinical studies that have looked at fat loss make it very clear that the Zone Diet is the best dietary strategy to burn fat faster (1-3).
If the moderate-carbohydrate Zone Diet is good, then shouldn't an even lower-carbohydrate diet like the Atkins diet be better? Not so fast. The published studies comparing the Zone Diet to the Atkins diet make it clear that there are no benefits to consuming a lower-carbohydrate diet that generates ketosis, but there are plenty of negative consequences, such as increased cellular inflammation and decreased capacity for exercise (4,5).
But losing weight is relatively easy compared to keeping it off. That's why the recent DIOGENES study is so important (6). This study makes it very clear that if you want to keep lost weight off, then your best choice is maintaining a diet that has at least 25 percent of the calories coming from protein, and about 40 percent of the calories coming from low-glycemic carbohydrates. That's the Zone Diet.
So if your New Year's resolution is to lose weight (and really lose fat) and keep it off, then the Zone Diet should be your only choice
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