For my last diet in this experiment, I have chosen to do the zone diet to contrast last week’s extreme carnivore diet. The zone diet looks at ingesting food in a more calculated approach.
The zone diet was developed by Dr. Barry Sears more than 30 years ago that aims to reduce diet-induced inflammation. This inflammation is the reason one gains weight, becomes sick, and ages faster. The “zone” is a physiological state, suggested by Dr. Sears, where one has an optimized ability to control the diet-induced inflammation – which can be measured in clinical tests. These tests include blood sugar levels, cholesterol levels, and the level of insulin resistance in the liver.
The diet itself consists of a balance of the three food groups. Visualize your dinner plate, 1/3 of it is protein; like chicken, 2/3 of it are carbohydrates; like vegetables or rice, and only a very small portion of fat too; like olive oil or some nuts. This may be familiar to you as the proportions are similar to infographics such as these:
The benefits to the zone diet are similar to the previous diets I have done, like losing excess body fat and reducing weight, but there is more of a focus on mental well-being than some of the other diets. This diet is claimed to help think faster and perform better due to the reduction of the inflammation I mentioned earlier.
During this week, I had the chance to go back home and had my mom cook for me, because who doesn’t miss a warm, homecooked meal. Early this week, my mom prepared Almond Chicken.
To make this recipe she used: 
- 2 cups Broccoli flowerets – steamed
- 1 1/2 teaspoons Olive Oil
- 3 oz Boneless chicken breast (sliced)
- 1/2 Green bell pepper (chopped)
- 1 red bell pepper (chopped)
- 3/4 cup onion (chopped)
- 1 clove garlic (minced)
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes (halved)
- Some salt and pepper
- 1 teaspoon sliced almonds
This recipe seemed pretty simple when I watched her make it. You first steam the broccoli, saute the other vegetables with the chicken, add broccoli, and top it with the almonds. It was a fairly basic dish with nothing special to it, but I can see myself making it rather than my mom making it for me.
This diet overall has been very easy to follow actually, I didn’t find myself going out of my way to accommodate to it. This allowed me to easily follow the diet guidelines as I simply had to estimate the proportions of each food group. I recommend adjusting your current diet to the zone diet if it’s similar to it already.
In addition, I felt a change in my mood where I wasn’t frequently lazy and didn’t feel tired during the day. However, I did not see a change in my weight, but perhaps I needed to continue to follow this diet plan to see significant weight-loss results. To sum, I would rate the zone diet a 5 out of 5 due to it being easy to follow and not having experienced any noticeable negative effects.
From all the diets discussed so far, I think that this one is the most balanced and seems the healthiest (all though there is too much subjectivity to determine that). I definitely want to try this diet because I feel like it harbors an effective mind-to-body connection and improves mental well-being.
I’m glad you didn’t feel any negative effects and that this diet was easy to follow. It seems like this diet is good for encouraging balanced meals and eating healthy, so closer to changing the diet in the sense of the types of food people eat rather than the diet in the sense of a weight-loss diet.
I would definitely want to try out the zone diet because it is not about restricting yourself from eating certain foods, but to eat food in moderation. I love food and would not want to limit my options, but would rather downsize my portions to have a healthy diet.