I'm just know finding this program and bought a book about it to read next week while on vacation. However, I'm one of those people that has to know NOW. Can you explain the blocks to me and how will I know how many I'm supposed to have in a day?

TIA!

Stacey

Hi Stacey!

There's an excellent presentation of the block method on this site. Click the EATING tab (above
) the QUICK START GUIDE, then Zone Food blocks.

You're welcome!

I'll eb glad to help if you have questions.

Perfect ... found that and I think I understand now. I printed off the Zone Food Blocks as well. Quick question .. if I chose to have egg whites in the morning, would I eat 6 of them to get 3 blocks of protein?

Stacey

Yes, 6 egg whites would be 3 blocks of P. Also, when choosing fat free protein (eg, egg whites, protein powder, fat free dairy products, etc) you should double the fat blocks you add to the meal. The block system is designed with the assumption that the protein source is a low fat protein which contains half the fat needed to balance the meal. Another way to get around this is to pair it in the meal with a protien containing a a little extra fat. You may have noticed that in Zone recipies, egg white is many times accompanied by either cheese, sausage or Canadian bacon, all of which contain a little extra fat that makes up for the fat missing in the egg white.

Sue, congratulations on making the Zone a wonderful life plan. I looked under EATING and QUICK START GUIDE but didn't see where it had how many Calories per gram make up a block. For example, I have Zone bars with 9 fat/4 carb/4 protein under the Calories per gram; how do I put that into a block? Or how many blocks is that?

I'm so confused:) Any advice? Thanks-juli

Thanks Juli!


One gram of protein contains 4 calories, one gram of carb contains 4 calories, and one gram of fat contains 9 calories. Calories are not the focus of Zone blocks.


One Zone protein block contains 7 grams of protein. One Zone carb block contains 9 grams of insulin stimulating carb (insulin stimulating carb is the total carb minus the total fiber). One Zone fat block contains 1.5 grams of protein (3 grams of fat is needed to balance one block of protein plus one block of carb; the other 1.5 grams of fat is hidden in the lowfat protein block).


You'd use the number of grams of protein, carb and fat in the bar to determine how many Zone blocks it contains. Blocks aren't determined by the number of calories, though you can assume that one Zone balanced block of protein, carb and fat usually contains around 100 calories give or take.