The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss

This means that, in effect, human growth hormone is the most powerful fat-burning hormone in the body. So release of human growth hormone from the pituitary gland is the crucial hormonal change that occurs with anaerobic exercise. That hormonal change gives you two crucial sweat benefits: it burns fat, and it allows you to build new muscle at the s

Eating fat does not make you fat. It's your body's response to excess carbohydrates in your diet that makes you fat. Your body has a limited capacity to store excess carbohydrates, but it can easily convert those excess carbohydrates into excess body fat. It's hard to lose weight by simply restricting calories. Eating less and losing excess body fa

So the critical hormonal balance of insulin and glucagon depends on two things. One is the size of the meal you eat—excess calories stimulate secretion of insulin. The other is the ratio of protein to carbohydrate in each meal.

Let me be a little more specific about the rewards you'll reap from staying in the Zone. One is loss of excess body fat. If you have a weight problem, the real problem is excess body fat. Even if you're only slightly overweight, the dietary technology

carbohydrate hell and propel you into the Zone. For now, here's the bottom line: Eat small meals with the correct ratio of protein to carbohydrate. If you remember only that statement, you'll be positioning yourself for entry into the Zone.

What is that rule? Maintain a beneficial ratio of protein to carbohydrate every time you eat. This one simple rule is the foundation for constructing a Zone-favorable diet. And what is that beneficial ratio of protein to carbohydrate? The ideal is about 0.75—that's three grams of protein to every four grams of carbohydrate.

fat, even though the fat content of these diets is very low. With the Zone-favorable diet I've developed, the fat content is exceptionally important: in fact, it's the biochemical key that ultimately prevents the accumulation of excess body fat. In other words, in a Zone-favorable diet you use fat to lose fat.

The bottom line: if you want to generate the maximum hormonal benefits from exercise, aerobic or anaerobic or both, you need to be in the Zone—before you exercise, while you exercise, and right after you exercise. This is true whether you're a marathon runner, a weight lifter, a jogger, or a three-times-a-week aerobic dancer. How do you accomplish

Once the glycogen levels are filled in both the liver and the muscles, excess carbohydrates have just one fate: to be converted into fat and stored in the adipose, that is, fatty, tissue. In a nutshell, even though carbohydrates themselves are fat-free, excess carbohydrates end up as excess fat.