Foodie Friday: Zone Review and GIVEAWAY!! (3 winners - $179 each!) **ENDED**

Ever since I learned that Jennifer Aniston was on the Zone diet, I would gawk at her amazingly lean body and wonder what the diet was really like.  The concept behind the Zone diet is that you need the right balance of foods and nutrients to maximize health and weight loss. Zone foods contain protein that is meant to reduce hunger. Essential fatty acids is important to help you burn fat faster and polyphenols help reduce cellular inflammation.

The diet is designed to be a nutritional plan. It is not about depriving your body (or cravings) of certain foods. In fact, the Zone diet allows you to eat breads, pizzas, cookies, brownies and more! Their patented food products are created to help you burn fat faster, lessen hunger, and they are delicious. Since the program can be a little overwhelming at first (as any new diet can be), you also have access to a Zone personal coach to help you throughout the process as well as access to free recipes to help make the most of your Zone foods.

Here is the full list of foods (per week) included in a typical Zone diet plan:

Bagel Chips - Cinnamon

Bagel Chips- Plain

Bagel - Garlic

Bagel - Multigrain

Bagel - Onion

Bagel - Sesame

Bread - Cinnamon (2 slices per pack)

Bread - Multigrain (2 slices per pack)

(2) Bread - White (2 slices per pack)

Cookies - Coconut Chocolate Chip

Cookies - Heath Bar

Cookies - Milk Chocolate Chunk

Cookies - Peanut Butter

Croutons - Herb

Flatbread - Multigrain

Granola - Original

Granola - Peanut Butter

(2) Pasta - Fulilli

(3) Pasta - Orzo

Pizza Crust - Mulitigrain

Pizza Crust - While

Pretzel - Sesame

Roll - Mulitgrain

Roll - Sesame

In addition to the above mentioned foods, you also get a week's worth of Daily Essentials which contain OmegaRx (omega-3 fatty acids that dilute out Toxic Fat in every cell in the body and the highest-purity fish oil available) and Zone Polyphenols (contains the same amount of oxidents as eating 10 servings of vegetables and fruits).

Review: I will admit I was a little confused by the program when I first received the package. I  received a bog box of carbs and thought "is this all I am supposed to eat all week?!" After reading the enclosed literature I quickly realized that these were simply the proportioned carbs and I must fill complement them with fresh foods.  Since it is summer time and I have gone on three vacations in a month, I was unable to go on a strict Zone diet, but I did have the opportunity to sample most of the foods contained in the packages (I received a 2 week supply which were mailed separately to preserve freshness).   I was absolutely amazed by how good the products tasted. Never before have I tried diet food that actually tasted better than similar non-diet foods. For once, I was not disappointed when it was time to eat diet food, I was disappointed when I was unable to eat it for whatever reason!! 

Some of my favorites:

The original granola was so addicting. In fact, after eating it in the morning, I found myself craving it all day! I forgot to bring milk to work so I ate it plain and it kept my hunger at bay for several hours.

The cookies were chewy and had lots and lots of flavor (tons of M&Ms, chocolate chips, etc). Two cookies was definitely filling as they were quite heavy and this snack was the only one I would need to get through the afternoon.

The pastas had just enough amount in each package to fill me up. I liked the variety of meals you can make with them and there are quite a few recipes that looked great. Since I am not much of a cook, I used some plan red pasta sauce and was very pleased.

The breads were absolutely amazing. The cinnamon swirl was my favorite. It was sweet and very soft. It tasted fresh from the oven after toasting. All of the bread tasted bakery-fresh and they were very filling.

Between the combination of the foods and the Daily Essentials, I can say that I ate less and felt energized. Never once did I feel deprived. The Daily Essential vitamins are quite large, so if you have trouble swallowing pills this may be a challenge. I usually do not have trouble with pills, but these babies were hard to get down. The foods were really amazing, but the diet does take time and money so you will want to consider this ahead of time. A two week supply of Zone foods costs $179 plus the costs of the other foods necessary to make recipes. It is easy to stay on the diet when I am in a routine (like work), but when vacations started or we had social events to attend the diet went out the window.  Considering I did not stay strictly on the diet, I can say that it does work because I lost 2 pounds in 2 weeks by doing nothing more than intermittently eating the foods and using the Daily Essentials. I am sure if I dedicated my efforts to the diet the weight loss would have been even more dramatic.

Buy it here: You can shop for your perfect combination of Zone foods from the Zone Diet website.

Win it here: Three (3) lucky Cake Mom readers will win a 2 week supply Zone Diet package worth $179 each!!!

**Please read the rules**This is open to US residents only. You must complete the mandatory entry before completing optional entries. Each optional entry needs to be added as a separate comment. Comments that do not follow the rules will not count and will be deleted. PLEASE LEAVE ME YOUR EMAIL IN THE COMMENT if it is not visible in your public profile! One set of entries per household. 

 

Mandatory Entry:  Go to the Zone website and tell me one thing you learned or one food or recipe you would love to try!

 

Optional entries: Leave an additional comment for each entry.

1. Follow my blog (publicly)

2. Subscribe to my blog via email and confirm the subscription

3. Grab my button and post a link to your blog

4. Check out the Chautauqua Institution and tell me one event you would like to attend (see 2011 calendar link at the top)  (3 entries)

5. Follow me on Twitter and tweet about this contest (can be done daily). You must place a link to your tweet.

6. Enter another one of my contests. Enter as many as you like, but this method is only worth 1 entry regardless of how many you enter.

7. Like Cake Mom on Facebook  

The winner will be selected on 7/10 via random.org and will be emailed. The winner will have 48 hours to respond.

I was provided with the above mentioned product for the purpose of facilitating this review. No other compensation was received and the views expressed here are my own. 

Congrats to katklaw777; DEBIJOT; and erin m. You have all been emailed.