The Zone Quotes

“That's why the recent popularity of juicing (the removal of fiber from fruits to make easy-to-drink juices) has been a disaster. Juicing simply removes a primary control rod (i.e., fiber) from the carbohydrate, meaning that the carbohydrate enters the bloodstream too fast.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss

“Sorry, but I have alarming news: low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets are likely to promote heart disease—especially if you're genetically predisposed to a high insulin response to carbohydrates. If you're eating this way, you're putting yourself in danger—you're not minimizing your risk of heart disease, you're actually increasing that risk.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss

“The answer lay buried deep in some rather obscure journals. But it was a relatively simple answer: the delta 5 desaturase enzyme is under profound hormonal control. Although EPA could provide some limited control of delta 5 desaturase enzyme activity, consistent control could only be achieved by controlling hormonal balance. And which hormones? Of course: insulin and glucagon. I finally began to understand why women seemed to need a more or less continual readjustment of the EPA to GLA ratio to stay in the Zone. Women tend to eat relatively lower amounts of protein than men, simply because more women are perpetually on low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets—which are also low in protein. As a result of these high-carbohydrate diets, the supplemented GLA was constantly being driven toward arachidonic acid because the activating effect of insulin was overwhelming the inhibitory effect of EPA. So for women the ratio of DGLA to arachidonic acid would initially increase, and then begin to decrease as arachidonic acid built up over time. This was especially true if they were eating a high-carbo-hydrate diet. That's why the women constantly needed less and less GLA and more and more EPA to stay in the Zone. At that point I realized that to get to the Zone on a consistent basis, it was far more important to control the insulin-to-glucagon ratio than it is to supplement the diet with activated essential fatty acids. That's when I shifted gears, and started to put more and more emphasis on the control of the protein-to-carbohydrate ratio as the primary portal to the Zone. With this new emphasis on the macronutrient content of the diet came a surprising discovery, a discovery applicable to both men and women. The closer a person maintained an ideal protein-to-carbohydrate ratio of 0.75, I found, the more there was a significant increase in the activity of the delta 6 desaturase enzyme.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss

“If you find yourself hungry and craving sugar or sweets two to three hours after a meal, you probably consumed too many carbohydrates that last meal. Whenever you have a problem with hunger or carbohydrate cravings, look to your last meal for a clue to the reason why.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss

“The hormonal benefits generated by a Zone-favorable diet produce unprecedented gains in athletic performance. In the Zone, fatty acids are released from adipose tissue at a faster rate, meaning increased muscular endurance because muscle glycogen is conserved. Stored fat is better utilized, both during training and at rest, and this provides the desirable fat loss that almost all athletes seek. Oxygen transfer is increased and muscle fatigue minimized. And stable blood-sugar levels provide increased mental alertness—indispensable if an athlete expects to achieve maximum performance.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss

“Now, I want to be fair: not everyone has such a negative hormonal response to high-carbohydrate diets. There are people who can eat carbohydrates until the cows come home and never get fat. Why? It all depends on your genes. Research conducted by Gerald Reaven at Stanford University in 1987 unraveled this genetic mystery. It turns out that people's genetic insulin responses to carbohydrates are diverse. In about 25 percent of a normal population, insulin response to carbohydrates is very blunted. When these lucky people eat excess carbohydrates, their insulin levels don't rapidly surge upward. They can consume large amounts of carbohydrates and not get hungry or fat. (These people often do very well on high-carbohydrate diets, so the dietary establishment elevates them to iconlike status to demonstrate the moral superiority of such a diet. Heck, these people just had a lucky draw in the genetic lottery.) On the other hand, 25 percent of an otherwise normal population has an unlucky genetic draw that dictates an extremely elevated insulin response to carbohydrate. These people simply have to look at a carbohydrate and they begin gaining fat. Between these two extremes lies the other 50 percent of the American population. These people respond normally to carbohydrates, which means that if they eat too much carbohydrate they'll have an elevated insulin response—not as elevated as the unluckiest 25 percent, but still elevated enough to do all the damage described above. These people will always fail on a high-carbohydrate diet. They're accused of being weak-willed gluttons who can't control themselves, when in fact they were just born with unfortunate genes. This means that about one-quarter of the population who follow a high-carbohydrate diet will do reasonably well because they're blessed with genetic good fortune. These people can gorge themselves on carbohydrates and never get fat because their insulin levels are always low. The other 75 percent, however, will have an increasingly difficult time complying with such a diet. So, as I said, If you've failed on a high-carbohydrate diet, you're not at fault, your genes are. Well, you can't change your genes, but you sure can change your diet.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss

“What did I expect? A weight loss of about one pound per week. (It's genetically impossible to lose more than 1 to 1½ pounds of body fat per week—you just can't lose body fat any faster. You can lose more weight, but that will be primarily water loss and muscle-mass loss. That's why people on quick weight loss programs look so haggard—they're losing muscle mass.)”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss

“Any carbohydrates not immediately used by the body will be stored in the form of glycogen (a long string of glucose molecules linked together). The body has two storage sites for glycogen: the liver and the muscles. The glycogen stored in the muscles is inaccessible to the brain. Only the glycogen stored in the liver can be broken down and sent back to the bloodstream so as to maintain adequate blood sugar levels for proper brain function. The liver's capacity to store carbohydrates in the form of glycogen is very limited and can be easily depleted within ten to twelve hours. So the liver's glycogen reserves must be maintained on a continual basis. That's why we eat carbohydrates.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss

“Surprisingly, the second group of individuals who tend to be protein malnourished are elite athletes—especially women. Their protein demands are often exceedingly high because of their greater amounts of lean body mass and higher levels of physical activity. These hard-working athletes tend to consume more than enough calories, but they rarely eat adequate levels of protein.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss

“Maintain a beneficial ratio of protein to carbohydrate every time you eat. This one simple rule is the foundation for constructing a Zone-favorable diet. And what is that beneficial ratio of protein to carbohydrate? The ideal is about 0.75—that's three grams of protein to every four grams of carbohydrate. That's the ideal. But there's a range of beneficial protein-to-carbohydrate ratios that are still Zone-favorable—between about 0.6 and 1.0 (see”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss