On Wed, 31 May 2000, Ken Stuart wrote:

> Adjusting your diet so that you are not hungry for 4 hours, is not the same as
> making sure not to eat before 4 hours is up.

True, but I think it's a question of means and ends.  With the
Zone diet, it is an end not to eat sooner than 4 hours after a
meal, and adjusting the diet to make this possible without much
discomfort is a means to that end.  The reason why this is an end
is to allow the insulin and glucagon responses to the meal to
proceed most efficiently.

> Sears does specifically say to eat when you are not hungry.

Yes, and you *shouldn't* be hungry sooner than 4 hours after a
Zone-favorable meal, although it's difficult for some to achieve
this, in conjunction with the other rules.

> Hunger indicates that the blood sugar level has dropped, which either requires
> glucagon (as mentioned in your previous posts) or cortisol to restore (and you
> have previously referred to the health problems involved in excess cortisol).

Did you mean glucose instead of glucagon?  One reason why some
people do well on lower-carb diets, such as Atkins, appears to be
that once their blood sugar stabilizes, even at a low level, the
hunger goes away and they are fine as long as they don't cause it
to spike by eating too much carb or protein.  In short, they can
achieve a "Zone-favorable" meal by ingesting just protein and
fat.  They will eat rather more protein than Sears recommends,
but less or no carbs.  The rest of the calories are from fat.

It would be interesting to find out how many blocks of just
protein are hormonally equivalent to, say, 4 blocks of protein
and carbs.  My guess is that it would be about 6, but who knows?

Todd Moody
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