Zone Diet

isn't too much protein bad for your liver or kidneys or both?

Zone diet is really just a low calorie diet. Look in the book. Its absurd. Calorie totals of around 1500 per day. That's sick. Anyone loses weight on these low calorie totals even if its 1500 calories/day of twinkie bars.

Its true low carb does help fat burning a bit. But low carb means sh*tty competitive performances. Period. End of Discussion.

If body fat loss is the desire better to go low carb, low calorie in the off season when not competing.

TLG

I'm sure some "experts" will fill in the details or correct me, but I think to a great extent excess protein is simply pissed away.

One of a dangers of a low carbohydrate diet is reduced mental capacity. I believe your brain needs carbs, it doesn't have the ability to convent fats and proteins into usuable energy sources. Moodiness, short term memory loss, etc. are common side effects of a diet deficient in carbs.

Supposedly protein leaves you feeling "full" longer, so you tend to eat less without feeling hungary all the time - this would tend to make losing weight easier. Most Americans are protein deficient and consume ungodly amounts of carbs and fats. I am no expert, but I think the protein diets simply go to the other extreme and can be unsafe/unhealthy.

Regina Jacobs is an advocate of the Zone Diet and I can speak from personal experience that it works (meaning that you will lose weight w/o starving yourself) ALso, the Zone does not eliminate carbs. You can eat whole grains, such as oatmeal, brown rice, whole wheat pasta and whole rye bread. Anything with white flour will trigger your insulin levels to rise, thus increasing fat production. Cereal is bad. Some fruits are considered "bad" as well, such as bananas, however I think bananas are essential to a runner's diet so I do not abide by this rule. As for protein, you roughly consume the amount of grams per pound of body weight. SO, if you eat three meals a day, figure you should consume one and a half chicken cutlets at each meal. If you'd like to learn more about the Zone, go to a bookstore. THere's plenty of info out there.

Americans are NOT protein deficient!!!

The average American consumes WELL over 100 grams of protein a day, much more than is necessary, and even an amount that some research has proposed can be harmful. Certainly doesn't help with calcium absorbtion. . .

The zone diet is so trendy it's really irritating. For some reason it doesn't surprise me that SFH is on it. . .

The Zone Diet is NOT a high protein diet like that Adkins crap. It still gets most of its calories from carbohydrates. I knew cyclists who were doing 40-30-30 before there ever was a ZONE diet. The main thing about the ZOne is avoiding high-glycemic carbohydrates and I think there is something to that. I think I train best with a Zonish 50-30-20 diet.

The only reason that Adkins crap works is because it is actually calorie reducing because most people don't realize they get alot of their calories from sugary junk. For non-athletes, the main thing is just eating less calories, regardless of composition.

I heard from somewhere that Greg Lemond was on the 40-30-30 during his Tour de France wins.

I think the Zone diet is much more balanced than a lot of the other high protein diets out there.

But my question is actually what happens to access protein in the body? Is it converted to fat?

If I am 155lbs, I should be consuming 155grams of protein per day on Zone? That seems kind of much. Won't that make you bulky for a runner?

mrborko, for someone of your size the world health orginization recomends less than 40 grams of protein a day. you are not a carnivore, no matter how much the meatheads try to tell you that you are. you are an herbivore. your teeth prove this. your tongue proves this. your stomach ph proves this. your intestines prove this. your eyes prove this. your blood (alkaline) proves this. read. raw is the future. rawfood.com

Humans are ominvirous. It would be very difficult to be a healthy marathoner as a vegetarian. It is simply nearly impossible to eat the required amounts of protein and iron in vegetable form when one must also eat 4000 calories a day to fuel training. Particularly if one factors in the cost and preparation time of these "raw" foods. As someone running in excess of 100 a week and requiring well over 4000 calories a day, I cannot see meeting my caloric needs as well as my protein and iron needs on vegetables and fruits. Vegetarianism is hippie hogwash.

4000 Calories a day. Exactly.

Its calories people, calories. 1500/day on the zone doesn't cut it. Even if you go high up to 2000/day it still doesn't cut it.

Insulin is very important for runners. This is how our muscles get the glucose to rebuild glycogen.

May all of your days be filled with insulin!!!!!!!!

Carl Lewis, Dave Scott, Ed Moses, Rob De Costella, Paavo Nurmi. . . . are these names ringing any bells?

All vegetarian/vegan

I doubt anyone wants to get into a full fledged debate on the positives/negatives of vegetarianism, but to suggest that one cannot be a good athlete or succeed in endurance events without eating animal products is ridiculous.

All of those folks had the means to buy expensive soy and protein bar concotions as well as being rather slight individuals. Why go to that expense when I can get much of my protein and iron needs from a few .99 hamburgers at Wendy's. Vegetarianism, rather than being solely a nutritional thing, seems to smack of idealogy of a religious intensity to me. The fact is humans can use and process animal proteins very well. And fat is not a concern for a person of my build (6% bodyfat yet I outweigh Da Costa by at least 35 pounds, increasing my calorie demand far more than his.) For an athlee, I know of no sound arguments in favor of vegetarianism (although many non-athletes would probably do well to leave off meat as most folks choose the fatty caloric variety).

For every vegetarian runner you name, I can name ten with famously varied and large diets.

Bill Pearl, former Mr. Olympia/USA if i'm not mistaken, was/is a vegetarian. So, yes you can get the protein and calorie requirements needed to be a gorilla.

I just got back from the national strength and conditioning convention, anyway there was study cited that showed the zone diet to inhibit endurance. I think it was 10% less endurance and aerobic power as opposed to people not on the diet.

The basic idea of the diet is actually pretty good because it includes unprocessed foods, lots of fruits/vegetables, and isn't truly void of any single macronutrient.

However, runners (especially the ones on this board) shoudn't pay particular attention to the "blocks" or calorie reccommendations. If you want to maintain weight, eat however many calories you normally do, but just adhere to the 40-30-30. If you want to lose weight, eat 500 less per day. You must consider that outside of this board, a highly active athlete is considered to be someone who is training for a marathon and running 35 miles/week. For them, 2000 calories/day would be about right to lose weight, and that's why Sears made that recommendation. If you run 100 mpw, you obviously need a lot more.

The Zone diet is f***ed. End of story.

I really admire Marius Bakken, but I suspect that he was fully "zoned" going into the Bislett Meet.....trained very hard with no carbs in the system.