Since 2004, I have been a true believer in the Zone Diet. The summer of 2004, we went camping with a group of people and one of the gals was talking about how much weight she'd lost on this diet. She had several books in front of her and I remember thumbing through her books and thought I'd give it a try. I ordered the same books off Amazon.com and started reading the books intently. You need 3 blocks of everything for meal, one block of everything for snack, this equaled one block but if you wanted to eat something that was more, you had to make sure you ate the equal amount of blocks from the other food groups... ugh. The books went on my shelf to later dust off. When I went into the dr.'s office and he said he suggested starting with the Zone Diet, I was not excited about it at all. It was the most confusing, ridiculous diet I have ever read about and I just wasn't sure I could do it. At that point though, he used the term "medication" if I couldn't do it on my own. So I came home and I must have read through the first half of the book half a million times until it "clicked". I wrote out a week's worth of meals on scratch paper. Odd combo of foods but that's what I had written down, I'm not a brave soul and didn't venture too far away from simple foods. After 3 days of eating like that, I felt awesome--immediately I had energy. I was a headless chicken running wild--never felt better. Within a week, I had baked 15 dozen cookies (I'm not kidding) and put them in the freezer. I love to bake cookies but just don't do it because they are laying around and I end up eating them all. I had absolutely no cravings for sugar at all. I could sit there and actually bake the cookies and not even taste-test one of them. The freezer got full, but I sent a bunch home with my brother (he's a bean pull--no weight worries there) and he was happy to try out all the cookies. After losing all this weight, everyone wanted to know how I did it and I told them. I gave them the knowledge but couldn't make them do it. My mom turned up to be borderline diabetic just a couple of months ago, she started the diet and now weighs less than me now. I sit down with my pile of food and just make myself eat it just to feed my system. It's tasteless, bland food but that's all your body really requires. So why aren't I hungry? I think its the amount of carbs. I truly believe that if you eat too many carbs, your body does crave more. So this is just the right amount. My husband wanted to start eating the bland foods that I was. I packed his meals for two days, labeling everything, counting out 16 peanuts, etc. He came home from work and said he had never felt better after the foods he ate that day. I'm not one with time on my hands to pack and schedule his menu for his life so that was the last he chose to eat that way. I gave him the books, told him to figure out what foods he liked and make a plan, a menu. I lost him right there, it's too hard. I have tried so many diets. I've tried Atkins, Weight Watchers, Slim-fast, etc. I've tried all the diet pills so much that I think I became immune to them Metabolife, Dexatrim, Hoodia even tried the (genuine) ephredrine stacker (ephredrine, caffeine, and aspirin). I could have killed myself. I guess what I'm saying is...I'm glad I have found something that has worked for me--I know its not the same for everyone but I truly hope that each individual finds what fits them the best. I can put the information out there and I can teach this style of eating but whether or not, it works for people, is up to them. I'm done with fad diets and all the diet pills. Not saying they won't work, but what happens when you want to quit taking them? You've established nothing to prepare yourself to get off of them. I had a friend tell me I should try the Alli (?) diet pill. In one ear and out the other. Why? I've found something that works for me, it doesn't cost a fortune because I buy food and not pills. I think everyone reaches a point that they come to terms that there is no miracle drug out there.