Zone Meal Timing

Meal timing is critically important for staying in the Zone, just like taking a drug. Following the Zone, you try to eat five times per day (three meals and two snacks). Plan your day accordingly, just like you schedule appointments so you never let more than five waking hours go by without eating a Zone meal or snack. A typical meal schedule might be as follows: if you wake up at 6:00, then eat a Zone breakfast by 7:00. Five hours later, it’s noon, and time for lunch, which will be another big meal. Most people won’t eat dinner before 7:00, which is more than five hours after lunch, so have a snack in the late afternoon. After eating your dinner at 7:00, make sure you have one final late-night snack before you go to bed, because your brain still needs blood sugar during your eight hours of sleep. That’s a typical day in the Zone.

TIMING OF ZONE MEALS
MEAL		TIMING		APPROX. TIME
Breakfast		Within 1 hour after waking		7:00 A.M.
Lunch		Within 5 hours after breakfast		12:00 P.M.
Late-afternoon snack		Within 5 hours after lunch		5:00 P.M.
Dinner		Within 2-3 hours after snack		7:00 P.M.
Late-night snack		Before bed		11:00 P.M.

Following this program, at the end of a day in the Zone you have consumed adequate amounts of high-quality protein, extraordinary levels of vitamins and minerals from vegetables and fruits, and the same absolute amount of fat usually consumed in most vegetarian diets. You weren’t hungry or fatigued because you controlled blood sugar and thus the brain was constantly supplied with the only fuel source (blood glucose) it can use. Furthermore, you didn’t feel deprived because each of the meals contained large volumes of food. In fact, the size of each Zone meal can be very intimidating , because when you replace grains and starches with carbohydrates such as fruits and vegetables, the carbohydrate volumes on your plate quickly increase in size.