The Zone Diet - 1995 New York Times Best Seller

posted on 8 October 2010 | posted in Health and Beauty

The Zone came out in 1995 and was a New York Times bestseller. Written by Barry Sears - it is all about eating "in The Zone".

There are lots of good principles behind The Zone. Sears notes the following:

o Eating fat does not make you fat
o It is hard to lose weight by restricting calories
o Diets based on calorie limits usually fail
o Food can be good or bad.

We would agree with all these principles, but The Zone doesn't stop with these sensible and easy-to-understand principles. It goes on to present, quite possibly, the most complicated diet ever set out for people to try to follow.
The reader is supposed to get their lean body mass from Appendix B, multiply this by their activity factor from table 8-1 and then this gives the daily protein requirement. This is just the start. (No wonder the author has a PhD!)

Sears gives an example of someone who has a daily protein requirement of 75g, which then gives them 11 protein blocks per day (a block is 7g - why? We have no idea - just keep doing the maths). This person is then told to have 3 protein blocks for breakfast, 3 for lunch, 1 for an afternoon snack, 3 for dinner and 1 for a late night snack.

Another rule now gets introduced - never go more than five hours without eating a Zone meal. Why? Don't ask - just do what you're told!

Then we find out where carbs come in - a carb block is 9g (don't ask why) - and you have a carb block each time you have a protein block. All food is a mixture of fat/protein or carb/protein - so protein is in everything - even these carbs we are supposed to be eating. Rice, bread, pasta, porridge etc all have protein in - this doesn't make sense. (The rare foods that contain no protein are sugar, at one extreme of unhealthy, to olive oil, at the other extreme of healthy. Sugar contains 100% carbohydrate - no fat or protein and olive oil contains 100% fat - no carb or protein).

Anyway - back to The Maths, sorry The Zone, our person having the 3 protein blocks for breakfast, 3 for lunch, 1 for an afternoon snack, 3 for dinner and 1 for a late night snack can now have 3 carb blocks for breakfast, 3 for lunch etc...

Then it all gets really daft when Sears gets on to carbohydrates. First he lists brown rice and carrots as bad carbs (he calls them "unfavourable"). Second he lists one block as an apple or 9 grapes. So, if you fancy fruit for your afternoon snack, you can only have an apple and presumably throw the other half away before it goes brown and gross. This is obsessive and unhealthy dieting and can only lead to an obsessive and unhealthy relationship with food.

Our person, analysing this diet, worked out what she would be 'allowed' in The Zone and it would be only 10 carbohydrate blocks, which would be used up with "one 4oz bowl of porridge oats made with 2 cups of milk." So that would be breakfast and then no more carbs for the rest of the day. Nightmare!

"A Week in the Zone" does say that the total calorie content for a day in the Zone is about 1200 calories. So this is another diet that is low in both calories and carbs, which is best avoided. The good news about this diet is that you will probably burn loads of energy trying to work out what you're supposed to be eating!