Kotz Deborah - A Week in the Zone

Appendix B: Zone Food Choices:
The 1-2-3 Method

T he success of the Zone books that I have written during the past five years is primarily due to my support team, which is comprised of not only my coworkers, but also my closest friends. These include my wife, Lynn Sears, who does much of the editing of my books, and my brother, Doug Sears, who has a very clear insight and understanding of how to translate cutting-edge science into easily understood terms for the general public. In addition, I wish to especially thank Deborah Kotz for her excellent advice and input in helping develop this book.

At the same time, I also have a team at ReganBooks that consistently does an outstanding job of fine-tuning my books for the general public. For this particular book, I want to give special thanks to Vanessa Stich and Cassie Jones for their excellent editing.

Of course, my greatest thanks always goes to Judith Regan, who had the courage and foresight to support the Zone, and in the process helped improve the lives of millions of people.

S ince the publication of The Zone 1995, more than 3 million Zone books have been sold in America. Furthermore, these books have been translated into 14 languages, making the Zone a worldwide phenomenon. The concept that hormones can be controlled by the diet is quickly becoming recognized as one of the key medical breakthroughs that will be the centerpiece for twenty-first-century health care.

Even with this growing recognition, the Zone remains misunderstood by many. Some think of the Zone as a high-protein diet, which it is not. Many more consider the Zone too difficult to follow, which it is not. What the Zone is is a powerful, yet simple to use dietary program that will allow you to lose excess body fat, reduce the likelihood of chronic disease, and enable you to live a longer and better life. All of these benefits come from your ability to use food to lower excess insulin levels.

This book represents the condensation of many of the themes that I have explored in greater detail in my previous five Zone books. It is written in such a form that makes it extraordinarily simple for you to spend a week in the Zone. Within that short time span you will experience the power of improved insulin control. That power can be yours on a lifetime basis as long as you follow the simple how-to instructions in this book.

This book answers many questions people have asked me over the past five years of how and why the Zone works. For more detailed information on various components of the Zone, I strongly refer you back to the appropriate Zone book that describes in more detail the science behind the Zone or in-depth discussions of how to cook in the Zone. At the same time, I also present here some of the newest published research that validates the Zone as your key to a better and healthier life in the new millennium. All that I ask is you try the Zone for a week. I promise you it will change your life forever.

F or generations, every male on my fathers side of my family suffered from a similar fate: a premature heart attack that cut their life short decades too early. After my father died in 1972 at the age of 54, I realized that I had a genetic time bomb ticking away inside me. I knew I couldnt change my genes, but I was determined to find a way to lead a normal, healthy life span.

My quest to save myself has led me to a surprisingly simple conclusion. As it turns out, the key to a longer, better life is not some magic pill or potion. It is a powerful hormone produced by your diet called insulin. My research showed that if you were able to keep insulin levels within a certain zonenot too high and not too lowyou could dramatically improve your health and prevent a wide range of diseases. Whats more, you could also make your body start using fat for energy, thus allowing you to lose excess body fat without feeling hungry!

So how do you begin to regulate your insulin levels and begin the journey to better health? Again, I found that the answer was simple: by eating the right combination of foods at every meal. Essentially, you need to start treating the Zone diet as a drug. Once you start taking this drug, you will automatically achieve:

• Permanent loss of excess body fat
• Dramatic reduction in the risk of chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer
• Improved mental and physical performance
• A longer life

The first person to recognize food as a wonder drug was Hippocrates, the father of medicine, who instructed us to let food be your medicine, and let medicine be your food. Now some twenty-five hundred years later, we are just beginning to understand the importance of his words.

Make no mistake about it; food is a powerful drug. In fact, it may be the most powerful drug you will ever take. However, like any drug, food can help you or harm you depending on how you use it. Used correctly, food can make you more energized and healthier with the guarantee of a longer and more active life. Used incorrectly, food can become your worst enemyrobbing you of a healthy body, healthy weight, and a healthy mind, as millions of Americans are quickly finding out for themselves. Most important, if food is used improperly, it can also shorten your life.

You may think you already know how to properly use food by avoiding fat, and eating plenty of carbohydrates like pasta, bagels, bread, and rice. If youve been following these dietary guidelines, however, you may be puzzled as to why youre gaining rather than losing weight. Truth is, you have it backward. If youre like most Americans, youre probably eating far too many carbohydrates. This is why more than 50 percent of Americans are overweight today compared to 33 percent twenty years agoeven though were now eating less fat than ever before. This is called the American paradox. If fat were the enemy, then we should have declared victory over obesity many years ago. The fact is that dietary fat was never the real enemy. The real cause of our growing epidemic of obesity is excess production of the hormone insulin. It is excess insulin that makes you fat and keeps you fat.

You are constantly reminded that a calorie is a calorie, and that weight gain is simply more calories coming in than calories going out. Since fat contains more calories per gram than does protein or carbohydrate, simple logic would dictate that removing fat from the diet should make us thinner. Such caloric thinking can be summarized as follows if no fat touches my lips, then no fat reaches my hips. Well, it doesnt take a rocket scientist to walk on the streets of America and realize that statement simply isnt true. On the hormonal level, all calories are not created equal. The hormonal effect of a calorie of carbohydrate is different than the hormonal effect of a calorie of protein, and is still different from the hormonal effect of a calorie of fat. Each of these three nutrients has its own unique effects on your bodys hormones. In the proper balance, these three nutrients are exactly what your body needs to remain healthy by keeping insulin within the Zone. When these nutrients are out of balance and insulin levels surge too high, they can wreak havoc on your bodys hormonal equilibrium, resulting in weight gain, an increased likelihood of chronic disease, and acceleration of the aging process. On the other hand, if insulin levels are too low, your cells begin to starve because a certain amount of insulin is required to drive life-sustaining nutrients into your cells.