Most serious CrossFitters adhere to either the Paleo Diet, the Zone Diet, or some blend of the two. Christina Barnett has compiled some information on the Zone Diet to make it easy for anyone to understand, complete with a thorough Zone block chart and pictures of example Zone meals. While we actually recommend first focusing on quality of food by shopping the perimeter of the grocery store, balancing your portions and carb/protein/fat intake with the Zone is an incredibly valuable tool for both elite athletes and people seeking weight loss. To take your nutrition to the next level you need the hormonal balance that the Zone Diet provides.  Read on to find out more, and when you’re done use this PDF file to find the block equivalent of most common foods.  It’s even color-coded!

Diet is not a Dirty Word

Diet comes from the Greek root word meaning “way of life”. This is the Zone Diet: a way of life. It’s a way of life that controls gene expression and hormonal balance to give you the longer and better life to which we all aspire.

The Zone diet is primarily concerned with controlling your hormones.  Hormonal balance affects all important components of your wellness: body composition, energy utilization, blood chemistry, and much more.  Food is a drug.  This may seem shocking, but think about the definition of a drug.  Loosely, ingesting drugs causes physiological changes in your body.  Ingesting food has the same effect.  It can bring about positive or negative changes in your body.  Would you take 17 Tylenol capsules for a headache?  Would you consume expired, low-quality medicine?  Of course not.  Then why should we expect different results when we feed our bodies 17 times our necessary food intake, and comprise our diet of low-quality processed garbage with no nutritional value?  You see the results of this lifestyle in America today.

Any diet that excessively uses the word high or low to describe it is hormonally unsustainable. The only diet that can maintain hormonal balance for a lifetime must use the word moderate to describe it. The Zone Diet is moderate in

• Low-fat protein

• Low glycemic-load carbs (mostly fruits and vegetables)

• Heart-healthy monounsaturated fats

The Zone Diet is about balancing your hormones within a specific range to control hunger on fewer calories while still getting the proper nutrients your body needs for long-term health. The Zone Diet can best be described as a moderate-carbohydrate, moderate-protein, moderate fat diet that has approximately one gram of fat for every two grams of protein and three grams of carbohydrates (the Zone 1-2-3 Method™). These ratios represent the newest dietary recommendations from the Joslin Diabetes Research Center at Harvard Medical School for the treatment of obesity and Type 2 Diabetes.

With the right balance of protein, carbohydrates and fats, you can control three major hormones generated by the human diet – insulin, glucagon and eicosanoids.

Insulin – A storage hormone. Excess insulin makes you fat and keeps you fat. It also accelerates silent inflammation.

Glucagon – A mobilization hormone that tells the body to release stored carbohydrates at a steady rate, leading to stabilized blood sugar levels. This is key for optimal mental and physical performance.

Eicosanoids – These are the hormones that ultimately control silent inflammation. They are also master hormones that indirectly orchestrate a vast array of other hormonal systems in your body.

Into to Zone Living

A One Block meal consists of one choice from the Protein List (pink), one from the Carbohydrate List (blue) and one from the Fat List (green).

A Two Block meal consists of 2 choices from each list.

A Three Block meal consists of 3 choices from each list…and so on.

You can mix and match blocks as you wish.  If you aren’t very hungry when you first wake up, then a 2 block meal might be just right for you, perhaps with a 3 block lunch and dinner. Or maybe you prefer to start your day with 3 blocks and have a lighter dinner or lunch.

Here is a sample menu of a possible routine (times can be adjusted 30 minutes or so either way):

7:30 am          10am           1:00pm         3:30pm         6:30pm        9pm/9:30 (bedtime)

bkfst                snack            lunch                 snack             dinner               snack

2 Block           1 Block         3 Block         1 Block           3 Block           1 Block    = 11 total

10 to 11 blocks of balanced food is about right for a small woman.  Feel free to experiment with your number of daily blocks and move them around as you see fit.  Every athlete is different.  The below chart will also help you determine your block requirements.

You don’t have to set alarms. The point is to develop the habit of eating at regular intervals so your hormones are balanced all day. Eat within an hour of waking up in the morning, don’t go more than 4 hours without eating something, and eat a snack before you go to sleep so you have some fuel to dream on.

Buying a digital food scale is a great idea since it makes measuring blocks fast and easy. Use “tare” to make it even easier, and you won’t have to use math at all!  Put your plate on the scale and hit the tare button. It subtracts the weight of the plate and makes the scale read zero. Measure out one of the items. Hit the tare button and again it starts you at zero once more for the next item. Finally your plate will be full of all your foods, all measured individually, but all on one plate. Very easy!

After about a month you’ll be able to “eyeball” the food and you won’t need to measure precisely anymore…unless you’re having something new you’ve never measured into blocks.

Don’t worry too much about being exact; this isn’t a chemistry test!  You’re never going to eat many of the items on the list anyway, and some items you like to eat may not be on the list, but you can find out how to convert anything into blocks.

One last thing: Read the label on already prepared foods you like.

7 grams of protein = 1 block.     14 grams = 2 blocks.      21 grams = 3 blocks.

9 grams of carbs    = 1 block.     18 grams = 2 blocks.      27 grams = 3 blocks.

1.5 grams of fat  = 1 block.        3 grams = 2 blocks.        4.5 grams = 3 blocks.

For example, if you get a snack bar that says:

8 grams of protein

29 grams of carbohydrates

6 grams of fat

You should count this as a carbohydrate and not worry about the protein and fat in the snack bar. You must be careful not to micromanage your nutrients.  If you incorrectly count all of the macronutrients in this snack bar (~1 block of protein, ~3 blocks carbs, ~4 blocks fat) then you will end up underfed and driving yourself crazy.   In the case of this snack bar you should just count it as 3 blocks of carbohydrates. Add 3 blocks of protein and fat for a complete 3 block meal.  This takes practice and can be frustrating at times, but the results will make the effort worthwhile!

I hope you feel as good as I do living “in the Zone”.  Below you can see some examples of Zone-friendly meals.

2 Block Meal

• 2 eggwhites & 2 turkey links

• 2 small tomatoes or one large tomato

• 1 tsp cashew butter (1000mg fish oil not counted)

3 Block Meal

• 6.7 oz cottage cheese

• .5oz (1/8 cup) rolled oats, 3.7 oz (1 cup) strawberries, & 2.4 oz blueberries

• 9 cocoa almonds

4 Block Meal

• 4 eggwhites, 2 turkey links, 1 oz cheese

• 2 cups strawberries & ½ oat pita

• 12 cocoa almonds

4 Block Meal

• 4.5 oz chicken meat & 1 oz cheese

• 1 whole oat pita

• 12 cocoa almonds

4 Block Meal

• 6 oz grilled fish

• 36 asparagus spears and 1 cup mushrooms

• 2 teaspoons of cashew butter

Finally, buying natural, paleo-friendly foods (shop the perimeter of the grocery store) and preparing for the week is a great way to ensure success:

Much of this information is derived and paraphrased from the Zone Diet website here.