Which Zone Diet Books are Best for You?

I've read all the Zone Diet books by Dr. Barry Sears, so I hope the following guide will help you sort them out.

The first Zone Diet book is The Zone: A Dietary Road Map to Lose Weight Permanently: Reset Your Genetic Code: Prevent Disease: Achieve Maximum Physical Performance by Barry Sears and Bill Lawren, first published in 1995.

Dr. Sears went on to claim he wrote this book for medical professionals, and he'd never meant this book for a lay audience. It's been attacked as too technical. Frankly, I like that. The scientific basis of the Zone Diet is laid out in detail that many people find excruciating.

Reading Zone Diet Books is Not Always Easy, but Always Worth the Effort

Myself, I found it comforting. There are tons of diet books based on fads. The Zone is different. Don't believe it, just read this book and try to argue with the scientific details.

I'm not a doctor or medical researcher and I don't pretend to remember every detail of this book, and that's OK. It's enough for me to know that it does exist, and it's all here.

Many people, however, don't seem to care about the scientific basis of a diet. They just say, tell me how to lose weight.

So the next Zone book by Barry Sears is Mastering the Zone: The Next Step in Achieving SuperHealth and Permanent Fat Loss. This also explains why the Zone works and is good for you, but does so in a lot less detail and is more oriented toward giving you practical details.

Myself, I believe that everybody on the Zone should read these books so they have a solid grounding of the science and the techniques. These two are the foundation. Again, I realize however, that my opinion on this is in the minority.

Recipes, Zone Diet Books Making It Easy to Follow

Later Zone Diet books have gone on to expand upon the possibilities of the Zone. These include: Zone-Perfect Meals in Minutes; Zone Food Blocks: The Quick and Easy, Mix-and-Match Counter for Staying in the Zone; Zone Meals in Seconds: 150 Fast and Delicious Recipes for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner by Barry Sears and Lynn Sears; The Zone Diet; A Week in the Zone: A Quick Course in the Healthiest Diet for You by Barry Sears and Deborah Kotz; and What to Eat in the Zone: The Quick & Easy, Mix & Match Counter for Staying in the Zone.

The Anti-Aging Zone was the next major work. In it, he examines many facets of how to extend healthy life. He concludes that it's probably impossible to extend human life past 120 years or so (some scientists disagree with this), but is possible to get to that, and is much better health than we currently have.

He prescribes the Zone Diet (of course), moderate exercise and meditation. This is a useful book, especially if your goal is long term health as well as (or instead of) losing weight. I love the chapters on hormones. If you're ever tempted to take hormone supplements, read this book first.

However, Sears is not an expert on exercise and it shows. In this and other books he reviews the current medical literature, and he is right to warn against excessive exercise, but otherwise there are better sources of info. Same with meditation.

In The Soy Zone: 101 Delicious and Easy-to-Prepare Recipes, Sears embraces soy protein as an important part of the Zone. Although widely popular, some alternative health experts warn against it. There're lots of arguments both for and against. I find it interesting that in later book Sears ignores soy.

In his next Zone bestselling book, he writes about the importance of fish oil. The Omega Rx Zone: The Miracle of the New High-Dose Fish Oil. These days fish oil is for sale at GNC and over radio infomercials. However, the importance of supplementing with Omega 3 oils was not well known when this book arrived. He was one of the pioneers.

zone books

Probably the Most Important of the Later Zone Diet Books

Same with his next book, The Anti-Inflammation Zone: Reversing the Silent Epidemic That's Destroying Our Health. It's become almost a cliche now, but when this book came out Sears was one of the first to describe the effects of chronic inflammation and its link to metabolic disorder, tying it in to his earlier findings about how the Zone Diet promotes hormonal balance.

His latest book is Toxic Fat: When Good Fat Turns Bad. It's interesting in many ways because it reveals that the fat cells of our bodies are not simply storage chambers filled with calories we wish we could "burn off" easier.

No, the true story is a lot more complicated. Fat cells are quite active, releasing various biochemicals that affect your health -- negatively. Guys, one chemical that fat cells release reduces your testosterone. If that doesn't make you want to lose your beer belly, just put on a dress!

Overall, I admire the way Dr. Sears has continued to build an empire of information products regarding his diet. He stays up on current health research and ties that into the Zone Diet and modern concerns.

I personally believe everyone should read Enter the Zone, Mastering the Zone, the Omega RX Zone, and the Anti-Inflammation Zone, but I realize not everybody likes to read everything, as I do.

So, my advice is to definitely read Mastering the Zone and one other. If you're most concerned with your health and longevity, make it The Anti-Inflammation Zone. If you're most concerned with losing weight, read Toxic Fat.

Reading Zone Diet books as they come out is a good way to stay up on the latest developments regarding health, longevity and weight loss from medical science.

Next: Is Zone Diet -- comparing the Zone Diet to the Hormone Diet.

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