While I sometimes disagree with Mark Sisson, I found his recent blog posts criticizing “The Zone Diet” (of Barry Sears) and “The Paleo Diet” (of Loren Cordain) to mirror my own thoughts. You can read his posts here:
Note that “The Paleo Diet” in this case refers to the specific diet developed by Loren Cordain, not the broad category of what I (and others) refer to as “paleo” diets, of which Mark Sisson’s primal eating plan is just one type.
Also, while I’m not so familiar with The Paleo Diet, I do know The Zone — and Mark’s criticisms are spot-on. You can find more in this post by Richard Nikoley. As I said in the comments on that post:
The Zone was my first introduction to “paleo”-type diets about ten years ago. It definitely helped me get my blood sugar under some control: mostly by eating more protein, I stopped crashing and burning as I had been doing on a regular basis. So in that respect, it was good.However, the allowed calories from carbs was simply way too high — such it was easy to eat “in the Zone” while still eating tons of processed carbs, including sugars and grains. So I maintained my quasi-addiction to carbs on the diet. As a result, I achieved nothing like the results I’ve gotten over the past few months.
It’s frustrating to think that Sears understands so much, yet ultimately misses the boat so completely.
And that’s just one problem among many.
