Zone Diet Critique: "The Zone Diet Phenomenon"

[Ben Moskowitz]

I was downloading stuff off of the internet hoping to get more suggestions, advice, whathaveyou on the Zone diet. I came across this review article which I've attached, "The Zone Diet Phenomenon: A closer look at the science behind the claims."

It comes off pretty hard against the Zone, and dismisses the results as simply caloric restriction. I haven't read the whole thing quite yet, but it's a cool "break" from homework that keeps my gears going.

What are your opinions of the literature cited and the apparent lack of evidence for the Zone's claimed effects on insulin-glucagon, eicosanoid metabolism, and hormones?

[George Mounce]

I love reviews like these. They make me chuckle that someone can go to school for so long and be a scientist. I long for the days when people didn't know squat and they had to be real scientists.

[Steve Liberati]

Honesty, I had a hard time reading past the first line of the review once I noticied it was written by the US government. Couldn't help but wonder what they really have against the low-carb approach. Is it the US food pyramid that heavily promotes bread, cereal, rice, pasta, grains and dairy? If so, I'd love to see just a shred of scientific evidence touting the benefits of the high-carb approach. Better yet, can the goverment provide any empirical evidence in support of their dietary recommendations? I'm sure Sears, CrossFit and other Zone followers would have no problem revealing their "real world" experiences and the REAL data behind the "fad" diet.

[Jay Cohen]

Ben;
Try Zone for 1 month or 3 or 6 whatever, then you decide. If you searched these boards long enough, you SHOULD know that Zone works for quite a few people.

Quit reading and start Zoning.

[Ger Lavin]

The Zone diet is just a calorie restricted diet. However it's one that provides sufficient protein and fat for satiety. It emphasizes fruit and veg, and nutrient density over calorie density. All good think. It also provides ample carbs for CF style workouts. and is a good starting point for tracking and controlling your food intake.

To quote Lyle McDonald "Although I find a lot of the scientific rationales given for such diets to be pseudoscience at best, I do think that this type of moderate approach is probably close to ideal for most individuals." Full article here (WFS)

The article takes issue with Sears science, a lot of which is dodgy. But no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water. As Steve said the Zone works well for lots of people on the board.

[Brandon Oto]

It IS calorie-restricted for someone is trying to lose weight. It demonstrably isn't for most of us, who have increased the fat intake. I'm getting about 3000 calories a day; what about you guys?

These sort of articles are written about diets from a fat-loss perspective. I find it best to ignore them entirely for the athletic nutrition point of view; we can go back and forth on the particulars, but it's a pointless game since we're talking about something irrelevant to CrossFit.

[Ben Moskowitz]

Originally Posted by Brandon Oto

It IS calorie-restricted for someone is trying to lose weight. It demonstrably isn't for most of us, who have increased the fat intake. I'm getting about 3000 calories a day; what about you guys?

These sort of articles are written about diets from a fat-loss perspective. I find it best to ignore them entirely for the athletic nutrition point of view; we can go back and forth on the particulars, but it's a pointless game since we're talking about something irrelevant to CrossFit.

Well higher protein-carb ratios apparently trended towards an anabolic state according to the article. This was a denunciation for fat loss effects.
However if you restrict calories, and then up fat intake while maintaining this state, maybe you end of with (relatively) huge and ripped CF monsters.

[Garrett Smith]

Sure, there may be a dearth of hard science behind Dr. Sears' claims. Fine.

The diet works, especially as a starting point for people to empirically figure out their caloric needs and how they react to varying amounts of macronutrients.

Combined with Paleo, it works great. Nuff said.

[Leonid Soubbotine]

If you don't read the whole article - at least scroll to Conclusions.
It's funny as hell.

What else does one really need to soar than anecdotal evidence really?
Scientists huh? Charlatans!

[Ger Lavin]

On a side note I was interested to read that Valentina Vezzali one of the most consistent and high performing fencers in the world (gold in last four Olympics, multiple world championships, world No 1 eight years running) follows the Zone diet.