In Tanzania, 1000 people of the Hadza tribe still live as hunter-gatherers. They’ve been largely unchanged in their way of life for the last (at least) 10 000 years. This fascinating people was used as the basis of a study published in 2012, which essentially proved, and highlighted, the theory I’m constantly presented with as fact whenever browsing health sections online: You wanna stay fit? Lose weight? Be healthy? It’s 80% diet, and 20% exercise. That is, no matter how many hours you spend pumping, running, and lifting, it won’t burn off those burgers from McDonald’s or delicious chocolate cake. Since the Hadza people live like we Westerners did as hunter-gatherers thousands of years ago, the team of scientists from the UK, Tanzania, and the States, weighted their exercise level against their metabolic rate. The latter was then compared to the metabolic rate of Westerners. And guess what they found? The metabolic rate of the Hadza tribe is exactly the same as yours or mine. It’s a human characteristic, which does not change.
Man, was I glad to read that. It would suck quite a bit if I’d put all the effort of this month into eating healthier (at a somewhat drastic level, I might add), and then found out all I needed to do was run a couple kilometres further on the treadmill. The change in diet I’m referring to is one Ariz and I made a few weeks back. Ramadan was over, my lovely mother had gone back to Norway (taking some of my heart with her), and it was time to get back on track. Ariz has been pestering me about the Zone diet for as long as I can remember us getting into fitness. All “Miniblocks” this, and “equal parts” that. But then I started thinking about this Hadza tribe (well, I didn’t at the time, but for the sake of storytelling, let’s pretend I did), and I thought to myself, it wouldn’t really hurt giving a proper change in diet a go. I know we’ve tried it before. But this was different. You’ll see.
I started reading from the two leaflets Ariz has carried religiously with him wherever we’ve moved, and realised this Zone diet makes a lot of sense. Don’t ask me about the science, though - I can’t really be bothered with that. The essence of this way of eating is that your body only needs a certain amount of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates per day (depending on gender, and activity level, of course), and these have set values in the form of miniblocks. These values go like so:
1 miniblock of fat = 1.5 g
1 miniblock of carbs = 9 g
1 miniblock of protein = 7 g
So, if I need 14 blocks of each of these per day, that means I need to consume 21 grams of fat, 136 grams of carbs, and 98 grams of proteins in 24 hours. Yes, yes, I know it’s a lot of math. It’s also an f-ton of vegetables to consume. I honestly cannot get over the amount of healthy food you have to eat in order to compensate for a teensie tiny bit of unhealthy food. Go figure. Anyway, getting back to my storytelling.
Ariz and I started this diet a few weeks back, and the change in everything related to physical and psychological wellbeing is just astounding. I know, I know, I’ve talked about this a billion times. But this Zone diet is something different. I just feel healthier. Like, long-term prospect, thinking about the future healthier - somewhere rooted deep inside my body, probably where that Hadza tribe hunter-gatherer is buried from thousands of years ago in my instincts. I don’t feel like chocolate and fast food and chips anymore. And I’m not just saying that. Honestly, I don’t. My favourite snack right now is a handful of dates and some nuts. It’s like my mind’s erased all those things I used to love putting into my body before, and replaced them with something equivalently tasty - but healthy. The mind’s a mysterious place - it’s almost like it wants my body to be happy.
