If you’ve heard of the Zone Diet and FormulaZone, you may be wondering are they the same diet? Yes they are. FormulaZone is the ZoneDiet made easy, thanks to a clever system accessible online that takes the headache out of the diet.
The Zone Diet was originally created by Dr Barry Sears for cardiologists to help people with diabetes and obesity as well as heart disease. The diet was designed to ensure the right nutritional balance of carbohydrates, protein and fat – all of which the body needs:
- 40% low-glycemic carbohydrates to feed the brain without spiking blood sugar.
- 30% protein to maintain muscle mass and trigger the fat-burning hormone, glucagon.
- 30% fat to allow the body to absorb fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K, and Linoleic acid.
Not surprisingly the Zone Diet’s method of weight loss through healthy eating has made it a popular mainstream diet too, but a big problem has been that it’s not easy to follow. Not a lot of us have time to work out the 40-30-30 mix of carbs, proteins and fats in each meal.
FormulaZone has gives you access to simple, easy-to-use tools that do everything for you, right down to actual meal plans and a shopping list so you (and your family) can enjoy the benefits of the Zone Diet without the headache.
Here’s a look at how FormulaZone works.
First, you create a personal profile using the FormulaZone Personal Profiler tool. Enter your gender, height, weight, activity level and so on, and the Diet Profiler works out your body mass index, suggested goal weight, and the number of calories you should eat daily to meet it. It also asks you to specify some preferences about how much variety you like in your meals, and which foods you can’t or won’t eat, and so on.
Next, you use the Interactive Meal Planner to create your actual complete meal plans for upcoming days. The meal planner is a fantastic tool. Diets are always more successful when you’re following a plan rather than working out what to eat on a meal-by-meal basis.
Meal plans are easily customized (via your Profile and other tools) to suit you and your family perfectly, so if there are foods you’re allergic too or just don’t like, or if you’re vegetarian or diabetic, no problem. The more you use the Interactive Meal Planner, the more it learns your preferences so it keeps getting easier to create push-button meal plans that are exactly right for you.
The Meal Planner has access to plenty of recipes. At the ForumlaZone website the exact number varies – we’re guessing because (as they say) it’s increasing all the time. By our count, there are more than 4,650 recipes (totting up the individual numbers for breakfast, lunches, desserts, dinners and snacks).
If you like, you can add your own recipes – old family favourites or tasty meals you’ve found in magazines – using a Recipe Builder tool. Just enter in the details and it delivers a nutritional profile. If necessary you can tweak the recipe so that it has the right 40-30-30 balance (calculations are done for you!) and save it for future use by the Meal Planner.
You can also fine tune recipes with the FormulaZone Ingredient Substitution Finder tool so you don’t need to miss out on meals that sound great but contain something you’re allergic to or just don’t like!
As well as the recipe Builder and Meal planner, other great tools include the Nutrition Label Analyzer – just pump in the details and see how ready-made meals from supermarkets compare to the perfect nutritional balance. This is a really useful tool because when ready-made meals are up to scratch, you can incorporate them into your meal plans and take time off from cooking without ruining your diet.
Another important feature is that family members can enjoy healthy eating and weight loss too, at no extra cost. All the recipes can be automatically portioned and scaled to suit your partner’s and kids’ nutritional needs too, using the Family style tool. This is a big bonus because with many diets you end up eating alone because meals are simply not healthy or tasty enough for the rest of the family.
Although there’s no extra cost for family members, it has to be said that the potential saving is not very much because this is a super-affordable diet plan to begin with! It works out to $8.33, $6.67 or $5.25 a month, depending on whether you join for three, six or 12 months. And of course, there are no special meals or foods to buy.
This includes access to all the features, including additional tools such as the Fast Food Analyzer and personal Progress Log. You can check out everything you get and find out more about the diet in general, at the FormulaZone website.
An original FormulaZone Review, exclusive to this site!
Copyright © Carol-Ann Mackenzie/DietsThatWork
