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The Zone's Sears is defensive about having his diet, which is lower in fats and proteins, grouped with Atkins'. "Any meal that you have to take potassium supplements, there's something wrong with that," he says of the high-protein diets. He advises eating a protein portion the size of your hand, lots of vegetables and water, and treating carbs and fat like condiments. (The goal: a 40-30-30 caloric ratio of carbs to protein to fat.) Yet his diet can be boring and requires an incredible attention to detail, like eating three olives or one macadamia nut. Still, the Zone has become so popular that it has spawned a gym for devotees in Hollywood and a catering service in Los Angeles, the Delivery Zone, which serves about 120 people a day. A similar service, Perfect Balance, has started in New York City and delivers to 1,200. Kristin Davis, who co-stars in HBO's Sex and the City, gets a delivery every day, and it has helped her lose 10 lbs. "I feel so much better that I'd be really shocked if there was a [health danger] that we didn't know about," she says. "It's more healthy than I would eat if I were left to my own choices. In that case, I probably wouldn't be eating a salad or fruit."
Like the Zone, Suzanne Somers' diet, which she calls Somersizing, avoids white flour and sugar, but it argues that the important thing is to combine foods in the right way. Her program (developed with endocrinologist Diana Schwarzbein, who has her own diet book) permits a meal combining protein and vegetables, but eating protein within three hours of eating carbohydrates is taboo. "The reason I used to be bloated was a gastric war between the protein and carbohydrates," says Somers. "Now I never have gas, I can proudly say. It's a great thing not to have gas." She adds that with her diet "you can even eat at McDonald's. I order two Big Macs but no buns." This is the kind of talk that men like. Men named Stocky. Stocky White, 37, the owner of a lodge in Livingston, Mont., lost nearly 50 lbs. on the Suzanne Somers diet. "It was awesome," he says, "and I've kept it off."
The next wave of fad diets base their low-carb logic on even stranger theories than insulin or food combining. Peter J. D'Adamo's book Eat Right 4 Your Type advocates diets tailored to your specific blood type. Type O's get to eat red meat. Type A's aren't as lucky; they're stuck with mostly vegetables and fruits. Type A's, however, get to keep using their arteries. D'Adamo sells vitamins for each body type and claims he has got the already skinny Elizabeth Hurley, Hugh Grant and Andy Dick to buy into his logic.
Dr. Abravanel's Body Type Diet and Lifetime Nutrition Plan divides people into thyroids, adrenals, gonads or pituitaries, recommending different foods for each one. The big drawback of this diet is discovering that you are a gonad. Followers of the raw-foods diet eat only uncooked food; the Caveman Diet allows you to eat only what Stone Age people ate; and The Body Code, by Jay Cooper, divides dieters into warriors, nurturers, communicators and visionaries. Nurturers, in addition to eating lots of fruits and vegetables, no doubt do most of the cooking. More popular is Gwen Shamblin's The Weigh Down Diet, which advises using spirituality to avoid overeating and has sold more than 1.2 million copies to overweight Christians--a kind of What Would Jesus Eat? plan.