Zone Food Blocks: The Quick and Easy, Mix-and-Match Counter for Staying in the Zone

by Barry Sears

Overview

Over two million people worldwide are already experiencing the health and performance benefits of the Zone diet. Based on the hormonal consequences of food rather than caloric content, the Zone treats food like a powerful drug. Properly administered, this drug allows you to maintain peak mental alertness throughout the day, increase your energy, and reduce the likelihood of chronic disease all while losing body fat.

Now, in this essential new Zone reference guide, Barry Sears, provides you with the Zone resources and Food Block information you need to make every meal you eat a Zone meal, including:

How to use and adjust Zone Food to fit your own biochemistry

Zone Food Blocks for every ingredient, including vegetarian and nondairy sources of protein

Zone Food Blocks for fast food and prepackaged supermarket meals

Rules for modifying prepared foods to make them Zone–perfect

The Ten Zone Commandments for staying in the Zone

Think better, perform better, look better, and live better— into the Zone.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060392420
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/03/1998
Series:	Zone
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.37(d)

About the Author

Dr. Barry Sears is recognized as one of the world's leading medical researchers on the hormonal effects of food. He is the author of the number one New York Times bestseller The Zone as well as Mastering the Zone, Zone-Perfect Meals in Minutes, Zone Food Blocks, A Week in the Zone, The Age-Free Zone, The Top 100 Zone Foods, The Soy Zone, The Omega Rx Zone, Zone Meals in Seconds, and What to Eat in the Zone. His books have sold more than five million copies and have been translated into twenty-two languages in forty countries. He continues his research on the inflammatory process as the president of the nonprofit Inflammation Research Foundation in Marblehead, Massachusetts. The father of two grown daughters, he lives in Swampscott, Massachusetts, with his wife, Lynn.

Read an Excerpt

WHAT IS THE ZONE?

What is the Zone? You have probably heard many things about it. Let me first say what the Zone is not. It is not a high-protein diet, and it is not a high-fat diet, and it is not a high-carbohydrate diet. It is, however, about moderation and balance. Specifically, it's about hormonal balance-keeping hormonal responses (and in particular, the hormone insulin) generated by the food you cat within a zone: not too high, not too low. If insulin levels are too high, you can never access stored body fat for energy. If insulin levels are too low, your cells will starve to death. In essence, when you follow the Zone Diet you are treating food as if it were a drug, giving food the same respect that you would give any prescription drug. This is a revolutionary concept, and this is why the Zone is controversial. When viewed through this prism, food can be your greatest ally or your worst enemy; you just have to know how to play by the hormonal rules that haven't changed in 40 million years and are unlikely to change tomorrow.

WHY IS THE ZONE IMPORTANT TO YOU?

You need the Zone, because your life depends on it. The Zone is about hormonal thinking and how the food you eat controls very powerful hormones that are often hundreds of times more powerful than most prescription drugs. Hormones, which are the chemical messengers of your body, direct every one of your body's vital systems as they can help your body move toward illness and disease or redirect your body towards health. When they are functioning at their best, they can help your body achieve a state of wellness and optimal performance. This is what the ZoneDiet is all about. Once you begin to think about food hormonally, mean that food has to taste like a drug, but it does mean that it's important to realize that food can have adverse hormonal side effects, such as the overproduction of insulin.

Hormonal thinking is very different than caloric thinking. Caloric thinking can be summarized by this philosophy: "if no fat touches my lips, then no fat reaches my hips." This type of thinking has been the nutritional mantra in America for the past 15 years. During this time, fat has been made to be the villain of our society. Yet in that same 15-year period we have actually been eating less fat than ever before and, in the process, have become the fattest people on the face of the earth (1). What went wrong? Maybe fat is not the demon we have been told. This is why more and more scientists are voicing their doubts in prestigious journals like the New England Journal of Medicine in 1997:

"Replacement of fat by carbohydrate has not been shown to reduce the risk of coronary disease…" (2)

"Beneficial effects of high-carbohydrate diets on the risk of cancer or body weight have also not been substantiated…" (2)

Or other medical researchers who have stated:

"The more insulin-resistant the individual, the greater the likelihood that low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets will increase the risk factors for ischemic heart disease." (3)

How could this be if we have been told that eating a high-carbohydrate diet is the key to better health? In essence, these respected scientists are saying the emperor (i.e., the low-fat diet, high-carbohydrate diet) has no clothes. Americans have been sold a pig in a poke for the last 15 years with the expectation that low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets would be the panacea for our health and wellness. The hormonal thinking behind the Zone explains why this hasn't happened. In fact, the general state of health in America is worse now than it was 15 years ago. Fortunately, there is a solution to this health crisis because it can be reversed with the Zone Diet.

ZONE BENEFITS

If dietary fat alone doesn't make you fat (besides not causing heart disease and cancer), then what does? The answer is excess levels of the hormone insulin. The power of the Zone is that this hormone can be controlled by the diet. The Zone is about keeping insulin in a range or zone-not too high, not too low. Not only can keeping insulin in a tight zone prevent you from gaining weight and help you to lose it, but also maintaining insulin in this same zone produces the following benefits:

• Thinking better

• Performing better

• Looking better

• Living better (and longer)

Who doesn't want to experience these benefits? Let's take them one by one.

Thinking Better

Maintaining peak mental acuity is simply a consequence of maintaining stable blood sugar levels. Blood sugar is the metabolic fuel your brain uses to maintain your mental activity. If blood sugar levels drop, then brain function (and your thinking ability) becomes compromised since your brain is running on empty. This is known as low blood sugar. As an example, think about how you feel three hours after eating a big pasta meal. You can barely keep your eyes open, and you find yourself in a dense mental fog. That's an example of low blood sugar. Should your blood sugar levels drop even lower, the brain will actually shut down and go into a coma. This commonly occurs with diabetics who inject too much insulin. Before that drastic step happens, most people will reach for some high-carbohydrate snack that will temporarily increase blood sugar levels, but this simply starts this vicious cycle over again.

What controls your blood sugar levels? It is the amount of insulin in the bloodstream. Insulin is a storage hormone. It tells your body to drive incoming macronutrients (protein, carbohydrate, and fat) into their respective sites for storage so that they can be used at some time in the future. Too much insulin, and you drive down the levels of blood sugar by sending it to the liver and muscles for storage. This is great for those organs, but not too good for the brain. When blood sugar levels drop, clear and concise thought becomes more difficult. I don't care how many Ph.D.'s you have, once low blood sugar sets in, your mental capacity drops like a stone. On the other hand, if you can maintain insulin in the Zone, then you stabilize blood sugar levels, giving you peak mental acuity for four to six hours after your last Zone meal. That's the good news. The bad news…

 

Interviews

On Wednesday, June 17, barnesandnoble.com welcomed Barry Sears, author of ZONE FOOD BLOCKS.

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AkioBN: Welcome, Dr. Sears.

Barry Sears: It's a great pleasure to be here, and I look forward to the questions about the Zone.

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Question: Hi, Dr. Sears! I've been "in the Zone" for two weeks now, and my only outcome seems to be a feeling of being less bloated. I am extremely overweight and not very active, so I'm only eating eight blocks per day. Any suggestions?

Barry Sears: Weight loss is different than fat loss. It's impossible to lose more than one and a half pounds per week. If you're decreasing the bloating, this is probably an indication that you're losing body fat at near a genetic maximum.

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Question: Dr. Sears, thank you for helping me lose 30 pounds. My question is, which is more important eating a Zone-favorable meal with, for instance, ground meat, pasta, and saturated fats, or eating a healthy but unbalanced Zone meal?

Barry Sears: Eating a Zone meal, even though it contains ground meat, pasta, and saturated fat, would be vastly hormonally superior to eating a non-Zone meal. The key to the Zone is maintaining the hormone insulin in a tight range -- not too high, but not too low.

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Question: How do I determine how many blocks for an eight-year-old boy? He is slightly overweight, and I'd like to nip it in the bud.

Barry Sears: First of all, assume that he has 10 percent body fat; then, whatever his activity factor really is, jack it up two notches. This will provide adequate protein for any growth spurts.

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Question: I have some stomach cramps. Should I eat more, or should I stay off the diet?

Barry Sears: If you have stomach cramps, two questions you want to ask yourself One, are you urinating more than usual and have a touch or of diarrhea, or are you urinating less than usual and have a touch of constipation? It's quite likely that the second is taking place, and the way to address that is to add more fish oil to your diet.

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Question: Doctor, how do you feel about the book SUGAR BUSTERS? It seems to be similar to your ideas.

Barry Sears: SUGAR BUSTERS, in many ways, is exceptionally similar to THE ZONE. So much so that I almost thought I was reading my own book. The primary difference is that the Zone goes into the biochemical detail about how food affects hormones. And the other difference is that the Zone was never conceived as a weight-loss program, but as a treatment for heart disease and diabetes.

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Question: I have just begun weight training. How do I gain weight in the Zone?

Barry Sears: You don't want to gain weight, you want to gain muscle mass. The best way to achieve that is to add extra blocks of protein, carbohydrates, and fat to your existing diet. That will provide the adequate protein to build muscle mass, and by controlling insulin, you will not block the release of growth hormones required to build new muscles.

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Question: I don't know much about your book, but what is your opinion on the nutrition costs and benefits of being a vegetarian?

Barry Sears: A vegetarian diet is excellent, assuming that you're getting adequate protein and that the ratio of protein to carbohydrates will maintain insulin within the Zone. Unfortunately, many vegetarians consume too little protein relative to the amount of carbohydates, thereby decreasing many of the benefits of a vegetarian diet.

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Question: What are the potential effects of a high-protein-type diet, such as yours, on the renal system? Can protein, being a large molecule, cause potential harm over a period of time?

Barry Sears: First of all, the Zone diet is not a high-protein diet, because at no time are you ever consuming too much protein at one meal. Because of that fact, you're not putting a strain on the kidneys, and therefore not interfering in daily functions. In fact, preliminary studies with diabetic patients indicate that the Zone diet reverses the spillage of protein into the urine.

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Question: I've lost over 120 pounds in the last year eating mainly a vegan diet. How many calories should I now be eating a day once I am at my ideal weight, which is a guy, five feet nine, 145 pounds?

Barry Sears: The ideal number of calories will probably be in the range of 1500 calories if the calorie makeup is consistent with the Zone principles.

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Question: Sometimes after eating a meal I feel a "head rush." I am in my first week of the Zone. Is this typical?

Barry Sears: It can be. The head rush you speak of is really caused by an increase of the production of good eicosanoids. This could be solved by adding a small amount of extra carbohydrates to each meal for the first week.

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Question: I have been very successful in the Zone. However, my doctor looks down his nose and tells me that in the long run, it's unhealthy, and says it has too many proteins. Comments?

Barry Sears: I just came back from the American Diabetes Association meeting, in which we presented data on the use of the Zone diet for the treatment of diabetes. One of the ex-presidents of the ADA commented that this was the first major breakthrough in diabetes treatment in the last 50 years.

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AkioBN: Thanks for joining us, Dr. Sears.

Barry Sears: It was my pleasure!

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