Brief summary of the zone:

And I do mean brief... The Zone book by Sears is complicated in the very least. There is no way I can give an accurate summary of it's entire contents in this next few paragraphs.

Sears has gone away from the high carb/low fat diets that are in mode these days to promote a diet that it 40% carb, 30% protein and 30% fat in it's calorie profile. He has done this for two reasons: to limit the effects of insulin in one's system and to regulate hormones in the body called eicosanoids which will improve one's health and longevity.

The diet is based on blocks where each block consists of 9g carbs, 7g proteins and 3 grams of fat. So once you determine your protein requirements you can determine the number of blocks you can eat in a day and then you spread them out over your day.

Does this sound complicated... well it is! This is my first knock against the Zone... you have to solidly understand what Sears is saying before you can construct a good Zone diet. Then there is all the math and activity determinations. It's just overwhelming for a casual diet person.

The entire Zone program is based around protein intake. You determine this via your LBM and a chart that you choose your activity levels on. Once you have your protein intake figured out you're off to the calculator... but Sears doesn't talk about protein efficiency. To him 1g of protein is 1g of protein regardless of the source. As Duchaine point out in that MM2K article it's well known that we want to use quality protein sources... quantity is the only important factor here.

This isn't a huge change. Just add whey protein, egg, milk or meat proteins into your diet somehow and you should be fine.

The next thing to look at is carbs... you know how many carbs you can eat each meal from the blocks required but Sears makes a point that you should not eat any carbs over a glycemic index (GI) [new glycemic indicies] of 50. Now not only does this limit your carb selection but Dan also commented on how a little expanding of this GI range doesn't increase insulin levels given adequate protein and fat intake. Duchaine recommends GIs of less then 70. Personally... I think we've gone GI crazy. Yes GI is important for pure carbs but if you're regulating your dietary intake with fat and protein this isn't as important. I still caution to limit your high GI and processed food intake but to put these extreme limits on one's food choices seems very severe to me.

Fat... that evil bad entity that we all curse. Well in the Zone we learn about how fats effect our health. We should avoid saturated fats (fine with me and Duchaine) and stick to unsaturated fats and limit our polyunstaurated fat intake... the latter seems very strange to me. Linolenic acid is very important to the manufacture of hormones and gondatropins along with having solid evidence to reduce heart disease and increase overall healthiness. It is a bodybuilders best friend (and why I caution people on really low fat intake diets) because these fats are used to build testosterone which is one of greatest allies in building muscle mass. This Zone advice seems to be contrary to what bodybuilders need IMHO. (Duchaine concurs in his article)

Not only that but Sears talks about eicosanoids (some of which I agree with but most I do not) and how regulating these improve health and one's life span. But he doesn't believe in scientific studies nor reports to back up his claims so you can't take these as valuable. They come across as a diet 'puff' if you will. "Eat my diet and become healthier and live longer".... we've all heard these before. Now is the time to prove those claims. Sears falls alot short on this one.

So now that you figure out your blocks and you understand the limitations of the various foods you should be off to the races right? Well sort of... if you figure out your caloric intake the Zone tends to be a calorie reduced diet which is great for fat loss and endurance athletes but it isn't great for a bodybuilder. How do you gain muscle mass by not feeding yourself enough food... it just is impossible captain. 8^)

Deep in the pages of The Zone... there is a hint to correct this though. Increase your fat intake... not a problem (if it wasn't so well hidden) but how does that effect a bodybuilder? Well it's likely that you will end up being undercarbed and have too much fat intake. The latter will most likely kept as body fat on this diet too... there is too much carb intake to make the body switch to ketones for fuel. Be prepared to run out of steam folks... the best advice I've heard on this is from my ex-workout partner (who follows a modified Zone diet... competitive powerlifter competeing in 2 weeks whos' dropped is weight from 180 to 165 for this contest without losing much muscle). Increase your protein intake before you start to calculate your block levels. This increases your protein, carbs and fats ingested... if you get a value of 1.5g per kg change it to 1.7g... etc.

As well there are times to go 'outside the Zone'... to me this is early in the morning. After a night's sleep cortisol is ravaging your body and catabolizing muscle tissue and you want to stop it. That's done with growth hormone. So to do that you want an insulin spike to trigger gH release to stop the cortisol. (Assuming gain of muscle wanted) Following a zone diet gH levels won't rise for a good 2 hours which means precious muscle lost... I prefer a higher carb intake in the morning if I'm on a mass gaining scheme. That way I can get gH in my system in about 30-45 minutes. As well the extra carbs help me perform my morning workout since my glycogen stores have depleted over the night. So if either of the above apply to you I urge you to go outside the zone briefly for your morning snack/ pre-workout meal.

So there is my brief rant and rave on The Zone. Overall I think it's a pretty good diet (though slightly complicated) that many people can benefit from but in order for weight lifters to benefit I think they should modify it with: morning carbs and increasing the overall calorie intake (through increasing your protein levels) if you're trying to gain mass.

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