Hi,
I'm sorry if this is repeated somewhere else. I've only been on the Zone diet a week and lost 7 lbs. BUT, I was getting pretty light-headed so the last two days, for lunch I added whole grain bread for a sandwich and two no fat cookies with low-fat yogurt for a snack later in the day. The light-headedness is gone, but I'm wondering if I messed up my 'chemistry' to lower cholesterol. My main goal is to lower cholesterol and also lose weight. Thanks!

Bread and cookies will not help you maintain the hormonal control that's necessary to stay in the Zone. Lightheadedness can be one of the symptoms that accompanies unfocused hunger, in which case you would drop one block of carbohydrate from your meals. My suggestions for you would be to recalculate your daily block requirement with the Zone calculator (in TOOLS tab above), review the method of putting together a balanced Zone meal (use the info in Quick Sarte guide in the TOOLS tab, or on the Grocery Additions page of the WEIGHT loss tab if you are doing the ZoneFast 1-2-3 plan, which is the Zone baked goods and pastas), and drink plenty of water (dehydration can cause lightheadedess). If you are not using the ZoneFast 1-2-3 Plan try to eat most all of your carbohydrates from vegetables and fruit.

Well I followed the meal plans EXACTLY from the book Week in the Zone. I did calculate my Zone blocks at 11. I dont think losing 7 lbs in 6 days is healthy and when I added carbs, I felt much better and still lost another pound. I also drank a sufficient amount of water. The bread was high fiber, no cholesterol or fat and the cookies were also no fat, no cholesterol. Seems strange to me that your suggestion to remove carbs would make me feel better when I added carbs and felt fine. I was able to lose 30 lbs myself the last few months but I wanted to try to lower my cholesterol even more. I'm not sure this diet is right for me.

Losing significant weight during the first week or so of beginning the Zone diet is common, and is due to the loss of retained fluid (from your previous way of eating) as you lower insulin into the Zone and achieve hormonal balance. In case the wording of my previous reply to you was confusing, I was not suggesting you need to drop a carbohydrate block, but merely informing that if you have hunger with lightheadedness, it would be the appropriate adjustment to make. I did not include this as a recommendation for you in my sentence that followed (the sentence containing my suggestions for you) precisely because you had not mentioned whether your lightheadedness was accompanied by hunger. The weight loss will soon slow to about a pound a week. You could read or reread a Zone book for a better understanding of this and my suggestions.

One of the principles of the Zone is to adjust if needed based on hunger. Again, I don't know if you had hunger with the lightheadedness, but for more info on adjustments, click on the "Hormonal Adjustment Diagnostic Chart" found at the bottom right of this page: http://www.drsears.com/ZoneResource...fault.aspx