Helen and Geoff's Amazing Adventures

Have fun and do neat stuff

Zone Diet. It Works.

by | May 3, 2022 | diet, Zone

In mid January 22, my medico told me to lose weight. I was 101 kg at that time. In early May 22 I am now 87kg. I have lost 14 kg in 14 weeks. I has come off my gut which has decreased by 12cm. What did I do? I followed Barry Sears Zone Diet method. What is that?

Zone Diet Method

  1. Dr Barry Sears made a name for himself developing Cancer treatment medication. In about mid 90s, he shocked his colleagues by switching his effort to tackling (developing solutions to) the obesity epidemic that is sweeping the world. He has an extremely good understanding of how the human body responds to intake of different foods and how to reduce weight effectively. In recent years, he has concentrated further to tackle ‘chronic inflammation’ in the human body – how this chronic inflammation causes chronic diseases (especially diabetes) and how to reduce that inflammation and so have a good go at reducing those chronic diseases.
  2. Key Points
    1. Three meals a day, each less than 400 Calories. 
    2. Up to three snacks a day – each about 100 Calories.
    3. Maximum of 1,500 Calories per day. Therefore, it is an intake reduction diet. It is NOT (as many pundits claim) a ketogenic diet. Dr Sears is insistent that these just don’t work as there are too hard to maintain.
    4. Balance Protein and Carbohydrate for each meal in the ratio 5:7. 
    5. Default Protein intake for each meal is 25g. That 25g increases the more you seriously exercise. With 25g Protein you need 35g Carbs. Because, I exercise a bit, I have been using 28g Protein balanced with 39g Carbs for each meal.
    6. This balance is crucial to the diet’s success. It does quite a few things: prevents hunger or tiredness; prevents weight gain; controls weight loss so only fat comes off. If you don’t balance, your body will add weight.
    7. You can fine tune the Protein: Carb ratio. If you get hungry add a little more Protein. If you get weary/tied add a little more Carbs.
    8. Record everything you eat and drink. What get measured gets managed.
  3. That is it. Quite easy. It does need constant weighing of what you eat. I also use the Easy Diet Diary app to record everything. You do have to stick to it rigorously. You should not get hungry. The weight should just fall off. For me it has.

Resources

  • Two Barry Sears books. The Zone (1995). The Resolution Zone (2020). 
  • Zone website. Includes products, resources and blogs.
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Shield Shrimp

When it rains across Australia’s vast inland region, temporary pools crop up all over the arid ground, giving life to a strange desert crustacean known as the shield shrimp (Triops australiensis).

Named after the formidable carapace that shields its head and upper body, T. australiensis can grow up to 7.6 cm long, and it uses its long, segmented tail and mass of 60 or so legs to propel itself through shallow water.

It also breathes through these legs – its sub-class Branchiopoda means ‘gill-legged’ – and in the females these legs bear ovisacs for carrying their tiny eggs.

Several pix in the Photo Gallery and a movie.

Acacia peuce

A rare and endangered plant. The tree grows up to 15 to 18 metres (49 to 59 ft) high, with short horizontal branches and pendulous branchlets covered in needle-like phyllodes adapted for the arid dry climate. It has a distinctive habit more similar to a sheoak or a conifer.

Although speculated to have been widespread across central Australia during wetter climates 400,000 years ago, the population is now mostly restricted to three sites, separated by the encroaching Simpson Desert. In the Northern Territory, the species is restricted to the Mac Clark (Acacia peuce) Conservation Reserve which is surrounded by a pastoral lease, Andado Station. The other two sites are near Boulia and Birdsville in Queensland. The tree is found in open arid plains that usually receive less than 150 millimetres (5.9 in) of rain per annum. They grow on shallow sand aprons overlaying gibber or clay slopes and plains and between longitudinal dunes or on alluvial flats between ephemeral watercourses.

 

Owen Springs Reserve on Hugh River

Owen Springs was a station on the Hugh River. The Hugh River flows into the Finke (when it actually flows). Both cut through the Western MacDonnell Ranges. The image above shows Owen Springs Reserve as a dot at lower right. The river it is next to is the Hugh. Hermannsburg, our next town, is near middle left edge. Hermannsburg is almost on the Finke River. You can see both Hugh and Finke Rivers cutting through sections of MacDonnell Ranges.

Palm Valley

Palm Valley is within the Finke Gorge National Park southwest of Alice Springs. Palm Valley has a smallish population of Red Cabbage Palms (Livistona mariae). The nearest related species is 850 kilometres away in Katherine NT. The average rainfall for Palm Valley is just 200 mm per year. Small pockets of semi-permanent spring-fed pools allow the unique flora and fauna (desert fish, shield shrimps tadpoles and frogs) to survive.

It had been assumed that the cabbage palms were remnants of a prehistoric time when the climate supported tropical rainforest in what is now the arid inland of Australia. Genetic analysis published in 2012 determined that Livistona mariae at Palm Valley is actually the same species as Livistona rigida from samples collected near Katherine and Mount Isa, both around 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) away. It is now thought that aboriginal people brought the palms to here from Mataranka.

Mound Springs

Mound Springs occur around the Western edge of the Great Artesian Basin and represent a natural discharge of Artesian water that was captured many hundreds of kilometers away from rain falling along the Great Dividing Range and New Guinea. This article provides details. Dalhousie is an excellent example of a mound spring.

Great Artesian Basin map Great Artesian Basin diagram