The Zone Diet Is Nothing More Than Glorified Calorie Restriction

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If you’re one to follow all of the latest and greatest diet fads, then you’ve definitely heard about the Zone Diet by now. Designed by biochemist Barry Sears, Ph.D., decades ago, this way of eating is currently garnering new attention due to its balanced approach to macronutrients, its distaste for inflammation-causing sugar and its avoidance of telling people that they can’t have a particular food.

However, the single factor that throws this plan to the bottom of our garbage cans seems to be the one that’s skimmed over or just mentioned offhand by a lot of other wellness news sources. It’s how restrictive the plan is when it comes to calorie consumption and what that means for a person’s metabolic and mental health.

The Zone Diet plan suggests that women consume only 1,200 calories each day, spread out over three meals and two snacks. Twelve. Hundred. Calories. There’s no caveat to allow room for intense or prolonged exercise. There’s no consideration for height or weight or basal metabolic rate. It’s just straight-up eat a highly restrictive number of calories, and as long as you balance them among carb, protein and fat sources, you’ll be fine.

Well, good freaking luck to anyone out there who wants to try and subsist on 1,200 calories every day over a long period of time and factor in any fun activities of any kind (like hiking, dancing, biking or anything that requires energetic movement). Because that’s just not a truly sustainable energy intake, and we all know (or at least I hope we do) that if a diet isn’t sustainable, it’ll never turn into your lifestyle, which means it won’t be successful. And if you jump on one more diet fad that ultimately ends in “failure,” you’re going to beat yourself up about it, which is another force you definitely don’t need in your life.

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Even if you think you can manage the 1,200-calorie limitation, you could end up with an entirely different issue: a metabolism that’s sluggish AF. When you don’t derive enough energy from the foods you eat for a long enough period of time, your body instinctually jumps into starvation mode, storing as much energy as possible rather than willingly expending it. And this reaction will only slow (or halt) your weight loss goals and, again, make you feel even worse.

Then there’s the obsessive compulsion risk that comes with meticulously counting calories and making sure they fall into the perfect percentages for your macronutrient categories. Some folks fare just fine with these numbers, but others can subconsciously let them dictate their every move. It’s surprisingly easy for people to become fearful of what a calorie can do to their goals, what overdoing the carbs just the tiniest amount could do to their overall weight. It’s at that point that people start becoming fearful of the food that keeps the body energized and alive. And the right diet shouldn’t lead you toward these kinds of disordered eating thoughts and behaviors.

The “perfect” diet isn’t a fad or a severe restriction or a magical pill. It’s a balanced diet of whole foods consumed as your body tells you it needs energy. You can make it more complicated if you’d like, but that is the baseline of every successful dietary lifestyle. It has nothing to do with counting calories.