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"The Zone"

What is The Zone Diet? The centerpiece of the Zone Perfect Nutrition Programme is the Zone Diet itself. The principle premise of the Zone Diet is a simple one: Your genes have changed very little during the past 100,000 years.

Your body is a biochemical machine. Like any machine, it needs the right fuel to operate properly. Over hundreds of thousands of years, Mother Nature has designed your digestive system to operate correctly when eating just two food groups: (1) lean protein and (2) natural carbohydrates like fruits and fiber-rich vegetables.

What about grains? Well, 8,000 years ago, there were no grains, bread or pasta. Agriculture is a very recent (by evolutionary standards) invention.

Evolution works very slowly. As far as our genes are concerned, we're still a bunch of hunter/gatherers foraging for food. The problem, of course, is that our genes may be programmemed that way, but that's not the way we actually live. We regularly eat large quantities of dense, highly processed carbohydrates such as grains and grain based products such as pasta.

Because we haven't evolved to a stage where we can eat excessive amounts of these high density carbohydrates without adverse biochemical consequences, our bodies aren't able to operate properly. We gain excess weight, suffer from diabetes, heart disease and a host of other ills, feel sluggish, and generally perform at a sub-par level.

The Zone Diet is designed to feed our actual genetic makeup - to give us the fuel we need, when we need it.

The Fattening of The Western World

It's not surprising that many people are caught in perpetual cycles of weight gain and weight loss. Why? Because much of the information we have received from friends, relatives, magazines, newspapers, commercial weight-loss companies and government health agencies about reducing excess weight is simply wrong.

Over the past 20 years, this misinformation has been responsible for making us fat-phobic. We fanatically consume only low fat foods in an attempt to remain or get thin. We eat fat free chips, muffins, and cookies; we drink skimmed milk; we even buy fat free ice cream and yogurt. And what has been the pay-off for our fat obsession?

Has our dedication to a low fat lifestyle turned us into a society of lean, healthy people? No! In fact the exact opposite has resulted. Over the past 20 years western society has experienced a consistent increase in excess body fat. Obesity over the last ten years has reached widespread levels despite the public actually consuming less fat than before.

Now, over 50% of the population in the UK and the US are overweight. In November of 1998, the U.S. Surgeon General declared an epidemic of obesity in America.

The Food Pyramid

Let's look at how food is currently being prescribed. I'm sure you have seen this food pyramid. It's on little refrigerator magnets, and you can't open a health magazine without seeing it.

It's been the poster child of the high carbohydrate, low fat diet. What most people don't realize, is that this pyramid wasn't designed by the medical establishment. It was designed by the US Agricultural Department. Now the Agricultural Department is a fine agency, but it's job is not to give medical advice. Its job is to sell agricultural products.

The current "healthy" diet consists of about sixty-five percent carbohydrates, fifteen percent fat, and twenty percent protein. These numbers are shown in this pyramid. As you see, we have been told to eat almost eleven servings a day of breads, cereal, rice, and pasta. They are at the basis of the pyramid.

These products are refined carbohydrates. They are manmade carbohydrates. The food industry has made them palatable for us and they make a good profit doing it.

On the next levels are the fruits and vegetables, meat and fish. Fats, oils and sweets get relegated to the top, because they're the enemy. Was this diet ever tested in the human population prior to being recommended by the US government? Surprisingly, the answer is no.

This diet came out in the late sixties in response to the rising epidemic of heart disease. The American Heart Association decided that since fat is a key component for one of the risk factors for heart disease, then Americans should start eating less saturated fat.

The problem is that there are more types of fat than just saturated fat. The government assumed we were not smart enough to just cut out saturated fats, so it urged us to cut out all fat. Fat was labeled as the enemy. Fat is a source of calories. When you cut out fat, you have to replace those calories with something else. The replacement was carbohydrates, because carbohydrates often don't have any fat.

The vacuum formed by reducing all the fat in our diets was taken up by carbohydrates. By the early seventies, we were being inundated with information. Eat high complex carbohydrates, eat all the pasta you want, there's no fat in it. Your diet is healthy as long as you don't add any fat to your meal.

Well, we listened, and now, twenty-five years after this diet came out, we are suffering the consequences. When this diet was created in the late sixties, twenty-five percent of the adult population was obese. We have now hit the fifty percent mark.

Dietary Fat Does Not Make You Fat!

The solution to this apparent riddle might surprise you, but the explanation is simple. Eating fat in the proper amounts does not make you fat. Carbohydrates: The Real Culprit

If you wanted to find out the best way to make people fat, who would you consult? One industry has spent millions and millions of dollars studying this question, and that's the livestock industry.

Why? Because for them, learning the quickest way to fatten livestock leads to the highest profits. So how do they do it? Do they feed their livestock diets high in fat? Do they put out tubs of butter and ice cream to get their animals nice and plump? No! The cattle industry knows that the quickest way to fatten livestock is to restrict their activity, not let them roam on the range (sort of like our couch potatoes), and feed them lots and lots of low fat, complex carbohydrates, in the form of grain.

Our own systems are not that much different than the ones for livestock. Just as the best way to fatten cattle is to feed them excessive amounts of low-fat grain, so too the best way to fatten yourself up is to eat lots of low-fat processed carbohydrates. Your genetic biochemical response to these carbohydrates is what makes you fat.

Eating carbohydrates stimulates insulin secretion. Since your body has a limited capacity to store carbohydrates, doesn't know when it's next meal might be, and has an unlimited ability to store food as fat, insulin does just that. Insulin turns the excess carbohydrates into fat! Dietary fat, on the other hand, does not stimulate insulin secretion.

By eating the proper ratio of low-density carbohydrates, dietary fat, and protein, you can control your insulin production. Maintaining your insulin level within a therapeutic zone, makes it possible for you to burn excess body fat (and keep it off permanently) and enjoy increased energy, improved mental focus, and increased vitality.

Whether what you just ate will be used for immediate energy or stored as body fat depends on whether you are in the Zone. The more closely you follow the Zone diet, the less excess body fat you will have. Permanent fat loss is possible once you know the facts. You can lose weight and keep it off simply...safely...easily... and permanently.