Italian Zone Diet Interesting diet. It's 40-30-30 with pasta? Let's see how that plays out for a normal calorie intake of 1500/day. This is what most active women need to maintain their weight. If you want to lose you'll have to subtract 100-300 calories from that. Also by active I mean exercise 20-60 min. daily.
1500 cal per day divided into 5 small meals per day is:
GRAMS per day
150g carbs (sounds reasonable)
112g protein (I don't even eat this much protein daily and I lift weights every day. If you're a protein type this probably works fine though.)
50g fat
GRAMS per meal
30g carbs (1 cup cooked pasta has about 40g carbs 1/2 cup with dinner plus veggies would be smart choice)
22.4g protein
10g fat
CALORIES per day
600 cals carbs
450 cals protein
450 cals
CALORIES per meal
120 cals carbs
90 cals protein
90 cals fat
I think the biggest issue with the 40-30-30 plan is constantly having to count grams of stuff. I seriously hated being on the zone (back in 2000 when I was first trying to lose 30 lb.) The zone helped me drop 8 lb in a month but my body fat only dropped from 32% to 31% which speak volumes of the type of weight loss you get with this type of dieting.
It's not real fat loss and those who find that it does work for them always admit that it's a pain constantly counting. When I switched to balanced eating a month later I lost another 8 lb. in 6 weeks and my body fat dropped from 31% to 26%. Huge difference in clothes size as well. This was 12 years ago and I've found over the years that balanced eating works best for me and most of my clients.
I like pasta but definitely not a fan of the zone diet.
