March 5, 2012

Get in “The Zone”

Dr. Barry Sears is a biochemist who wanted to find a way to avoid dying from a heart attack and invented the Zone diet to achieve these goals. This dies it based around balancing protein and carbohydrates with the goal to balance hormones. The balance of protein to carbs is 30:40 and that is supposed to be the focus of the “zone”.

Over the past ten years there has been a focus on high-protein and low-carb foods. Research on these diets have been limited but recently researchers have found biomarkers have been negatively affected by severely low carbohydrate intake. A problem that can arise with a diet like Atkins is that people can go into ketosis (inefficiency of the body to oxidize fat). This can eventually lead to bone loss.

The Zone diet has a high enough recommended dose of carbs that people will not go into ketosis. The Atkins diet recommends no more than 20 grams a day while the Zone diet allows up to 180 grams a day. Although the Zone diet is still low on carb intake it is not as extreme as the Atkins diet. It is important to note how imperative balance is in diets. Cutting out groups of food can be detrimental to one’s health and these results might not be found for years to come.

There are new diets and fads coming out daily and it is important for everyone to carefully examine the reasons behind the different diets. A very popular diet now is the Paleo diet which eliminates refined sugars, grains, dairy products and other miscellaneous foods. Although people swear by this diet and have a lot of research to back up their opinions it is hard to see the benefits of a diet which eliminates whole food groups which we have been consuming for years.

The Zone diet which focuses on balance and lowering the amount of certain food groups makes more sense to me. I think balance is extremely important to all aspects of life, especially in one’s diet. It is important to note that certain diets work better for certain people but doing research before starting a new diet is more significant than ever.

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