The Right amount of Protein is Important

28 March 2014

Zone nutrition is usually mislabeled as a “high protein” diet. It is in fact “protein adequate” in that we work out how much protein you need to eat each day to maintain your muscle mass.  Once you reach 30 you start to lose muscle and eating in the Zone protects your muscle mass so while you may lose weight you do not lose muscle. We had one client who went from a size 16 to a 10 but only lost one kilo on the scales.  Her body shape changed completely but she lost fat but not muscle. The other important factor
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Categories: Comments.
Tags: balanced, carbohydrates, fat, inflammation, insulin, muscle, nutrition, protein, Sleep, weight control, and Zone.

Fat is not the problem…

20 March 2014

Handy Hint of the Week: It’s not fat that makes you fat but sugar that makes you fat.  That doesn’t mean you can eat any amounts of fat but fat stops you feeling hungry.  If you eat low fat food add the appropriate amount of good fats into your meal or snack.  Good fats include olives, olive oil, avocado and nuts, especially almonds. Olive Oil: New Zealand produces some of the best olive oils in the world and they are fresh whereas the imported ones from Italy, etc may be several years old by the time they get here.  Oils oxidise and
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Categories: Comments.
Tags: balanced, fat, Krill Oil, sugar, and trans fats.

Sugar – the Real Problem

18 February 2014

The World is Waking Up to the Consequences of Sugar Addiction There have been several articles written over the summer about the obesity epidemic with it’s resulting damage to our health.  It is particularly interesting to see that the experts are starting to recognize that the main cause of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and the other conditions caused by underlying inflammation is caused by the amount of sugar in our diet.  One of my mantras is that “it isn’t fat that makes you fat, it’s sugar that makes you fat”.  I didn’t make that up of course, Dr Sears wrote
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Categories: Comments and Science.
Tags: diabetes, diet, fat, heart disease, obesity, sugar, and Zone.

Testimonial

4 February 2014

A testimonial from a client 4 weeks after starting in the Zone: I am over the moon about the blood sugar levels being back to normal (wasn’t expecting that so soon as it was the three month test (but I didn’t start until after Christmas) so the next one will be lower still. Also am down to my ideal weight of 68 kgs from 73 kgs.  SW
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Categories: Comments and Testimonials.
Tags: blood sugar and weight control.

Biggest Loser

17 December 2013

Below are the results of the Biggest Loser challenge that my daughter, Talya, took part in at her work over 8 weeks.  Talya did it all in the Zone and lead every week of the challenge.  She now has the tools to control her weight and her health for the rest of her life. Talya has also got the other benefits from eating the Zone – more energy, sleeping better and generally feeling better.  Congratulations Tal, I’m so proud of you.   FINAL LEADERBOARD Talya 6.81% LOSS 2 2.33% LOSS 3 1.50% LOSS 4 0.91% LOSS 5 0.91% LOSS 6
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Categories: Announcements and Comments.

Holiday Travel Tips

5 December 2013

Zone bars are very handy to have on hand when travelling by car, bus, boat, plane or train. For bush walking or on other walks they are small and light to carry, provide good nutrition and help keep up energy levels, the only extra you need carry is water. Several years ago we easily did the Tongariro Crossing in 5 hours on just 1½ bars each for breakfast before setting out and 1 bar each for lunch on the walk. I also find it handy to keep one in my handbag for when I get peckish or everyone else is
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Categories: Comments and Products.

Festive Entertaining

5 December 2013

 Instead of getting in the traditional Christmas cake and fruit mince pies for visitors consider better options. Put out attractively arranged cheeses, ham, turkey, smoked beef, other sliced meats and shellfish with grapes, cherries and strawberries, nuts and olives, cherry tomatoes and perhaps a salmon and cottage cheese mixture with a few Arnotts Vita Wheat crackers or raw or lightly cooked vegetables with a yoghurt and tahini or peanut butter dip. These platters are quick and easy to put together, always look attractive and are very popular.
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Categories: Comments.
Tags: Christmas, healthy food, and platters.

Best Wishes for the Festive Season

5 December 2013

Holiday Season Tips For some people the festive season can provide a temporary challenge to their Zone nutrition lifestyle. If you want to take a Zone holiday fine, although you will find that you feel a lot better if you roughly eat in the Zone at all those festive season events. Many clients report to us the good effects and how easy they find making Zone balanced choices at Christmas functions, parties and for Christmas dinner when they resolve to “just Zone it”. Following are a few tips on how you can enjoy the party season and still not stray
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Categories: Comments.
Tags: balanced, Balanced Bars, healthy food, meals, nutrition, and Zone.

New Heart Foundation Recommendations

7 November 2013

The NZ Heart Foundation’s new revised healthy food choice advice has been released and published in the 7th November edition of the The Dominion Post. They have distanced themselves from their old failed model by scrapping the well known Pyramid completely and have replaced it with a stylized heart. The new advice recommends consuming food groups in what appears to be approximately the following proportions: 40% vegetables and fruit – eat most 25% breads, cereals, grains, starchy vegetables – eat some 15% fish, meat, chicken, legumes, eggs 12% milk, yoghurt, cheese 5% oils, nuts – use some 3% cut back on
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Categories: Announcements, Comments, and Science.
Tags: carbohydrates, fat, healthy food, Heart Foundation, pyramid, sugar, and trans fats.

Tomato Sauce

25 October 2013

Tomatoes in all their natural forms are favourable and healthy carbohydrate with the obvious exception of commercial tomato sauce that is often about one third sugar. The ProZone book has a lot of tomato based recipes. When making sauce and cooking with tomatoes I strongly recommend using imported tomato pulp instead of New Zealand grown canned tomatoes for ease of use, taste and results. My reasons for this are that NZ canned tomatoes are sometimes very watery and they are not completely sun ripened before canning.  This has a significant effect on taste and ease of use. The products I recommend are in
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Categories: Comments.
Tags: carbohydrates and tomatoes.

Psyllium Husk

25 October 2013

Barry Sears mentions psyllium husk as a product to add to foods to give a feeling of fullness as it swells in the stomach. If you find smoothies or soy fruit ices not as satisfying as you would expect you could try adding a teaspoon of psyllium husk. It is no count dietary fibre. It can also be used as a thickener and added to yoghurt, milk, desserts, porridge and muesli etc and used in cooking. It can also be simply stirred into water and taken as fibre and a filler. Please note the psyllium husk is a heavy dose of
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Categories: Comments.
Tags: fibre.

Fennel Bulbs

25 October 2013

Barry Sears has written a book called The 100 Top Zone Foods that has a lot of useful information about these foods in it. Of course there are way more than 100 really good Zone favourable foods. One of these is worth mentioning as it is in season now. Fennel bulbs have a fresh crisp aniseed flavour. If you are not familiar with this vegetable that is under rated and under utilised in New Zealand it could be worth trying it. It adds flavour when sliced raw into salads and can be stir fried, boiled or roasted. Another way to
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Categories: Comments and Recipes.
Tags: carbohydrates, flavour, low glycaemic, minerals, and vitamins.

“Healthy Drinks”

9 September 2013

There was an article in the DomPost on Saturday about so-called healthy drinks.  It opens with “Fruit juices and smoothies represent a new risk to our health because of the amount of sugar the apparently healthy drinks contain”. While there is very little dispute over the amount of sugar and dangers in soft drinks it is enlightening that so called “healthy drinks” are finally being recognized for what they are.  A glass of freshly squeezed orange juice may contain up to 6 oranges or 12 blocks of carbohydrate.  I have had people come to see me who say “I have
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Categories: Products, Recipes, and Science.
Tags: balanced, carbohydrates, nutrition, protein, and Zone.

Carbohydrate Addiction

9 September 2013

The latest North & South (September 2013) has an excellent article about carbohydrates titled “Carbohydrate Addiction is Real – and it’s killing us”.  It states that “the number of obese people in the world is now greater than the number who are starving” which is something I wrote about in an earlier blog.  Along with the obesity is the huge increase in people suffering diabetes.  In China there are 90 million people with the disease and in India 908,000 people died from related causes in 2011. In New Zealand the statistics are just as frightening with the ever growing costs of
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Categories: Comments, Other, and Science.

Protein Powder

5 August 2013

ProZone Protein powder is made specifically for ProZone from casein , not whey, so is not involved in the scare over contaminated protein. Protein powder is a wonderful source of protein for making quick easy snacks/meals like smoothies and porridge.  ProZone protein is 91% pure protein and is still on special at $75 a kilo.  Go to the shop to order it now.
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Categories: Comments and Products.
Tags: protein.

Quinoa

26 July 2013

We are frequently asked about this grain that is promoted as high in protein. It is high in protein for a grain but 50g quinoa contains 1 block of protein and almost 4 blocks of carbohydrate so it should really be treated as a carbohydrate rather than protein. The other limitation of grains as protein is that because they are high in fibre you don’t tend to absorb a lot of the protein from them.  The only vegetable that is truly high is protein is soy. Quinoa is low glycaemic so small amounts could be used to supplement lots of favourable
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Categories: Client questions answered.
Tags: carbohydrates, low glycaemic, protein, and quinoa.
Formats: Image.

Ricotta vs Cottage Cheese

26 July 2013

I was asked the question about the difference between ricotta cheese and cottage cheese.  Ricotta is more pleasant than cottage cheese but ricotta, although relatively low in fat (saturated) compared to hard cheese, it is a lot higher in fat than cottage cheese.  This is the big advantage of cottage cheese: convenient protein with relatively low fat.
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Categories: Client questions answered and Other.
Tags: cheese, fat, and protein.

Wellington’s Shaking!

23 July 2013

I feel a bit prophetic after writing my blog on Friday about having some emergency rations like Zone bars on hand just in case.  I hope that everybody came through the earthquakes okay. I live on the top floor of an apartment building on the Terrace in the middle of Wellington.  We had a smashing time up there with things flying off shelves and breaking.  The worst casualty, apart from my nerves, was an unopened bottle of port bought duty free a few days earlier.  I’ve lived in Wellington all my life and have been through lots of earthquakes but
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Categories: Comments and Other.