Already being somewhat knowledgable on nutrition and alternative medicine (due to disaster in the family), I decide to buy a bunch of different diet and health related books just to gain more knowledge and provide more information to friends. I really wasn't looking for a diet for myself. After all, I was already eating healthy foods, taking good vitamin supplements, eating tons of veggies, and did plenty of intense exercise. What could possibly give me more health benefits than I already had? Previous changes in my diet had already drastically changed my bodies ability to fight off colds and other diseases. Because I noticed I was tired too often and I thought that some of Dr Sears ideas sounded good, I went on the zone diet. It didn't require me change the foods or the number of times that I ate but it did totally change the balance at each meal and added a snack before bed. Wow...2 days later my energy levels were incredible. It's been about 4 weeks now and my energy levels are still great. Enough for the plug for the zone diet. I am always stuggling to gain weight. Truthfully I'm sick of eating but I make myself eat to at least maintain what I have. The zone diet has totally fixed my energy levels and now I would like to see if I can fine tune it to gain weight. I'm 41, six feet tall, about 10% body fat, and I like to be at leaast 170 pounds but rarely get there (now I'm 168). My weekly exercise includes 10 minute cardio warmup plus 45 minutes intense lifting 3/week, 20 minute intense cardio 1/week , intense basketball 1/week, and 2 days of miscellaneous light sports. According to Dr Sears book I need about 22 blocks per day. On days I exercise, my meal break up is roughly 5-2-4-2 (exercise) 3-4-2. I'm wondering if I should up the fat to more than 30% fat and/or try 8 meals and/or add more blocks. I have noticed that I don't feel as good when I eat a six block meal. My gut says (no pun intended) I need to add fat and do 8 meals which would up the blocks per day. Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi, The thing to do is to make sure you're eating the correct amount of blocks to fulfil your protien need for you LBM, then add fat to supply the necessary calories/energy to keep your weight up. It's fine to go over 30% of calories from fat. From the info you posted I think 22 blocks is a little too much. At 168 lb with 10% body fat your LBM is roughly 151 lb. It appears you're using an activity factor of 1.0 to arrive at 22 blocks. This factor would be for the elite athlete or for a person doing heavy lifting 5 X a week (see "Enter the Zone"). The activity you describe doesn't meet this criteria. IMO, 0.9 would be a more appropriate activity factor, giving you about 20 blocks a day. I would add extra fat if you feel you need more energy after trying 20 blocks a day, or if you want to gain fat. Sue

Thanks for the help. This weekend I found the answer to my question in the FAQ of the Mastering the Zone book. Basically he says add 1 block and pound some weights. As you noticed, I have already added two blocks so I should not add any more blocks. If my body fat starts rising, I'll drop a block. My energy levels are very good and since I rarely do any distance type exerercise, I probably don't need much extra fat if any. My exercise is slightly above what I mentioned, but only puts me right on a .9 multiplier. This diet is clearly working for me. I'll just have to be patient and keep pounding weights :)

Hi, You're welcome. Glad you found an answer. Sue :D

I missed the fact that the 1.5 grams of fat per block assumed that I was eating a lean protein like chicken or turkey which already contains about 1.5 grams of fat per block of protein. Well, it turns out that I am taking in about 7 blocks a day of whey protein that has only about 2.3 grams of "built-in" fat instead of 10.5 grams. This put me 74 calories short per day in fat. That's almost 1 block of everything (7*4+9*4+3*9= 91 calories). So now I'm droping to 21 blocks and making sure I get enough fat. Beware of this adjustment you might need to make if you are taking a significant amount of extra-lean protein.

[quote:2eeadd2c1f="cmaurer"]I missed the fact that the 1.5 grams of fat per block assumed that I was eating a lean protein like chicken or turkey which already contains about 1.5 grams of fat per block of protein. Well, it turns out that I am taking in about 7 blocks a day of whey protein that has only about 2.3 grams of "built-in" fat instead of 10.5 grams. This put me 74 calories short per day in fat. That's almost 1 block of everything (7*4+9*4+3*9= 91 calories). So now I'm droping to 21 blocks and making sure I get enough fat. Beware of this adjustment you might need to make if you are taking a significant amount of extra-lean protein.[/quote:2eeadd2c1f] Hi Clark, This is a common mistake made by many newbie Zoners. Not only is the lack of fat putting you short on calories, as you mentioned, but it also may be keeping you from really getting your insulin level within Zone parameters, preventing you from actually being in the Zone. Other common protein foods which are also lacking fat are eggwhites, some soy foods...especially the soy "meats" (refer to the labels), and fat free dairy products. Even some low fat dairy will need additional fat . It's always good to read the label. Also, I agree with your decision to drop a block. With your LBM and activity, 20 or 21 blocks will be sufficient to meet your protein needs. If necessary, you can make up additional energy needs by consuming more fat. Sue

When I first started zoning I wasn't taking any whey protein, so the math all worked out. Then I switched to using some high quality whey protein because it was easy to have on hand and things got a little off moving me a little out of the zone. The main thing I noticed was that my sleep got a little worse. Having more fat in my diet helps me sleep. Something I have struggled with for a while. Last night I was dreaming away. Good thing I pay attention to detail. A couple years ago a body builder gave me a more typical body building diet with a calorie intake of 2700 calories and a break up for 40% protein, 40% carbohydrate, and 20% fat. I combined this with about 5 days of intense lifting per week. Previous to this I worked out 3-4 times but not intense at all because I had a bad shoulder which it turns out was easily corrected by surgery (lucky for me). In the beginning I felt fine and my weight, strength, and muscle size went up. My body fat went from about 12-13% to 10%. After 6-9 months of doing this, my sleep got really bad and my body ached a lot. So I decided to just eat less. I kept working about 4 days a week out but my weight quickly dropped back from 173 to under 170. This diet was obviously wrong for me. The calories were clearly too high. Even though the zone makes me feel good and perform well, I still continue to read other books. It's a hobby for me and I enjoy learning (or at least memorizing a point of view) about all kinds of health related topics. I have recently read a couple of weight lifting books. One of the books says to gain weight, eat 10% fat, 30-40% protein, and 50-60% carbohydrates. For losing weight, eat 10% fat, 50% protein, and 40% carbohydrates. The argument in this book is to slightly raise your insulin levels by adding carbs when you want to gain weight and slightly lower it by reducing carbs when you want to lose weight. It sounds reasonable. Interestingly, I applied the starter math this book suggests for gaining weight to determine the calories I would need for this diet and it was slightly lower than what the zone math (21 blocks of everything = (fat)21*3*9 + (carbs)21*4*9+ (protein) 21*4*7= 1911 versus 10*<BodyWeight> + <BodyWeight>= 1848 calories where my body weight is 168 ). I was glad to see this since I'm still wondering if am getting enough calories to gain weight on the zone. This lifting book then suggests that you add more carbohydrates if you don't gain weight after two weeks. This seems like a reasonable plan. It advocates eating things like potatoes and rice instead of fruit (or at least keep your fruit down to one serving a day) and then supplementing with vitamins to make up for the lack of vitamins. I think that the fat content this book suggests is too low for anyone who is not competing in body building. This kind of dieting clearly won't make you feel good or be in optimal health. The other lifting book I read recommends 20% fat, 15%-20% protein, and 60-65% carbohydrates but does not provide any equation for determine how many calories you need. On the nutrition side, this book just didn't have any thing more worth mentioning here. The argument with the zone diet is to slightly raise your HGH (Human Growth Hormone) levels. It's definitely healthier to raise your HGH and I definitely don't like the idea of doing a 10% fat diet. I don't know if anyone could ever compete in a body building contest using a zone diet, but you can definitely have low body fat on the zone diet and get some sleep :) Maybe you could do the zone diet until a few weeks before competing and then do a nasty diet to beat your body fat down. If anyone out there has some body building diet experience, I'd love to hear what you have to say. Especially if you compete in body building, have had a lot of success building muscle on the zone diet, or are some other type of elite athlete. I'm not interested doing serious body building (feeling good is more important to me than gaining weight) but I'm very interested in learning about different kinds of diets elite athletes do (or maybe tried and failed).