FAQS - Conquer the Crave - Plan Z Diet (2024)

You have to unlearn the bad diet advice you’ve been fed for years. Our so-called “obesity epidemic” in the USA is only about thirty years old. We started to fatten up in the early 1980s shortly after the U.S. Senate passed its Dietary Guidelines for America (1977). The government advised us to reduce our fat consumption from 40% to 30% and replace the fat with carbohydrates.

Food companies jumped in and started making low fat, “diet” foods filled with enough sugar and high fructose corn syrup to make them palatable. We know that sugar is a main contributor to obesity in America but food manufacturers have not backed off on using varying forms of sugar in their recipes.

When we got fatter, they replaced natural sugars with artificial sweeteners, unnatural flavorings, and preservatives. These things reduce the natural sugar content in foods but they wreak havoc on your metabolism. And we still didn’t lose weight.

So, the “experts” told us that we needed to exercise more. What a monumental mistake. The problem is, while exercise may burn calories, it also stimulates hunger. After an intense workout your body will need to replenish the calories it just burned. How does it do that? By sending you signals that you’re hungry and you need to eat!

Today, Americans spend billions on diet foods and health club memberships – more than they ever had in the past. And yet, between 1998 and 2008, the number of “clinically” obese Americans grew 37% according to the Centers for Disease Control.

We now know fat doesn’t make you fat. Complex carbohydrates and sugar make you fat–especially the highly processed white carbs and the high fructose corn syrup that’s in most processed foods. These are the convenience foods that fill the shelves of our grocery stores.

Knowing why we get fat in the first place is the first step towards keeping the weight off. Plan Z takes a completely different approach to weight loss: we work on your body and your brain.

Yes. You can do this diet easily at work. We know you have to go to work so we have a Zola to Go! section on our member site with recipes for planning, preparing, and packing meals and snacks that travel well. We can accommodate you even if you are traveling back and forth between two cities as you prepare for your wedding day. We’ve helped pilots, flight attendants, and even traveling salespeople lose weight while on the job. We’ve even helped a company of firefighters lose hundreds of pounds together.

Do you travel? Do you go out for meals? We’ll show you how to stay on Plan Z while eating in restaurants. Plus, Plan Z is totally family friendly. Your family can eat the same food you do–they’ll just have different portions because they’re not taking the ZR50 Reduction formula. No need to make your “diet food” and then make “regular” food for your family.

Have kids? Kids LOVE the food. You choose what you want to eat every day from Zola’s approved food list. This way Plan Z becomes part of your thinner lifestyle. You can set an example for your children and pass on valuable eating habits to them. We even have recipes for things like healthy chicken nuggets and tiny meatloaves.

You are a unique individual, but you are not so unique that the laws of science don’t apply to you. You are not an impossible case. You just had the wrong information until now. We believe if you had the right information you’d act on it and you’d likely be thinner than you are right now. But there is too much misinformation in the diet market place. Here’s why: Kraft makes South Beach Living packaged food, Heinz processes Weight Watchers food, Unilever owns Slim Fast, Kellogg’s owns Kashi Go Lean, Stouffer owns Lean Cuisine, Con-Agra owns Healthy Choice. Their so-called “diet” foods are filled with starch, sugar, artificial flavoring, and high fructose corn syrup.

Those ingredients have contributed to America’s obesity epidemic and along with American companies like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s (and many others) they are exporting our obesity epidemic to the rest of the world. Their business plan and packaged foods keep you dieting and buying their foods for the rest of your life. My business plan is to help you break the endless cycle of weight gain and help you move forward into your new life.

Obesity is a disease of fat production, not of overeating. If it were a simple math problem of calories in and calories out, we would all be thin. On conventional diets the first ten or twelve pounds come off and then you hit the wall. Your metabolism slows down. You’re hungry and irritable. You tough it out a few more weeks or you quit and the weight comes roaring back.

When are you going to get to the part where you tell me I have to get on a treadmill for an hour a day or this won’t work?

I’m NOT going to tell you that. I’m going to tell you to go walk the dog, or if you don’t have a dog, just chill. NO EXERCISE on ZReduction. Let me be clear. I think exercise is great. I think it’s important. Right now my exercise regimen includes regular yoga and weight lifting. What I will tell you though is we know two things about exercise (even the medical community will agree with me on this). Exercise will make you stronger. It will also make you hungry.

While you are on ZReduction, your energy should be put into enjoying the dieting experience. People who are seriously overweight have a difficult time approaching exercise and they take a deep sigh of relief when I tell them they don’t have to exercise to lose weight. You are not going to lose muscle mass. You’re only on ZReduction for 50 days; and if you don’t currently exercise, your lifestyle and routine are just going to remain the same. You ARE, however, going to lose fat. When you get to the ZReboot phase of the diet we are going to recommend you find an exercise program that suits your lifestyle. If you want to tighten up the loose bits left after losing the weight, you’re going to have to exercise to tighten up. Some tightening will occur naturally during a process we call ‘reshaping’ but for the bigger issues, you’ll need a targeted routine. Once you’ve completed ZReduction we recommend non-impact exercise, like yoga, Pilates and weight lifting. Too much emphasis has been made on exercises that tax your joints and your bones. There are plenty of things you can do that don’t wear out your skeleton. And they don’t all require a gym membership.

Plan Z dieters who are a little older talk about how fun it is to chase the grandchildren around the park instead of sitting on the park bench watching. They get on a swing with the kids and laugh. They feel like getting exercise now. They might want to take a long walk in the sunshine and even include speeding up their pace so they get a bit of heart benefit in an aerobic mode. Some get heavily into gardening and growing their own veggies. You can take walks in the woods and learn how to forage for wild mushrooms. There’s a lot more to life than your TV screen or your computer.

The best part is when you get off a considerable amount of weight you FEEL like exercising. A whole new world of activities opens up. People say their joints don’t hurt as much. You might feel like getting on a bike and tooling around the neighborhood. Or you might feel like a vacation in San Francisco but this time the hills won’t look so daunting. Or join a bowling league. I’m just tossing out ideas, folks.