Sunday, April 30, 2006

Eat in the Zone

The ‘Zone Diet’, popularized in books by Barry Sears, advocates “hormonal thinking” instead of caloric thinking as an approach to eating.  The Zone is the state that your body is in when your hormones are in balance.  And when your body is in balance, so is your mind.

Being in the Zone requires proper balance of the hormone insulin.  When insulin levels are neither too high nor too low, the human body is not busy storing excess calories as fat which means they are available when needed. The human body cannot store fat and burn fat at the same time, and it takes time (significant time if insulin levels were high because of unbalanced eating) to switch from the former to the latter. With balanced eating you are able to tap into stored fat to gain energy and loss weight. The ‘Zone Diet’ centers around a ‘40:30:30’ ratio of calories obtained daily from carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, respectively. The exact formula is always under debate, but for now I’ll trust Dr. Sears.
How to Eat in The Zone

For every 9grams of carbohydrates you eat, you need to match 7 grams of protein, and 3 grams of fat.  A typical Zone meal will consist of approximately 36 grams of carbohydrates, 28 grams of protein, and 12 grams of fat.  There are good and bad choices for each macronutrient (carb, protein, and fat), but just attempting to eat in the zone is a good start.  Start the day by eating a zone meal within one hour of waking.  Eat either a Zone meal or snack no more than five hours apart, and drink eight glasses of water throughout the day.  That is it.  Start treating food like a drug and observe what you feel, see, and think.

There are three possible senerios that occur four hours after eating.  The first is no hunger and good mental focus, which tells you the ratio of carbs to protein was in the Zone.  The second senerio is that you experience a poor mental focus, telling you your brain is starving and you need to decrease your carb intake next time you eat that perticular meal.  The third senerio is that you sustained a good mental focus, but became hungery, thus telling you to increase your carb intake the next time you eat this meal.

The Zone is a state of mind and body that you are already in, not become.  You are basically in the zone throughout your daily activities.  I can only imagine the accidents we would have on our freeways if we were not driving in the zone.  You are on cruise control throughout your life, why not play golf in the zone?  The only thing that can take you out of the zone is you.  You and your imagination can decide to make a situation pleasant or uncomfortable.  This discomfort can stem from many sources, make sure food is not one of them.  Try eating in the zone you will be amazed at how well you think, feel, and perform.