DIET SCIENCE

The Truth About the Zone Diet

One of the most effective ways to safeguard your health, live longer, and alleviate the impact of aging on your body is to eat a good diet. The Conscious Evolution Institute offers strong diet and nutrition plans in combination with our various Hormone Replacement Therapy options in order to help you maximize the potential benefits of therapy. The Age-Free Zone Diet is one of many viable diet options if you are looking to improve your health and reduce your risk of a number of Age-Related Medical Conditions

Age-Free Zone Diet

This diet was created by a man named Doctor Barry Sears. The goal of this diet is to simultaneously help you lose weight and help you live an optimized life full of vitality. The central premise of the Age-Free Zone Diet is that there certain factors which contribute to the aging process which can be controlled, and that four of the factors which speed up the aging process the fastest are free radicals, cortisol, blood glucose, and insulin. The goal of this diet is to control and reduce the levels of these Aging-Associated Factors through lifestyle and diet so that you can balance them in order to significantly reduce your mortality risk.

Zone Diet Overview

• Goal of the diet is to balance hormone levels in order to slow down aging

• Calorie-restricted diet high in protein and low in carbohydrates

• Involves the use of diet supplements

Who Should Consider the Zone Diet?

This diet is best for individuals that love meats like chicken, fish, and pork, and also for individuals that don't feel that they can completely restrict their carbohydrate consumption but would be able to limit their consumption modestly.

Who Should Not Consider The Zone Diet?

This diet is not suitable for individuals that need to limit their protein consumption, such as individuals with kidney problems. If you have Type-Two Diabetes, you should discuss this diet with your physician before initiating your plan because most medical professionals recommend eating slightly more carbohydrates than are allowed in this diet.

The Specifics of the Zone Diet

This diet is not explicitly designed as a plan to lose weight, but caloric-restriction plays a significant role in the diet, making it also effective for people that want to lose weight. Sears is a fan of caloric restriction because he is of the opinion that restricting calories is an effective means to limit the impact of aging even in individuals at a healthy weight.

The Age-Free Zone Diet is a combination of lifestyle changes and diet, which combine in an effort to optimize health and wellness. The three primary factors of this health plan are dieting, moderate physical activity, and meditation.

Although lifestyle choices play a big role in this diet, the primary focus of the plan is scaling back calories consumed in the daily diet by avoiding simple carbs and limiting total carb consumption. By tightly controlling the consumption of carbohydrates, the body does not rely so heavily on insulin, which is responsible for converting carbohydrates into glucose.

In addition to controlling insulin, the diet plan also impacts the balance of a number of different hormones, including Melatonin, DHEA, Testosterone, Human Growth Hormone, Progesterone, Estrogen, and Thyroid Hormone, all of which are important to maintain properly in order to optimize one's health. In men, for example, efforts are made to optimize Testosterone and Human Growth Hormone Secretion and to limit DHEA and Estrogen Levels in the body.

How Does the Zone Diet Slow Down the Effects of Aging?

Based upon the theory behind this diet, Caloric Restriction is an effective means both to lose weight while also limiting the negative impacts of elevated Insulin and Blood Sugar. Living by this health plan also limits the impact of Free Radicals on health. Free Radicals are the byproducts of oxygen reactions in the body which can damage cells if not controlled effectively.

Sears does not recommend severe caloric restriction, however. The goal of his diet is to intake just enough carbs to function optimally without experiencing unnecessary side-effects of over consumption. Maintaining these limited-yet-optimal levels will still give your body all the energy it needs to sustain itself effectively while also keeping Insulin, Glucose, and Free Radicals in check.

A high-protein, low-carb diet is the central feature of this diet plan, but the Zone Diet also involves the use of anti-aging supplements and antioxidants. In spite of these recommendations, Sears insists that exercise and foods play the most significant role in balancing hormone production in order to enhance longevity.

How is the Age-Free Zone Diet Organized?

The Zone Diet takes a common approach to stimulate metabolism: spreading out meals and snacks throughout the day. In the case of this particular method, the dieter will ideally eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner with two snacks distributed between meals. Every meal will involve four courses per meal for men, and three courses per meal for women. Each meal will have one source of fat, one source of carbohydrates, and one source of protein. This diet plan even comes with a diet cookbook which provides fourteen days worth of meals as well as a number of additional, helpful recipes.

To provide a more clear vision of what you can expect from your meals with this diet, breakfast might involve fruit salad, low-fat cheese, and soy patties. Lunch would involve reduced-fat cheese, turkey breast, lightly dressed tossed salad, and a fruit choice. An example of a Zone Diet Dinner would be grilled fish, grapes, green beans, and tomatoes topped with olive oil and Parmesan cheese.

In addition to meal plans, the Age-Free Zone Diet Book will provide you with examples of a number of quality choices for your meals and snacks in general, and provide you with knowledge needed to maintain a healthy diet.

The Rules of the Zone Diet

• Eat within an hour of waking up.

• Never wait for longer than five hours between meals and snacks. Eat something light even if you aren't hungry.

• Every snack and meal should involve protein.

• Place an emphasis on vegetables and fruits and make strong efforts to cut back starches, grains, pastas, and breads.

• Never skip snacks.

• Consume at least sixty four ounces of healthy drinks every day.

• Always have a small snack a half-hour before physical exercise.

How Do Nutrition Experts Feel about the Age-Free Zone Diet?

Experts agree that there are a lot of good ideas behind the Zone Diet, but there are certain aspects which have not been fully proven. One niggling point with regard to the Zone Diet is that Sears asserts that an important aspect of the diet is discovering ideal carbohydrate consumption to slow down aging, but he makes no special effort to help the potential dieter to discover what that personal limit is. The Diet Plan also provides no specific information regarding how to make the diet fit the needs of the individual.

A lot of what Sears supports is backed by compelling medical research. Responsible caloric restriction is highly correlated with reduced mortality. Elevated Insulin Levels do wreak havoc on the body and increase the risk of conditions such as diabetes and hypertension. Finally, free radicals do have the capability to damage healthy cells and increase the rate of aging from wear and tear as well as potentially damage the genes themselves.

The potential issue with regard to these scientifically-backed aspects of Sears' diet approach is that he takes the basic scientific wisdom and goes further, inferring benefits that may or not be the reality. One major issue that many nutritionists have with this diet is that the Zone Diet involves a lot of unneeded supplements that are sometimes combined in potentially damaging ways.

The Zone Diet is based on 1,500 calories per day for males and 1,200 calories per day for females. This level of caloric restriction will guarantee weight loss for individuals that are overweight or obese, but his plan does not provide necessary levels of certain nutrients, such as calcium and B-Vitamins, from nutrition alone. The lack of these vitamins from the diet is mitigated through the use of mineral and vitamin supplements.

In general, this diet recommends too much protein and not enough fiber and carbs. The result of this is that you may experience constipation and fatigue. Also, Sears believes that this diet is ideal for men and women with Type-Two Diabetes, but most experts with experience with diabetes patients generally advocate a diet with more carbs than the Zone Diet recommends. Of course, you could take the advice of the Zone Diet and alter it slightly to account for these dietary discrepancies in order to amplify the positive potential of a diet of this kind.

Still, the diet is too high in protein and too low in complex carbohydrates and fiber, which could leave you low on energy and constipated. And while Sears advocates the diet for people with type 2 diabetes, most diabetes experts recommend a diet much higher in carbohydrates than the plan provided in the book.

Age-Free Zone Diet Approved Recommendations:

Healthy Fats, Limited Complex Carbs, Proteins with Every Meal, Vegetables, Fruits, Caloric Restriction

Age-Free Zone Diet Things to Avoid:

Low-Fiber, Processed, High Fat, and High Carb Foods

The Schwarzbein Principle

Every diet and nutrition plan presents itself as the new solution and the easy way to lose weight and be healthy. Don't always trust the information that you read in these diet books however. There are a number of diets which can produce real benefits, including the Origin Diet and the Eat Right, Live Longer diet, but many can actually be bad for your health. This is especially true for certain fad diets.

One diet that we strongly suggest to avoid is the Schwarzbein Principle. The title of the book that contains this weight loss plan is “The Truth about Weight Loss, Health, and Aging.” The stated goal of this diet is to help you lose weight, reverse or soften the effects of aging, and strengthen the body's resistance to disease through changes in diet. We are going to explain why this diet is a bad idea.

The Schwarzbein Principle at a Glance

• High fat, high protein diet

• Denies foods with a high glycemic-index, including processed carbohydrates

• Purports to be able to balance Hormone Levels in the body

• Places an emphasis on foods that you could hunt, gather, pick, milk, or fish for

Who Should Consider the Schwarzbein Principle

No one should consider this diet.

Who Should Avoid the Schwarzbein Principle

Pretty much everyone should avoid this diet.

The Basics of the Schwarzbein Principle

The Schwarzbein Principle is a diet that was invented and proliferated via an Endocrinologist named Diana Schwarzbein. Her diet is a variation on diets like the Origin Diet in that it is both Low-Carb and High Protein, but there are a number of differences between the two diets as well. She claims that the diet has the ability to control Insulin.

Avoiding high insulin levels is the central tenet of the Schwarzbein Principle, and she considers high insulin levels incredibly dangerous, leading to a number of different adverse medical and health issues, including weight gain, low metabolism, mood swings, and accelerated aging. It also increases the intensity of food cravings. She says that elevated insulin levels are directly the result of the combination of a low fat and high carbohydrate diet.

Many diets, as well as the diet recommended by the USDA, utilize a food pyramid, but Schwarzbein's diet revolves around a food box which includes four classes of foods – carbohydrates, non-starch vegetables, fats, and proteins. She believes that these four groups need to be eaten simultaneously in particular amounts in order to properly balance the hormones of the body to encourage longevity and promote Anti-Aging.

Schwarzbein is also an adamant believer in the idea that refined sugar is both addictive and dangerous. In addition to her diet plan, she also advocates heavy use of supplements, including Omega-3 and Omega-6 Fatty Acids, 5-hydroxytryptophan, calcium, magnesium, and a multivitamin.

The Rationale of the Schwarzbein Principle

The principal idea behind Schwarzbein's nutrition plan is that a diet that is high in healthy fats and proteins while low in carbs helps to balance insulin and prevent insulin spikes as well as regulate levels of Glucagon. Glucagon is a peptide hormone secreted by the pancreas that directly stimulates an increase in blood sugar. Increased Glucagon Levels lead directly to increased Insulin Levels, which can be a terrible cycle is your Insulin Levels spike too often. The author of the diet believes that by controlling and balancing the body's hormones, it is possible to limit cravings for food and increase metabolism through diet.

There are a number of ways that she claims that it is possible to reduce hunger pangs and food cravings. A big part of balancing hunger under this system is to eat lots of fiber and “good” fats and oils. Balancing serotonin levels also plays a role in Schwarzbein's diet, and serotonin levels can be controlled by avoiding sugar, chocolate, refined carbs, caffeine, and alcohol. She claims that regulating serotonin can reduce cravings.

The Schwarzbein Principle calls for regulation of Carbohydrates, because the diet revolves around the belief that there is no way to overeat “good” fats and proteins. Only carbs have the ability to spike insulin levels, which she believes is the leading cause of weight gain. She believes that sugar is the culprit of most of the physiological ills related to aging, because it causes Insulin production to stay high and it prevents the body from utilizing nutrients with maximum efficiency.

The Meal Plan of the Schwarzbein Principle

The book that accompanies this diet plan includes a month's worth of daily menus in order to show how to institute a “healing” program which claims to balance hormones and encourage health and weight loss. The goal of this first month of meals is both to enhance your metabolism and to increase your insulin resistance. She also includes a month of daily menus and recipe options for vegetarians.

The primary goal of these menus is to balance Insulin and Glucagon production while balancing the glycemic index. It attempts to accomplish this by only including fifteen grams of carbs with each meal and including meals from her four specified food groups provided in her recommended portions.

Under the Schwarzbein Principle, a days breakfast would be along the lines of oatmeal with cream and butter, sausage, sliced tomatoes, and scrambled eggs. Lunch would consist of an olive oil-dressed cobb salad and an apple. Finally, an example of a Schwarzbein dinner would be roasted pork loin, asparagus and brown rice topped with butter, and another salad with olive oil. This diet does not recommend snacking, but allows it, providing examples such as almonds with string cheese and sunflower seeds.

Expert Opinion on the Schwarzbein Principle

The diet outlined with the Schwarzbein Principle shares a number of similarities with other diets. There are a number of effective and safe weight loss and anti-aging diets that suggest both low-carb consumption and high levels of protein.

One thing that experts are very quick to point out with regard to this diet is that hormone manipulation plays no role in any weight loss that occurs as a result of this diet. Any weight loss accomplishments earned while on this diet would explicitly be the result of caloric restriction, no thanks to the increased fat consumption and severely limited carbs. Although it is healthy to be conscientious with carbohydrates, it can actually be counterproductive and even bad for your health to limit them to the extent outlined in this diet plan. One of the major issues that people on this diet would face would be fatigue and exhaustion, because a diet with severely limited carbohydrates would not provide sufficient calories for day to day activity.

Besides the issue with severely limited carbs, the other major issue with this diet is that it recommends far too much saturated fat and cholesterol. Nutrition experts and medical professionals are quick to caution that there is no significant evidence that severely limiting carbs and eating a lot of fat will exert any positive pressure over your hormone balance. Even more specious is the idea that this diet will be able to enhance weight loss gains or have any Anti-Aging effect.

There is No Guarantee that You Will Lose Weight with the Schwarzbein Principle

It may be possible to lose weight on this diet if portions are controlled effectively, but the Schwarzbein Principle does not include any discussion of portion control as a means to lose weight. The example menus don't include calorie counts or portion sizes, and they usually include a lot of butter and other fatty ingredients with a lot of calories. The author simply does not place sufficient emphasis upon the link between caloric consumption and weight gain (she actually claims that the link is exaggerated), which is significantly if not infinitely more important than balancing hormones through fat consumption.

While it may be possible to lose weight with this diet if portions are tightly regulated, based specifically on the nutrition plan provided, it would actually be very easy to start gaining weight on this diet, if one ate portions that were too large. Even if you did manage to lose weight on this diet, you would lose weight very slowly, even if you ate a sensible number of calories each day. This is because the diet actually limits the consumption of a number of foods which are nutrient dense and can help with weight loss, and can lead you to be deficient in a number of vitamins and minerals, including Fiber, Folic Acid, Vitamin D, and Calcium.

What Type of Calorie Count is Recommended on this Diet?

With the information provided in the Schwarzbein Principle, there is no real limitation on caloric consumption. Because there are no recommendations with regard to serving size, there is absolutely no way to estimate the number of calories that you would be consuming with this diet.

Recommendations of the Schwarzbein Principle

Range-Fed Poultry and Meat Untreated with Antibiotics or Hormones, Limited Starch Vegetables and Whole Grains, Foods High in Fat and Protein

Things to Avoid on the Schwarzbein Principle

Foods with Hydrogenated Fat, High Sodium, Processed Sausage, Vegetable Oils, Foods with a High Glycemic Index, and Processed, Refined Carbohydrates

The Truth About the RealAge Diet

The RealAge Diet is another diet which claims to both help you lose weight and help you age more slowly. The full title of the diet is “The RealAge Diet: Make Yourself Younger with What You Eat.” The man that created the diet is Doctor Michael Roizen, and he believes that if you follow his advice, you will be able to actually make yourself biologically younger as long as you eat conscientiously. He places a strong emphasis on the idea that his nutrition and lifestyle plan is explicitly not a diet, although it will have the same impact on your health as a diet.

Rather than give you a complex diet plan to follow, it simply encourages healthy eating, which helps you achieve a healthy weight. Eating well and losing weight will not only increase your lifespan but help you make sure that those extra years are healthy years.

The RealAge Diet at a Glance

• Encourages the enjoyment of nutritious food in a relaxing setting

• Promotes optimal health and minimizes mortality risk through diet

• Places an emphasis on whole grains, legumes, vegetables, fruits, and soy foods

• Allows wiggle room: Wine with dinner is acceptable, as well as a treat from time to time

Who Should Try the RealAge Diet?

This diet is for men and women that have motivation and are willing to make the effort to alter their diet for the good of their health. The goal of this diet plan is to teach you how to live healthy with quality information regarding nutrition and food.

Who Should Try a Different Diet?

People that are looking to simply lose weight should consider a different diet. The RealAge Diet is created for individuals that are willing and ready to make enduring changes in both their eating habits and their lifestyle with the explicit goal of adding good years to their life. The diet will encourage weight loss, but other diets may achieve that end more quickly.

The Specifics of the RealAge Diet

The central concept behind the RealAge diet is that simply by choosing the correct foods, you can effectively mitigate the risks of a number of dangerous and deadly diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. The benefits of changing one's diet and lifestyle do not only relate to chronic illness however. The diet also claims to help you both feel and look younger. The RealAge Diet can be explained quite simply, and Roizen explains the basic principles of the diet succinctly: Eat nutrient dense, low calories foods that you enjoy.

One interesting addition to the RealAge diet is that one of the first steps of the diet is to figure out what your biological age truly is. Roizen accomplishes this through an extensive quiz that spans more than twenty pages. It goes through all aspects of your health status, diet and lifestyle, explaining how these factors are all interrelated and how good diet and lifestyle impact your life.

Unlike many other diet plans, Roizen does not point to any supplement or pill as the answer to your health problems. He also explains that there is no magic ingredient or food group that will make you grow old more slowly or lose weight more quickly. He also recognizes the connection between stress, psychology, and eating, so he recommends eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner in enjoyable and stress-free environments.

What is eating on the RealAge Diet like?

The RealAge Diet does not involve any silver bullets or “surefire” gimmicks, it simply outlines various guidelines for healthy eating. There are a lot of basic principles that can help you live longer that are simply ignored by many in 21st century America.

Among the recommendations that Roizen makes is that you avoid empty calories, simple sugars, trans fats, saturated fats, and red meat. These are all things that many people have heard before, but Roizen goes through the scientific principles behind why these foods are bad and helps you figure out ways to effectively avoid them.

In general, the RealAge Diet strongly cautions against the consumption of foods that have a high glycemic index. These foods are terrible for health because they lead to sudden spikes in insulin levels which have a negative impact on hormone balance.

There is strong evidence that High Glycemic Foods and Drinks encourage obesity, diabetes, and weight gain. The RealAge Diet provides fourteen days worth of example menus as well as twenty recipes, all of which give you a general idea how to shape your own dietary preferences and habits to fit the needs of your body.

RealAge Diet Meal Examples

Breakfast – Orange juice, soy milk, blueberries, kashi

Lunch – Soy milk, a plum, and whole-wheat bread with whole fruit spread

Dinner – Salad with olive oil, nuts, avocado, and canned tuna, red wine, and whole grain crackers

Dessert – Strawberries lightly dipped in dark chocolate

Snack – Whole Wheat Pretzel

RealAge Diet Largely Freeform

While the author provides example menus and recipes as a means to help you conceptualize a healthier diet, there is no explicit system for developing your own diet. The RealAge Diet provides you with a lot of freedom to arrange your diet around your personal preferences.

The RealAge Diet encourages healthier eating through education, and as you take the RealAge Test, the author explains 127 elements which can impact the aging process, causing you to grow and feel older more quickly. Of the 127 elements, 25 of the factors are related to diet and exercise, and he vividly explains how you need to alter your lifestyle in order to improve your health and reduce your mortality risk.

The Expert Opinion on the RealAge Diet

This diet is strongly influenced by modern scientific research, and is widely agreed to be an incredibly healthy diet. Experts also appreciate that Roizin encourages the consumption of plant foods high in phytochemicals, which have been proven to prevent and safeguard health by helping to prevent disease.

Although the diet is believed to be incredibly healthy and effective, the RealAge test is obviously very approximate, because there is no real way to really tell how long you will live based on the way that you score on a health test. Mortality risk is a probability equation, so your RealAge has more to do with your odds of reaching a particular age than a concrete measure of age based on a scoring system and questionnaire, no matter how complex.

For example, Roizen says that consuming foods high in phytochemicals known as flavonoids, including grapes, chocolate, garlic, broccoli, onions, and apples, have the ability to make your body 3.2 years younger exactly. Roizen claims that every suggestion he makes in his diet plan is confirmed by scientific research. On the other hand, although there is research proclaiming that flavonoid-rich foods are very healthy for you, there is no way to confirm how much longer or shorter that you will live based off of your ability to follow any particular health rule.

In spite of this, the questionnaire does achieve worthwhile goals in spite of only being an approximation, because it teaches you exactly how making worthwhile changes to your diet and lifestyle has the ability to powerfully impact your long term health.

With regard to the diet itself, there is very little to complain about in any facet. The diet is high in whole grains, nuts, vegetables, and fruits. It does not rely on the use of supplements, but the author does wisely suggest taking a mineral/multivitamin supplement just to make sure that you get all of the nutrients that you need. He does not recommend that you turn to any high-volume supplement with the hopes that it will vastly improve your health.

Another thing that experts really like about the RealAge Diet is the level of emphasis that it places upon both physical exercise and general activity level. Many other diets neglect discussion of good exercise and activity habits, making it seem like it is possible to easily lose weight and stay healthy just through diet alone.

There are also two nutrients that the RealAge Diet pays particular attention to, that other diets tend to neglect: Calcium and Vitamin C. He even takes it a step further, he believes that Vitamin D is likely one of the most essential vitamins needed in order to improve one's resiliency to the aging process.

What Are the Calorie Requirements of the RealAge Diet?

The RealAge Diet doesn't place an emphasis on calorie counting, but it still asserts the importance of being calorie-conscious. He even provides serving sizes and calorie counts for a number of basic foods you will be eating in your diet.

Although he doesn't discuss caloric restriction in depth, he does provide a calorie chart, which suggests recommended calorie consumption based on weight, activity level, and height. The book also includes a chart listing the number of calories burnt off by engaging in various forms of physical exercise.

RealAge Diet Recommendations

Vegetables, Fruits, Low-Glycemic Index Foods, Lean Meats, Solid Multivitamin, Eating in a Relaxing Atmosphere

RealAge Diet Things to Avoid

Trans Fats and Foods with a High Glycemic Index