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Zone is not set in stone but represents a bell-shaped curve.

    Why? Not everyone is genetically the same. Nonetheless, the more you increase carbohydrate intake (even adding moderate-glycemic ones such as fruits), the more you will increase insulin secretion. If that is combined with high amounts of omega-6 fatty acids in your diet, then you are going to create more inflammatory eicosanoids and more cellular inflammation. That’s going to make you fat, sick, and age faster. If you swing too much in the other direction and have too much protein and not enough carbohydrates (such as on the Atkins diet), you are going to cause the increased secretion of cortisol, which is a stress hormone. That hormone will make you fat, sick, and age faster.
    So it is critical that you keep experimenting with the balance of food ingredients on your plate until you can maintain yourself in the Zone. How do you know when you get there? Use your watch. If you can go for five hours between meals without being hungry or losing peak mental focus, that’s your sign that your last meal put you into the Zone. The secret is keeping yourself in that Zone for a lifetime. The better you play this hormonalbalancing game using the Mediterranean Zone, the better and easier your life becomes.
    The balance of protein, carbohydrates, and fat in the Mediterranean Zone is continually reinforced by ongoing research that has been published over the last fifteen years. The dietary recommendations of the Joslin Diabetes Center at Harvard Medical School for treating obesity and diabetes are essentially those of the Mediterranean Zone. Some of the more recent research comes from the EPIC study published in 2013 analyzing the diets of some twenty-two thousand Greeks, demonstrating those following a low-glycemic load diet with a total carbohydrate intake of about 40 percent of total calories had the least risk in developing diabetes. A 2010
British Journal of Nutrition
article estimated the diet composition of our Paleolithic ancestors was about 40 percent low-glycemic load carbohydrates, 30 percent protein, and 30 percent fat. It appears that health in the past, present, and future depends on having a balance of macronutrients. As soon as you start increasing one macronutrient in a diet, another has to decrease. Moving away from the basic Zone macronutrient balance creates very large hormonal changes that can disrupt your metabolism.
    The most important research, however, is that which demonstrates the effectiveness of the Zone diet in reducing cellular inflammation. The published research leaves little doubt on this subject. Harvard Medical School demonstrated in 2004 that the Zone diet was nine times more effective in reducing inflammation compared to a control diet based on the USDA dietary recommendations, even though the weight loss was the same with both diets. Tufts University School of Medicine came to the same conclusion when comparing the Zone to the USDA dietary recommendations in treating diabetics. A study published in 2006 in the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
indicated that the Zone dramatically reduced cellular inflammation while simultaneously improving exercise endurance and mood levels when compared to the Atkins diet.
    The reduction of diet-induced inflammation should be the real goal of any nutrition plan, as opposed to simple weight loss. It is only with the reduction of cellular inflammation that you begin to reverse chronic disease and slow down the aging process. Unfortunately, weight loss is not a good marker. This is because weight loss is made up of water loss, loss of muscle mass, and loss of excess body fat. Losing water and muscle is notgoing to have any positive health benefits. However, losing excess body fat does because of its reduction of inflammation. In this regard, the Zone is the clear winner.
WHAT TO EXPECT FOLLOWING THE MEDITERRANEAN ZONE
    The power of science is that it helps predict the future. If you throw a rock into