The Zone diet

The key factor in Zone Diet is the hormonal balance you achieve while eating each skillfully prepared meal. With a food plan comprising an accurate balanced ratio of carbohydrates (40%), fat (30%) and proteins (30%); you actually get to eat foods, which control your body’s insulin production. This means that no meal or snack is forbidden in the Zone Diet and yet you can lose weight or fat while Zone dieting.

For those emphasizing weight loss, or for the matter, for those who want to steer clear of cardiovascular sickness, diabetes and other chronic ailments, eating food that follow recommended recipes and staying in the Zone is a must.

Zone Dieting means following recipes with a low-carbohydrate diet plan, where proteins do not dominate the carbohydrates. This allows dieters to get more energy from carbohydrates rather from proteins or fats. The Zone Diet, unlike other diets, insists dieters to keep a close watch on the calorie consumption while eating: a meal not exceeding 500 calories and a snack not exceeding 100 calories is ideal for staying in the Zone.

Diets

Weight loss is not the only reason to be in the Zone. There are numerous additional benefits linked with the the Zone Diet, such as enhanced health, improved energy, improved mental clarity. The number of Americans with Type II diabetes is increasing at an alarming rate. The Zone diet is perfect for someone with Type II diabetes. Being a high protein, low carbohydrate diet program the Zone Diet was implemented to reduce both hunger and compulsion to eat. Most Zone Diet meal procedures are customized to each individual, based on sex, activity level and proportion of body fat. Every meal or snack is calculated around the 40-30-30 ratio so that the body can give optimal performance.

The Zone Diet encourages foods such as fresh vegetables, fruits and nuts, leafy green vegetables, sufficient protein consumption, and eight glasses of water everyday. However, Zone Diet prefers mono-unsaturated fats for saturated fats, says a big no to both processed foods and meals that contain too much salt.

How Zone Diet makes weight loss possible: Consuming too many carbohydrates produces too much insulin, a hormone that tells the body to pile up nutrients. The overload of insulin prompts the body to convert those carbohydrates into fat and store them in your gut, thighs, buttocks or other areas. But protein which has the contradictory effect stirs up the hormone glucagon, which tells the body to let go carbohydrates that are stocked up in the liver. When those carbohydrates are freed, the brain tells the body that its energy supplies are fulfilled and you ought to stop eating. Consequently, limiting the type of carbohydrates you eat and balancing them with 3-4 ounces of low-fat protein at every meal will keep insulin and glucagon balanced, controlling your hunger with smaller number of calories. End result: You’ll experience fat loss and lose weight. This is how the Zone Diet functions.

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Zone Diet by Barry Sears
The Zone Diet was originally developed by Dr. Barry Sears, PhD. He worked as a researcher at the Boston University School of Medicine and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has spent many years studying lipids, and their inflammatory role in the development of chronic disease.

According to some sources, Sears began working on Zone Diet in the early 1970s, shortly after his father’s death of a heart attack.

Back in 1982, the Nobel Price for Medicine was granted to research that proved a relationship between the hormones called “eicosanoids” and the development of certain diseases. These included diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, diseases of the immune system and cancers. Somehow, this moment is also supposed to have turned Dr. Sears’ attention from his own studies of lipids towards a related subject: the relationship between food and hormone production inside the body.

In 1995, Dr. Sears published his first book on the Zone Diet: “Enter The Zone”, The book became a number one worldwide best-seller, selling four million copies. Since then, Dr. Sears has published 10 more books on the same subject.

What Is “The Zone”?
Dr. Sears defines the zone as an ideal state of body and mind, in which we feel fresh and energized, and function to our maximum efficiency. The term is borrowed from the language of athletes. The goal of athletes is to reach their peak performance zone. This lasts a few minutes, or the time it takes to burn a match. Dr. Sears believes he can offer a way to make us “stay in the zone” as long as possible, even for a lifetime. “Enter Zone diet” became key terminology that Sears and acolytes use to encourage people believe this possibility.

Although the Zone Diet claimed to be the answer for staying in the zone, many athletes who follow this diet complained that it didn’t help them improve performance levels. On the contrary, they complained of losing concentration and of worse results.
Inspired by the 1982 Nobel moment, Dr. Sears launched his theory about dietary fat driving from eicosanoids which can lead to certain diseases. According to Dr. Sears, the key for a healthy body is a good hormone level. In order to regulate hormones like insulin, glucagon and eicosanoids, the body uses essential substances from food. As a result, food is considered by Dr. Sears the most powerful drug that our body uses every day.

So where does the problem lie? We feed our body every day, and still get become ill and fat. The problem lies in what we eat, and in what amounts. The modern individual eats “junk food” which does not fulfill the body’s needs. Dr. Sears even criticized the USDA. For decades the USDA had encouraged people to eat a diet rich in carbohydrates and poor in fats and proteins. Up to this point, there is little difference from other dietary theories (e.g. Atkins and South Beach Diet. But Dr. Sears doesn’t connect Zone Diet directly to vitamins, minerals and other important nutrients. He sees food as an instrument to control the blood insulin level.

According to Dr. Sears, while human DNA has not changed much over the last 100,000 years, our eating habits have. In the prehistoric era, the human being ate fruit and meat, a diet rich in proteins and fats, and poor in carbohydrates. Developing this hypothesis, Dr. Sears established the optimum ratio of carbohydrates, protein and fat which any individual has to respect in a daily menu. This is widely known as the 40-30-30 ratio.

… and in Practice
Up to now, although he has published 11 books about this subject, Dr. Sears has not yet provided any scientific proof that Zone diet works as he claims. The opinions of researchers contradict each other on this subject.

Yes, the Zone Diet is good as a diet to lose weight. Many people who followed it the diet agreed they were losing around 1.5 pounds a week. We also have the testimonies of many people who could not lose weight with other diets, but succeeded with Zone.

Zone diet works well for overweight people, but is it really a way of life? Zoners strongly believe that it is. Some food experts approve of the Zone as “a good diet”. After all, it encourages consumption of lean grilled meat, vegetables and fruit.

The Zone is also considered user-friendly, as it is easy to follow. For example, one meal should consist of one slice of lean meat (poultry or fish) the size of your own palm, and the other two-thirds of the plate should be stuffed with fruit and vegetables.

Nevertheless, some nutritionists and experts highlight at least one problem of the Zone diet. It limits the consumption of essential nutrients that our body needs to function properly. The first nominees are carbohydrates, which are transformed into glucose, the body’s favorite source of energy.

Up to now, many questions about the scientific rhetoric of Zone diet still remain unanswered. This is especially true when it comes to its efficiency in preventing cardiovascular diseases, cancer or type II diabetes. But thousands of people (including many celebrities) claim it has worked for them. They say they have no intention of feeding themselves in another manner until the end of their lives.

The In The Zone Delivery Diet
The In The Zone Delivery Diet is based on a 40%:30%:30% ration of daily calories obtained from carbohydrates, proteins, and favorable fats, respectively. Once these levels are reached and maintained, the body enters a hormonal balance which produces many positive effects, such as stable insulin and glucagon levels, increased energy, and weight loss.
Unlike other diets, which restrict the intake of many types of food, the In The Zone Delivery Diet allows you to eat your favorite foods as long as they are prepared with the 40:30:30 ratio.

Unlike other Diets, In The Zone Delivery allows you complete customization of your meals. Our chefs use the ingredients YOU want and prepare YOUR favorite dishes with the nutritional balance required to help you reach your goals.

A nne, an old friend of mine, walked up to Barry Sears at the Tom Landry Sports Medicine and Research Center in Dallas.

She complained that the program outlined in his book, Enter The Zone — more lean meat, egg whites, poultry and fish, while limiting many grains, vegetables, and fruits — just didn’t work for her. She didn’t feel good, and her performance level (swimming) had declined. Anne was now back on her vegetables, fruits, and whole grains.

“Stay with what works best,” he said, “but you know, Anne, it’s not the fat and protein that’s so important. It’s the effect of carbohydrates upon hormones and insulin levels.”

Though this was contrary to everything I had told her about nutrition, the book’s message was loud and clear: “All those trendy high-carbohydrate diets,” he had written, “may be increasing your risk of developing heart disease.”

Excessive complex carbohydrates, according to Sears, also causes obesity by increasing insulin output and fat storage. This is the process, he insists, that creates bad eicosanoids leading to heart disease and cancer.

“To complete a ‘Zone-favorable’ meal,” he advises, “always add fat, the building blocks for eicosanoids.” While it’s true that eicosanoids are hormones involved in many metabolic processes, the relation of “bad” eicosanoids to obesity and disease is at best a scientifically unproven gimmick. Unfortunately, however, it has captured the unquestioning reader’s imagination.

Every few years since the early 1950’s, someone has based a book on carbohydrate bashing. First, there were the Dr. Stillman’s Diet and Dr. Atkins’ Diet followed by The Scarsdale Diet, and finally, Enter The Zone. Now there are others: Michael and Mary Dan Eases’s Protein Power and Rachael and Richard Heller’s Health For Life.

And once again Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution is back on the bestseller lists. According to Bonnie Liebman, at the Center For Science in the Public Interest, it’s nothing new. “Miracle diets come and go like hemlines, hair-dos, and celebrity romances.” Furthermore, they don’t work; and all of them have the potential of raising low density lipoprotein (LDL) levels. And finally, what do these diets do for the authors themselves? Both Dr. Atkins and Barry Sears have exceeded the upper limits of weight recommended by federal guidelines.

A vegetarian diet, according to Sears, is as far as you can get from The Zone. He ignores the fact that individuals who eat vegetarian diets have far less heart disease and cancer, and tend to be leaner, not fatter. Moreover, most clinical studies conducted during the last half century, clearly show that a high-protein, high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet leads to higher rates of heart disease, stroke, hypertension, adult onset diabetes, and many types of cancer.

The relationship of animal fat to cancer is stronger than ever before. According to new studies released by the Environmental Protection Agency, potent carcinogens from industrial wastes, such as dioxin and other chlorinated compounds, are known to be concentrated in the animal fat of meat, fish, and dairy products. On the other hand, vegetables, fruits, and grains contain only small amounts of these compounds.

So why is the Zone diet so popular? It’s followers defend it vehemently, largely because they find the rapid weight loss irresistible. Like most low carbohydrate diets, however, a great deal of the weight loss is dehydration. Ordinarily, three grams of water are stored with every gram of carbohydrates in the form of glycogen in the liver and skeletal muscles. When this is sharply limited, the desperate “zonies” think they are losing up to a pound of fat a day. It’s also low in calories (about 1,700), causing the unhealthy depletion of lean body mass along with the minimal fat loss.

Also, without careful monitoring, this type of diet may lead to “ketosis” (an unnatural form of acidosis), which often causes some degree of anorexia and even euphoria. Sears denies that this happens with the amount of carbohydrates he allows.However, Dr. Atkins, another proponent of high protein, high fat, low carbohydrate consumption, considers ketosis to be a useful and necessary state. If ketosis sounds familiar, it’s also the result when insulin-dependent diabetics can’t metabolize carbohydrates without their insulin injections — a state leading up to diabetic coma.

The Sears diet recommends that one get 30 percent of calories from fat, 30 percent from protein, and 40 percent from carbohydrates. Here, it should be obvious that these are approximately the proportions already consumed in most Western countries, including the United States, where heart disease and cancer are rampant. Furthermore, with such low intakes of complex carbohydrates, it appears that Sears’ recommended diet would be deficient in vegetables, fruits, and whole grains — and would contain inadequate fiber. Adding insult to injury, this level of protein consumption may promote calcium loss and osteoporosis.

Sears has very little to say about cholesterol levels in his book. He writes, “if cholesterol is such a villain, why does the body make so much of it?” The real heart disease risk, he says, is “hyperinsulinemia and bad ecosinoids.” He is either unaware that practically all published reports indicate just the opposite, or he hasn’t thoroughly read his own book — written with the help of professional magazine writer, Bill Lawren. It’s riddled with such comments as, “eating fat doesn’t make you fat.” It cautions that such foods as potatoes, brown rice, bread, corn, carrots, pasta, bananas, dry breakfast cereals, apple juice and orange juice may be harmful to your health. None of the references quoted, backing these conclusions, have ever been published, and the book does not contain a reference section or a bibliography.

So in summary, a half century of scientific research, first from Ansel Keyes’ population studies in the 1950’s to T.Colin Campbell’s ongoing Cornell-Oxford-China Nutrition project today, has given us a wealth of data supporting the health benefits of carbohydrates. “The Zone” would be a giant step backward. A little weight loss, which is quickly regained when the diet is no longer tolerated, isn’t worth the inevitable long-term health risk.