Zone Diet

The Zone diet has been created by researcher Dr Barry Sears. It is a demanding, although effective, weight loss diet.

The diet stresses you eat a moderate amount of all 3 main foods:

• 30% low fat protein

• 40% carbohydrate found in fruit and vegetables

• 30% monounsaturated fats.

Explained another way, this diet recommends:

1 gram of fat for every 2 grams of protein and 3 grams of carbohydrate.

Thus Barry Sears' diet is also known as the Zone 1-2-3 Method.

Eating this ratio of nutrients is essential for the diet to work effectively.

An easy way to begin the Zone diet, and to be certain to attain the right ratio of nutrients, there are manufactured meal and snack blocks. Use a block for one of your meals each day. 

When you eat these strict proportions of healthy carbohydrate, protein and fat, you control three important hormones produced by your body: Insulin, Glucagon and Eicosanoids.

By controlling these three hormones you lose weight:

• Insulin and glucagon are hormones secreted by the pancreas to control the sugars (glucose) in your body.

• Eicosanoids are 'super' hormones transformed by the essential fatty acids omega-3 and omega-6. These hormones connect hormonal systems in the body and are essential for optimal health.

Summary

It is essential to understand why you are dieting on these strict ratios of nutrients because you need to be serious about the Zone diet, especially when you want to lose weight.

The meal and snack blocks help you to begin on the diet, keep on the diet when you are busy, or when you don't like continually weighing nutrients (at least until you get familiar with the diet). However, there is a cost for these blocks.

You can lose weight healthily on the Zone diet.