How to Choose Foods for the Zone Diet

You're in "the zone," states Dr. Barry Sears, the lipid researcher who created the zone diet, when you've balanced the right proportion of carbohydrate to protein and fat. You've then reached the hormonal balance needed for favorable insulin levels. The USDA recommends a diet with more carbohydrate and less protein.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

A Daily Diet of Three Meals and two Snacks

1. Select lean meat, chicken with fat trimmed, fish, egg whites or soy products for protein sources.

2. Keep your protein size small.

3. Snack twice a day on nuts, vegetables or fruit.

4. Choose carbohydrates with a low glycemic index. These are foods that don't elevate your insulin level. This includes most vegetables, lentils, beans and fruit.

5. Favor mono-unsaturated fats such as olive oil, avocado, almonds and macademia nuts.

6. Supplement your diet with omega 3 fish oil.

7. Eat 40 percent of your calories from carbohydrates, 30 percent from protein and 30 percent from fat each day.

Making Your Caloric Intake Precise

8. Understand the mini block concept to help you eat right at each meal and snack. One mini block is 7 grams protein, 9 grams carbohydrates or 1.5 grams fat. One mini block from each category equals a ZonePerfect Food Block, and represents the way you should think of your meals.

9. Use the charts in Dr. Sears' books to calculate the exact amount of food you need for a mini block. Alternately, you can find unofficial Zone charts online.

10. Include three mini blocks in each meal if you're a woman and four mini blocks if you're a man.

11. Eat one mini block for each snack.

Tips & Warnings

• Drink eight glasses of water a day.
• Each protein serving should fit into the palm of your hand.
• Avoid starchy foods such as pasta, rice, bread and corn. Skip bananas and raisins as well.

Resources

• Review a Zone Block chart

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