If you have ZEN in the cupboard, or you are partway through your 90 days, this is the guide that should have come in the box.

We built it after sitting down and calling our own customers. Not a survey. Actual phone calls. The same handful of things came up again and again, from people who were doing almost everything right and getting less out of it than they should have.

None of it is complicated. Most of it takes thirty seconds to fix.

Part one: the seven things people get wrong

1. Starting on two scoops

The full dose is two scoops. That is not where you begin.

Start on one scoop for the first two or three nights, then move up to two. Your gut is being asked to do something new. Give it a short runway and the whole thing goes down easier.

People who jump straight to two often find it strong, back off, and never come back up. Which leads directly to number two.

2. Quietly halving your dose and staying there

This is the most common one, and it is almost always about taste.

ZEN is six botanicals and nothing else. No sweeteners, no flavouring, no masking agents. It tastes like what it is. Some people love it. Plenty do not.

So they drop to one scoop, feel a bit of improvement, and stay there for the whole 90 days. They get a fraction of the protocol and conclude that is all ZEN does.

If that is still a struggle, a teaspoon of honey stirred into the warm water takes the edge off without changing how it works.

If you have been sipping it slowly out of a big mug, that is the hardest possible way to take it. Stop doing that.

3. Using cold water

Warm water matters. Cold water reduces how well the botanicals work, and it makes the texture worse.

Warm, not boiling. Boiling is too aggressive.

And if you see a few grains settle at the bottom, that is normal. There are no artificial mixing agents in it. Swirl and drink.

4. Taking it too close to food

ZEN is a nightly drink, and the timing is part of the protocol.

About an hour after your last meal, as the last thing you have before bed. Then nothing else until morning.

That overnight window, where your gut is not busy digesting anything, is when the work happens. Have a snack at 11pm and you have taken that away.

5. Treating jar one as the verdict

This is the one that costs people the most.

The 90 days runs in three phases, and they are not the same.

Phase one is the runway, not the destination. We have spoken to customers who finished jar one, felt some improvement but not the change they were hoping for, decided it had not worked, and put the other two jars in a cupboard.

They stopped four weeks before the part that was going to help them most.

Most people notice first relief somewhere in the first two weeks. The real change tends to land in phase two. Give it the full 90.

6. Never actually starting

Some people order, the box arrives, life happens, and it sits there.

If that is you, there is nothing to catch up on and nothing to feel bad about. Open it tonight. One scoop, warm water, an hour after dinner. That is the whole first step.

The box is not the protocol. Tonight is.

7. Stopping the moment it starts working

The one we hear most often on the phone, in almost the same words every time. "It helped a lot, but it is starting to come back."

That is not ZEN failing. That is what happens when you finish a reset and go straight back to everything that caused the problem, with nothing supporting the gut through it.

Which brings us to the part nobody explains properly.

What to expect, week by week

Every gut is different, so treat this as the common pattern rather than a schedule you are failing if you are behind it.

If you are two weeks in and nothing has changed yet, that is not a failure. Check the seven things above first, because it is nearly always one of those.

Part two: so why would you stop?

The question we get asked most is "what happens when I finish?"

Here is the honest answer, and it comes straight from the phone calls.

The single most common thing we hear, in almost the same words every time, is "it helped a lot, but it is starting to come back."

The 90 days gets your gut to a good place. It does not rebuild your life.

Everything that put your gut under pressure in the first place is still out there, and that list does not stop:

Hardly anyone gets through a year without at least one of those. Most of us get several.

So when someone tells us it has come back and we ask what changed, the answer is nearly always the same. They stopped. They felt good, they got on with life, and by the time they noticed it had slipped they had lost a lot of the ground they paid for.

If the reset is what got you comfortable, then stopping it is the one variable you changed.

So the real question is not "when do I stop."

It is "why would I?"

If it is working, that is the answer

If you got through the 90 days and food got easy again, that is the protocol doing exactly what it was built to do.

Think about what that looks like on a normal Friday. You order what you actually want. You eat at someone else's table without scanning it first. You have the bread, the curry, the glass of wine, and you go to bed without bracing for it.

That is the thing you were after. And it does not hold itself in place.

You got there by doing one small thing every night, about a minute before bed. The people who still feel good a year later are, almost without exception, the people who kept going. The ones who tell us it crept back are, almost without exception, the ones who stopped because the jar ran out and a calendar said 90.

So if you are eating freely and feeling well on it, there is nothing to work out. Keep going. Ordering again is not starting over, it is holding the position you already got to.

Nothing here is on a timer. You reorder when you want to stay where you are, and not a day before. No pressure from us either way.

If you are on prescription medication or managing a diagnosed condition, check in with your GP about ongoing use. We will send you an ingredient sheet to take with you, just ask.

Part three: the point of all this

The name is not decoration. Eat free is the whole objective.

Not a life of eliminating things. Not another list of foods you are not allowed. The point of resetting your gut is so you can sit down to the food you actually like, with the people you actually like, and not spend the next three hours regretting it.

That is what we are aiming at. Not a supplement you need forever. A gut that handles your life.

If you have got there, brilliant. The only thing left to do is not undo it.

If you are not there yet, and you have been making any of the seven mistakes above, you have not had a fair run at it. Fix the ones that apply, finish the protocol properly, and give it the full 90 days.

Quick reference

Dose	1 scoop for nights 1 to 3, then 2 scoops.
Water	50 to 100ml warm. Not boiling. Not cold.
Method	Drink it fast like a shot, chase with a full glass of warm water.
Timing	About 1 hour after your last meal, last thing before bed.
After	Nothing to eat until morning.
How long	Every night for 90 days.
After that	If food got easy, keep going. Stopping is what lets it creep back.

Six botanicals, nothing else: turmeric, black pepper, cinnamon, fenugreek, carom seeds (ajwain), bitter cumin.

Free from: gluten, wheat, dairy, lactose, soy, artificial colours, flavours and sweeteners, added nuts.

On medication, pregnant, or managing a diagnosed condition? Check with your GP first. Email us at hello@zeneatfree.com and we will send you an ingredient sheet you can take to them.