What is intelligent eating?  It’s knowing how and why different kinds of foods affect your body, your energy, and your sense of well being.  How important is it?  Well, Barry Sears wrote the book, “The Zone”, a national bestseller, because he understood that unless he learned how and what to eat, he was destined to die of a heart attack at an early age like his father and his grandfather before him.

How important is it to us at Giovane?  Well, consider that Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw wrote their best seller, “Life Extension, A Scientific Approach”, based on their exhaustive knowledge of the role of nutrition specifically for stimulating the release of Human Growth Hormone. In addition Barry Sears latest, and best book, “The Anti-aging Zone”, deals specifically and in detail with dietary approaches to hormone balancing.

So, as much as we hate to think of it in that way, food is actually medicine.  Not just medicine, but probably the most powerful medicine ever created..  Most of us realize that there are good foods and bad foods but few understand why.  Least of all, the United States Government with their new food pyramid that shows massive amounts of carbohydrates (in the form of grains) at the base and very little protein or fat at the apex.  The proof of the error of their ways lies in the epidemic expansion (no pun intended) of obesity in the United States, over the last ten years.

This is a good place to start our quick review of what we need to know about food.  Think “Carbohydrates”, “Proteins”, and “Fat”.  All food can be broken down to these three categories.

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates include all the vegetables and fruits we eat, as well as grain products like pasta, breads, and cereals.  For as long as we can remember, nutritionists have been telling us to eat large quantities of complex carbohydrates, very little protein, and absolutely no fat.  Well, thanks to them, we’ve all grown fatter.  Look around you!  Why?  What went wrong?

Well, here’s the bottom line.  All Carbohydrates are broken down to simple sugars.  When sugar enters the blood stream the body produces Insulin.  With increasing blood sugar, rising insulin levels create three major problems.

• The first problem is that insulin takes all that extra sugar from carbohydrates and converts it in the liver to fat!  That fat gets deposited on our bellies and hips to be used later as a hedge against starvation.  So forget all those “fat free” items lining the grocery shelves.  They are absolutely loaded with fat producing carbohydrates!  Remember this, YOU DON’T GET FAT FROM EATING FAT!  But more about fats later.
• The second major problem comes over the years with the continuous bombardment of our insulin receptors until, as we age, we need more and more insulin to transport the sugars from carbohydrates into our cells.  This oversupply of insulin is toxic to our blood vessels and to the brain where short memory is stored, producing a condition that has been labeled by researchers and medical practitioners as “syndrome X”.  It simply means that we are walking around with too much insulin in our bodies.
• Third, and more specific to our purpose, insulin and HGH are in direct opposition to one another!  When insulin levels are high, HGH is virtually ineffective.  When insulin levels drop, the pituitary responds by secreting HGH. 

So, are we telling you to stay away from carbohydrates?  Not at all.  In fact, to be in the “Zone”, the largest percentage of your foods will actually be carbohydrates.  The secret is to select high fiber carbohydrates like broccoli, green beans and spinach and avoid potatoes and cooked carrots.  This alone could save you pounds!  As Barry Sears states in “The Zone”, “most people are simply not designed to eat pasta.”

Proteins

Proteins are the building blocks of our bodies.  They are composed of the amino acids that utilize the complex chains of DNA and RNA for repair and replication of healthy cells  And just as insulin carries the sugar from carbohydrates into our cells for energy, HGH, in the form of IGF-1 (Insulin like growth factor-1) facilitates the transport of these critical amino acids into our cells for building, repair, and replication.  It is easy to see then, why diminishing levels of HGH can allow us to age.  As we utilize less protein and more sugar, muscles shrink, fat takes over, and our cell replication is distorted

Each of us has a specific protein requirement from our daily intake of food that will keep our bodies in balance. Few of us take in an adequate amount of protein because we have been given some bad advice by well meaning nutritionists.  We have seen incredible results in fat loss when Giovane’s patients have shifted their focus to an appropriate protein balance.

Fats

Fats have been unjustly maligned as a dietary taboo.  In reality, we need fats both as a source of energy and as a resource in the maintenance of body tissues.  The “Zone” diet, in fact, calls for 30% fat with each meal.  That’s difficult for most of us to get used to, but it is based on scientific study and good common sense.

It’s really a matter of intelligent eating in terms of selecting polyunsaturated versus saturated fats.  The good fats, polyunsaturated fats, are those found in nuts, avocados, olives and olive oil.  The saturated fats are those found in meats, eggs, and dairy products. 

Why do we need to ensure that we have adequate “good fat” intake in our diet?  Because there are monitoring systems in our metabolism that increase fat production in our liver if our blood levels of fat are too low.  That’s why we mentioned earlier that, “YOU DON’T GET FAT FROM EATING FAT”.

How does one use the data we have collected to implement the “Protein Prescription”, as well as carbohydrate and fat recommendations?

Like any prescription, you wouldn’t swallow the whole bottle of pills at once.  We need to break those grams down to 3 or 6 meals depending on your life style.  In other words you can do it either at breakfast, lunch, and dinner or spread it out as breakfast, midmorning snack, lunch, mid afternoon snack, dinner, and late night snack.