DietZone
Diet Zone advocates balancing protein
and carbohydrate ratios instead of caloric thinking as an
approach to eating.
It is not primarily a weight-loss
diet (though it can be used quite successfully for that purpose);
rather it is a way of eating - the intake of food that produces the best
results within our bodies based on a hypothesis of how the human body
has evolved to cope with the food intake throughout history.
"The Zone" is Sears's term for
proper hormone balance. When insulin levels are neither too high nor too
low, and glucagon levels are not too high, then specific
anti-inflammatory chemicals (types of eicosanoids) are released, which
have similar effects of aspirin, but without the downsides such as
gastric bleeding. |
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The American Heart Associate does not
recommend the Zone Diet due to high-protein, lack of essential
nutrients and little information on long-term effects.
Additionally, when the human body is not
busy storing excess calories as fat which means that those stores
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. Using stored fat for energy causes weight loss.
The diet centers on a "40:30:30" ratio
of calories obtained daily from carbohydrates, proteins, and
fats, respectively. The exact formula is always under debate, but
studies over the past several years (including a non-scientific study by
Scientific American Frontiers) have shown that it can produce weight
loss at reasonable rates.
Low carbohydrate diets
like the Atkins diet
became extremely popular throughout the
United States in 2003 and 2004, but Sears claims that they miss the
point. According to him, they ignore the importance of hormonal balance,
as well as the influence of dietary balance on digestion and hormone
production. In addition, high-protein/low-carb diets cause the
production of some "bad" hormones that the body tries to flush from the
system. Much of the initial weight-loss from such diets is water loss. |