Since this thread started out being about experience with ZC, I thought I'd say something about that. 

I've experimented with ZC twice. Once was a few years back, for about six weeks. More recently (last summer) I went for over two months. I had (and have) significant weight to lose. Neither time was a ringing success. 

I found that I did fine during the day, and my appetite was well-regulated. I ate one or two small, high-fat meals, because that's all I wanted. By dinner time I was very hungry, however, and ate Falstaffian amounts of meat. Amazingly, I'd be hungry again a couple of hours later, and wanted more and more. It was the kind of hunger that made it hard to pay attention to much else. *Distracting* hunger, I guess you could say. I lost no weight. Other than that, I suffered no ill-effects. 

What I find is that if I have a moderate amount of carbs with dinner, paleo or not, my appetite is more regulated, and I'm not hungry for the rest of the evening. Very possibly I'd do better on ZC if I went to bed not long after gorging on meat, but that's not my lifestyle. So I generally include a starch with supper--potato, sweet potato, root veg, or rice (never a grain-based starch, though)--and doing so enables me to lose weight. I also have lower BG in the morning eating this way. I don't have (and don't want) a huge portion of this starch. I'd estimate 35g of carb, give or take. 

I don't present my experience as in any way normative. I know that the advice at the ZIOH forum is always to keep at ZC, and eventually you'll adapt. That may be true, but I just don't see the point of doing so. No one has demonstrated that ZC is the healthiest or best way to eat. Those who find that it works well for them shouldn't be deterred by my or anyone else's experience. For those of us who didn't do as well, there just doesn't seem to be any good reason to struggle to adapt to it. 

Furthermore, monotony is real, and it can be a problem. I reject the premise that food is fuel and nothing more. For our species this simply isn't true. Food is a key component in many social interactions. It's one of the ways we form and lose relationships. The dietary rules of many religions serve to create boundaries, to demarcate people from other people. This is non-trivial. As Ray Audette has pointed out, in our current misguided social milieu in the Western world, low-carb is politically incorrect, and even alienating. ZC is maximally so. Why choose a diet that is maximally alienating? Don't misunderstand me. If there are solid health reasons for doing so, then go for it. This keeps most of us committed to low-carb, despite the social consequences. But if ZC offers no demonstrable advantage over LC, then what's the point of doing it? 

Todd Moody 
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