The Zone Diet Details

The zone diet should be simple to follow and not too much work has to go in to accurately weighing different food sources. To make sure you get the right balance, it's adviced that you simply use common sense, look at what you plan to eat and see how much space each food type takes up on your dinner plate. More accurate forms of measurement may be used, however, for most people this will surfice.

The Zone Diet and Nutrient Balance

The key nutrients you should be tracking are as follows: Carbohydrates, Proteins and Fats. The Zone diet works by adjusting your intake of these nutrients to an optimum level for health and weight loss.

What is the correct balance for The Zone Diet?

The problem with modern day diets is that they consist largly of processed and refined foods. Interestingly enough, The Zone Diet actually takes the dieter's dieting habbits back to an ancient time where the human diet consisted mainly of meat, fruit and veg. This was the diet our bodies were designed for.

The zone diet is sometimes known as the 40-30-30 diet plan. This is because The Zone Diet recommends the dieter's diet consists of 40% simple carbohydrates (such as whole grain bread), 30% protein and 30% mono-saturate fat (such as oliv oil, avacados and almonds etc).

Carbohydrates for The Zone Diet (40%)

The zone diet is sometimes mixed up with other diets. Diets such as Atkins recommends the dieter to cut right back on carbohydrates and increase the proportion of protein. In certain instances this can be unhealthy.

You will notice that the Zone Diet does no such thing. In fact the 40% of the diet is made up of good carbohydrates and only 30% is protein. So how do we determin what a "good" carbohydrate actually is?

The zone diet using a scale called the Glycemic Index. The foods that contain high amounts of sugary / refined carbohydrates are listed at the top of the glycemic index - white bread, honey, white rice are a good example. Foods low on the glycemic index represents the good carbs. These include lentils, peaches, peanuts etc.

Fats for the Zone Diet (30%)

Unlike other "low carb" diets such as Atkins, the Zone Diet advises against large amounts of saturated fats, such as most animal fats.

The dieter should try to get their 30% proportion of fats from mono-saturates such as those found in nuts like almonds and olive oil.