Welcome to ZLife!

CONGRATULATIONS!  YOU’VE BEEN RELEASED FROM DIET JAIL.

Plan Z provides you with the the missing structure to take you from captivity (diet jail) to freedom. You are about to enter Phase 4 of Plan Z . . .

ZLIFE

Wait a minute! If you’re in Phase 4 of Plan Z, doesn’t that mean you’re still on a diet? And if you’re still on a diet, doesn’t that mean you’re still in diet jail?

That depends. ZLife implies you have learned and are now practicing a new way of eating. You now know how and why you got fat in the first place, right?

Let’s review: Your insulin got out of whack and started converting carbohydrates into more and more fat. Every time you tried to diet by calorie restricting, your metabolism slowed down. So you gave up on diet after diet. Then, you found Plan Z. You bought into the idea that you cannot achieve weight loss by eating less and exercising more.

Calorie balance is virtually impossible to measure accurately. You really should watch Gary Taubes’ Dartmouth lecture again as you start ZLife to drive that lesson home. It will help you keep your mind right. And show it to your friends and family when they tell you to watch your fat intake.

Back to Plan Z. You started taking the Crave Control spray. You were amazed to see the weight start dropping off. You weren’t hungry. The formula was mobilizing the stored fat first. Amazing? Not really. Hormones got you to your unhealthy weight and our spray helps you get back to normal.  Maybe you studied diet literature and learned more about alternative medicine since you’ve been on Plan Z. But let’s review: Agriculture is only about 10,000 years old. Before that, humans were hunter gatherers.  We ate wild game and in-between we ate fruits and vegetables that occurred in nature. Meanwhile, there were periods of time where humans didn’t kill an animal. And our bodies evolved to store fat for famines or periods of hunger. Brilliant.

We did not evolve to eat processed white flour and sugar. But in 1979, the McGovern Senate Subcommittee proclaimed that we should eat less fat.  It suddenly became “unhealthy” to do what we evolved to do. We can trace the “obesity epidemic” back to that fateful year. We did not evolve to have unlimited access to starch. But as soon as low-fat became “healthy,” food processors jumped into the fray to create low-fat alternatives. Low-fat yogurt, low-fat margarine, low-fat cheese, etc. are all of the things that make you fat.

I honestly don’t think these food processors meant to fuel the obesity epidemic, but they did. But back to you. You finished ZReduction and went on ZReboot. You stayed off the sugar and starch, and you added back some wonderful foods: cheese, butter, ghee, coconut oil, pork ribs and mascarpone. Tough duty, huh? And what happened? You were satisfied and you maintained your weight within a few pounds. And when you gained a little too much, you did a protein day.

Six weeks later, here you are in ZLife. If you’ve read this far, maybe you can predict what I’m going to say next:

ZLife and ZReboot are pretty much Z same thing. ZReboot is sort of a halfway house between ZReduction and ZLife.

You’ve been in that halfway house for six weeks. You’ve seen how you can maintain a healthy weight by eating whole foods and enjoying delicious recipes. Everyone reports that they are amazed at how much they can eat and not gain weight. So now that you are free you either keep eating like you are or you go back to the way you were before you started on your Plan Z journey. Wouldn’t that be maddening? Zola and I used to enjoy some Cheez-its with a pre-dinner cocktail. Now it’s a chunk of cheese or a quarter of a cup of nuts. Big sacrifice. Eat the cheese instead of the Cheez-its. Instead of oatmeal, I now have eggs for breakfast. That’s no sacrifice. That’s delicious. Don’t eat dry cereal or drink big glasses of orange juice. Have the orange.

Love guacamole? Do you now have the discipline to use the chips as a spoon instead of a snack? It’s not the fat in the guac that is worrisome, it is the carbs in the chips. Forget about Seinfeld. Double, triple, quadruple dip your chips. Or use your Melba Toast. Zola and I were at one of our favorite little dive restaurants the other day. She ordered a turkey burger with no bun and a salad. She said to me, “It feels funny not ordering the fries and the bun, but once I’m finished with the meat and the salad, I don’t miss any of that. I’m full and I’m happy.”

For someone in ZLife, carbs are the only thing you really need to count. If you want to have some brown rice, by all means have it. Just understand that most “experts” will tell you this is a healthy, low fat, whole grain product. But fat doesn’t make you fat. Carbs do. Cooked brown rice contains 45 grams of carbohydrates per cup. So have a half cup (cooked) and you’re down to 22.5 grams. Or have a quarter cup and you’re around 11 grams of carbohydrates. Savor it. Live it up. See how many grams of carbohydrates you can handle before you start to gain. I can eat about 80 grams a day and maintain my new weight. Myfitnesspal is a great place to track your carbs and your weight. You’ve probably used it in ZReboot to track your calories. But in ZLife, carbs count more than calories. You know how to do a protein day. With a protein day you can erase a day or two of debauchery. But you can’t go back to your Pepsi drinking, pizza eating, diet ice cream loving former self. Or we’re going to have to do this all over again.

You feel better and look better right now than you have in how many years? You are healthier. You are fitter. But for the rest of your life, you are going to be bombarded with media “experts” telling you that you have to exercise for at least 300 minutes a week and avoid saturated fat and eat lots of healthy whole grains. I just watched one of the USDA webinars talking about food guidelines. Believe me, these people don’t have a clue about what to do about obesity. But you will be tempted to believe them. The media will issue press releases about the dangers of saturated fats. You will hear that calories-in, calories-out is the only way to lose weight successfully. But you know better. And you are smarter than “they” ever will be. Plan Z works on your body and your brain to make this the last diet you will ever do.

You are a Plan Z by Zola Insider.

Welcome to ZLife and freedom.