Zone Diet

The Diet:

This diet is named after the condition where a person might get into a zone of performance. Whether it is mental, physical, or level of ability. The idea is to get your body into a fat burning zone.

The caloric intake of your meals should be broken out as follows:

• 30% lean protein (chicken, turkey or fish)
• 40% from good carbohydrates (fruits and vegetables (excluding potatoes))
• 30% from fats

For snacks you may have vegetables or fruits, or a small handful of nuts.

The Experience:

The Zone diet says you don't have to count calories. You are however expected to limited your three food groups within a certain percentage of calories per day. It isn't clear to me how I am supposed to do that without counting the calories, but I tried to anyways. I would pick foods comprised of either protein, fruits and vegetables, and I would cook them with olive oil.

Most days I would have some cottage cheese, oatmeal, or cream of wheat for breakfast. Included would be a little bit of brown sugar and some cranberries. For lunch I would usually have a salad, which has small amount of protein, and quite a bit of vegetables.

Monday night I had a large salad leftover from Sunday, so I threw a can of tuna in it and finished it off. For dressing I sprinkled lemon juice and pepper into the bowl (I am presently out of salad dressing). Most other nights I had chicken with broccoli for dinner.

Midday through the week I was starting to particularly hungry most of the time. During the days I would usually snack on fruit, nuts, or the occasional protein bar. After dinner I would snack on some semi-sweet chocolate chips.

As I got closer and closer to Friday I was becoming more and more tired. Wednesday when I tried to workout I had basically no energy, and did a pathetic 20 minutes on the elliptical.

Everything was going as expected until Friday. I hadn't lost any weight but I hadn't gained any either. I still had to teach my martial arts class so I ate some "energy" food to get me through it. When I got home from teaching I was pretty pretty tired (probably crashing from bad food) and the temptation to just lay into some more stuff was too much.

Saturday I had a few peanut butter sandwiches. That same afternoon and evening I was feeling a lot of desire for sugar and I ate a bunch of cookies (to combat the desire). I went to bed on a full stomach of oatmeal and sugar.

The Result:

No real surprise here. Due to the binging on Friday and Saturday I was 2.6 pounds heavier from the previous week. The had a lot to do with my 11th hour breakdown, but also lately it has just been more difficult to be motivated. I have now returned to the flat line that I was stuck at for months (until the end of November). I need to hunker down and really be devoted going forward if I am going to get down to a new stable weight.