On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, Ken Stuart wrote:

> On Thu, 30 Mar 2000 17:06:56 -0500, Todd Moody <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >The Zone diet is whatever Barry Sears and his minions say it is.
> >If you follow Sears' "rules" to the letter, as I did, you may or
> >may not end up with a program that conserves muscle.
>
> There are no hard and fast rules.   In many places, he gives advice for
> adjusting the plan based on your own personal physiological reaction.
> For example, there are graphs showing that the protein/carbohydrate ratio is a
> spectrum, and not every body works best on exactly "0.75".

That's true, but that spectrum does have limits, and the P:C
ration is never supposed to go above 1.0.

But I'm not talking about ratios at the moment.  I'm talking
about the effects of various levels of caloric deficit.  You
stated that if one is getting "adequate protein", presumably as
defined by Sears' LBM and activity guidelines, then caloric
restriction won't cause muscle loss.  This is false.  For anyone
considering following the Zone diet it is important to recognize
the following two things: (1) If the daily caloric deficit is
great enough, LBM will be lost no matter how much of your intake
is protein.  (2) The Zone diet plan, as described in ETZ and MTZ,
provides no way to determine whether an individual's caloric
deficit is excessive (in terms of causing LBM loss) or not.  This
is because it provides no way to quantify caloric deficit.
Furthermore, (3) because the Zone "prescription" is based on LBM
and activity levels only, with just a *small* allowance for the
amount of weight that one needs to lose, the more weight a person
has to lose the more likely it is that he or she will lose LBM.

Now sometimes Sears says things to the effect that if you're
losing LBM or not feeling energetic, or whatever, then you're not
"in the Zone," even though you're doing just what he says to do.
This is just a sophomoric trick of tautologizing the diet, in
effect *defining* the Zone as whatever works, and defining
whatever doesn't work as "not the Zone."

> A lot of the "blocks", charts, etc. are designed for people who have little or
> no feel for interpreting their own body's reactions and symptoms, and who
> certainly have little or no ability to actually understand what is going on, in
> terms of the physiological processes being adjusted (unlike the people in this
> list).

The blocks and charts deal mainly with macronutrient ratios.
Again, Sears' books offer no guidelines for tracking caloric
deficit directly.

> At this point, there really is only two differences between the Zone plan and
> the Protein Power plan:
>
> 1) The Eades have you restrict carbohydrates to a ketosis-inducing level during
> the initial phases.  This is because a) they feel that it is better for people
> coming off SAD high carbohydrate diets to go "cold turkey" in order to get the
> body to adjust to a more normal paleo existence, and b) the ketosis seems to be
> helpful in terms of initial weight loss.   Sears believes that ketosis is
> unhealthful and so he does not have an initial phase that differs from
> maintenance.

This is not quite accurate.  First, the Eades are indifferent to
ketosis.  Second, although the Zone and PP plans are similar in
their "protein prescriptions," the Eades do not call for any P:C
ratios at all.  Instead their plan works in terms of absolute
amounts of carbohydrates.  Third, based on their extensive
clinical experience with obesity, they doubt that most obese
people do well at "Zone levels" of carbohydrates.  That is, they
say that most people with weight problems will probably stabilize
at carb intake levels significantly less than the Zone.

It's true that Sears thinks ketosis is unhealthful.

> 2) The Zone Diet is particularly interested in the hour-to-hour level of blood
> sugar and hormones, while Protein Power (for reasons never made clear) is not
> interested in anything quite so minute.   This may be due to the fact that
> Protein Power started out as a weight loss diet, while the Zone Diet started out
> as a way to prevent heart disease, and later a way to increase athletic
> performance.

I think one reason why the Eades don't pretend to track
hour-to-hour hormone levels is because these things are affected
by so many factors beyond the macronutrient composition of meals.
For example, the amino acid composition of protein significantly
affects the insulin and glucagon response to it, as do stress
levels, activity patterns, and so on.

Todd Moody
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