Zone Diet
The Zone diet is a diet popularized in books by Barry Sears,
which advocates "hormonal thinking" in approach
to weight loss, rather than caloric thinking.
The term, "the Zone," is Sears' term to
describe proper hormone balance — insulin levels in
the body being neither too high nor too low — as vital
to using stored bodyfat for energy, causing one to lose excess
weight. The diet centers around a "40:30:30" ratio
of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, respectively. The formula
is considered controversial, but studies over the past several
years (including a non-scientific study by Scientific American
Frontiers) has shown to achieve weight loss quickly.
Hormonal paradoxes
Research, Sears explains, points to an important hormonal
paradox which "low-fat" advocates were unaware of,
namely that low-fat carbohydrates increase the production
of the hormone insulin, causing the body to store more fat.
He points to a known fact about cattle ranching: that the
best way to fatten cattle is to feed the lots of low-fat grain.
Sears and others have pointed out the irony that human diets
for the last twenty years have been full of low-fat carbohydrates
— and people are more obese, they claim, as a result.
In addition to this, fat consumption is essential for burning
fat. Healthy (monounsaturated) fats cause the production of
important "command hormone" glucogen which direct
other hormones in their use of stored fat in the body. Low-fat
diets actually stimulate fat storage, according to Sears,
because fat-storing insulin levels are allowed to run out
of control.
The "low-carb craze"
The low-carbohydrate diet is fast becoming popular, with
the Atkins diet and others, but Sears claims that these miss
the point — that they ignore the importance of maintaining
a hormonal balance, and how the balance between carbs, proteins,
and fat influences the interconnected mechanisms hormones
production and digestion.
This article is licensed under the
GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the
Wikipedia article "The Zone Diett".
|
