Hello,

I've been studying diet for a long time now, working the sound foundation of the zone the whole time. Through my research, I've found almost nothing relating to how much food I should eat daily as a growing, active teenager.

I'm not worried about weight loss (I'm <7% body fat as is); I'm in fact trying to gain weight in the form of muscle. How should I modify the traditional zone diet to Calorie-wise to suit my specific needs?

Hello craig:

As an active teenager you might want to try the body fat calculator under the Zone Toold tab on this page. It will ask you for your measurements and will give you the results of blocks you should be consuming a day.

Before puberty, meals would be considered for kids (8 to 10 blocks a day), past puberty it counts as an adult. So definately check with the body fat calculator. :-)

Hi,

To add to Rizzo's advice, I've read that for the block calculation, a growing teen should use a higher activity level than their actual level, in order to provide the additional protein necessary for growing. Another way to accomplish the same thing would be to use you actual activity level and add a couple blocks to the result. In addition, due to your low body fat %, you should double (or, if your activity level is very high, triple) the amount of monounsaturated fat blocks you eat in each meal and snack. If you double the fat a 4 block meal of 4P, 4C, 4F would become 4P, 4C, 8F. Triple fat for a 4 block meal would be 4P, 4C, 12F. A one block snack doubled is 1P,1C, 2F, a 2 block snack doubled is 2P, 2C, 4F, and so on.

Craig, if you are trying to gain ~1 lb of lean muscle mass per month, you would add an extra block to whatever number you come up with after Rizzo's and Sue's advice.

We all learn in the Zone, so you pick the best the level you can and then study the results. You can always adjust you blocks based on your results.

also, don't think in terms of calories. think in terms of hormonal response and protein to support your lean body mass, activity level and muscle growth requirements.