About

Zola

Zola began her “dieting career” at the age of 12 with her first diet invention; The Hardboiled Egg Diet.  You see, Zola was going to be in her older sister’s wedding and at age 12 so she decided she was too fat for pictures.  She wanted to slim down.  Substituting a sugary dessert with a hardboiled egg seemed like a diet to Zola (Leave it to Zola to go “low carb” before Atkins.).

Zola continued her dieting career, trying just about every diet ever written; she even made up some more of her own, like the one she did at age 15.  Zola decided then that eating every third day would be a very successful diet.  Little did she know she’d pass out from hunger and exhaustion when she got home from school.   Not a brilliant idea.

The desperation to get slim or stay slim never went away.  Try as she might, she was never successful at keeping weight off. She was an expert at taking it off, but the fat always came back, and brought even more with it.

Finally, in 2009, Zola’s homeopathic physician introduced her to a diet that made sense to her. The diet worked so well (30 pounds lost in 30 days), and carried such a promise to help Zola re-set her metabolism, that it was the first time in her adult life where she felt like she could eat like a real human being without gaining weight. She was convinced it was time to start a business promoting the diet. Starting a company was not new to Zola.  Zola and her husband started a sales training business even before they were married.  That company still exists today–27 years later.  The marriage is still successful too and she and her husband will have been married 25 years, this year.  A milestone.

Zola is also a successful food and entertainment writer and produces as a very successful newsletter distributed by ArcaMAX; headquartered in Virginia.  Zola’s following of over 800,000 people worldwide, look with anticipation for the arrival of her column every Monday.  Zola gets tons of fan mail and her following get a new recipe to try out every week.

Partnering again with her husband, and this time adding her homeopathic physician Dr. Paul Branch and his partner/wife Kimberly Foster Branch, Zola has embarked on the journey to help others (who’ve also held sideline careers of losing weight) become successful and move on to healthy lifestyles filled with delicious food.  Zola even welcomes those that just have a few pounds to lose, because those pounds are sometimes the hardest to get rid of.  She also welcomes people who not only want to lose weight but feel it’s about time they diet in a healthy fashion and gain a new perspective on what it means to eat healthy and be healthy.

Let’s all wish Zola well, because goodness knows America needs a diet that works!

Zola’s motto:  Eat Like a Gourmet…Look Like a Dream.

P.S.

Zola is all of that. And none of it.

In reality, Zola Gorgon is unreal – an invention, an alter-ego, a double life of Chicago/Madison CEO Sarah McCann.

Zola is what Sarah might be if she weren’t running Sparque, Inc., the internationally regarded sales training company she cofounded with her husband and partner, Chris Lytle, in the mid 1980s. Zola is the persona that Sarah adopts more than thirty times a year, hosting unique dinner parties for friends and colleagues in her Fitchburg home. Zola is the character Sarah allows to come out and play – just as an old football player becomes an armchair quarterback on Sundays in the fall. And Zola is always willing to share Sarah’s ideas, recipes, and techniques with anyone who believes cooking should be more fun than work.

And believe us, Zola knows.

Chris Lytle, VP of Anger Management

Chris writes the Big Fat Lies About Obesity Blog. He is angry about all of the misinformation about diet and exercise that we’ve been fed for decades–information that doesn’t work.

He is passionate about helping Zola and you lose weight and keep it off and is thrilled to be part of The Zola Diet Works Team.

In his other life, he is the author of  the best-selling book, The Accidental Salesperson and a professional speaker and trainer. Having traveled extensively conducting more than 2100 seminars on three continents, Chris gradually became overweight, but not obese.

Chris is not on The Zola Diet hCG protocol, but has joined Zola in her quest to eliminate processed foods and sugars from their diet. So far, he has lost 15 pounds. Once an avid jogger, he now participates in Super Slow weight lifting and plays tennis once a week.

In addition to all of that, he’s a great guy all around who has a wonderful gift for writing and telling stories.

Doctor Paul Branch

Doctor Branch is a licensed M.D. and a physician that specializes in integrative medicine.  That means he knows about alternative medicines, such as homeopathy, chinese medicine, ayurvedic medicines, and bio-identical hormone replacement, in addition to what he learned in medical school.   A large portion of his traditional medical school teachings are not of much help to dieters (check out Chris’s blog, Big Fat Lies About Obesity for more info on that subject), but a lot of what he knows about alternative medicines is.

Dr. Branch is also Zola’s doctor, and Kimberly’s husband (she’s the party girl pictured below with the martini in her hand). He is the one who originally brought the “Zola” diet to Zola, the (former) self-appointed “Queen of Diets that Didn’t Work.”

Dr. Branch likes to think outside of the box, and in the complex field of weight loss, that’s important. It’s his role to refine what the medical field has done and make it better. He’s here to help you make sense of things and bring you the latest information on getting thin and staying thin. This will include information on hormones and bio-identical hormone replacement.

Be sure to check out his blog, The Doctor Weighs In, for those pointers that allow you to individualize your weight loss regimen and contribute to your long-term success.

Kimberly Foster-Branch

Kimberly Foster Branch is the VP of Life After The Diet and writes the Livin’ ZLife in ZCity section of The Zola Diet Works blog site. She has watched the struggle of obesity and anorexia in her immediate family, and is passionate about helping spread the truth about weight and health.

Kimberly was an actress in Los Angeles where she grew up. When that turned out to be a thankless blood sucking endeavor for almost a decade, she thought she would turn the spotlight back on herself by becoming a Beverly Hills pre-school teacher for 15 years in LA, Australia, and finally in New York City.

She has written and produced several children’s musicals that have been playing non-stop in Manhattan for the past 11 years. Her Off-Broadway shows also have matching children’s books and a full-blown cartoon series.

She has written for swanky TV shows and created concepts for many television projects. The martini-toting, stylish caricature of herself in the Livin’ ZLife in ZCity blog is from a cartoon she created called SICK, based on the real life comedy of her sister and her dealing with weight loss, beauty, and obsession in LA.

Married to Dr. Paul Branch of The Zola Diet, Kimberly lives in two cities: New York, New York and Madison, Wisconsin. Kimberly has maintained her perfect weight after completing The Zola Diet and continues living and loving her life.