Barry Sears > Quotes

“That's why the recent popularity of juicing (the removal of fiber from fruits to make easy-to-drink juices) has been a disaster. Juicing simply removes a primary control rod (i.e., fiber) from the carbohydrate, meaning that the carbohydrate enters the bloodstream too fast.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss: Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body – Proven ... Loss, Optimal Health, and Peak Performance

“Luckily, you don't have to inject growth hormone to burn fat and build muscle. All you have to do is train anaerobically. But you do have to understand that you only begin to exercise anaerobically when you are at levels in excess of 90 percent of your maximum heart rate. This is pretty hard work. It's also why world-class sprinters and swimmers are heavily muscled and at the same time very lean—they train anaerobically.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Dietary Road Map to Lose Weight Permanently

“To be genetically correct, man needs a modern version of a Neo-Paleolithic diet, a diet that's based on his current genetic makeup. That's exactly what a Zone-favorable diet is: a diet that is synergistic with mankind's genetic structure, which has changed very little in the last 100,000 years.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Dietary Road Map to Lose Weight Permanently

“Now, I want to be fair: not everyone has such a negative hormonal response to high-carbohydrate diets. There are people who can eat carbohydrates until the cows come home and never get fat. Why? It all depends on your genes. Research conducted by Gerald Reaven at Stanford University in 1987 unraveled this genetic mystery. It turns out that people's genetic insulin responses to carbohydrates are diverse. In about 25 percent of a normal population, insulin response to carbohydrates is very blunted. When these lucky people eat excess carbohydrates, their insulin levels don't rapidly surge upward. They can consume large amounts of carbohydrates and not get hungry or fat. (These people often do very well on high-carbohydrate diets, so the dietary establishment elevates them to iconlike status to demonstrate the moral superiority of such a diet. Heck, these people just had a lucky draw in the genetic lottery.) On the other hand, 25 percent of an otherwise normal population has an unlucky genetic draw that dictates an extremely elevated insulin response to carbohydrate. These people simply have to look at a carbohydrate and they begin gaining fat. Between these two extremes lies the other 50 percent of the American population. These people respond normally to carbohydrates, which means that if they eat too much carbohydrate they'll have an elevated insulin response—not as elevated as the unluckiest 25 percent, but still elevated enough to do all the damage described above. These people will always fail on a high-carbohydrate diet. They're accused of being weak-willed gluttons who can't control themselves, when in fact they were just born with unfortunate genes. This means that about one-quarter of the population who follow a high-carbohydrate diet will do reasonably well because they're blessed with genetic good fortune. These people can gorge themselves on carbohydrates and never get fat because their insulin levels are always low. The other 75 percent, however, will have an increasingly difficult time complying with such a diet. So, as I said, If you've failed on a high-carbohydrate diet, you're not at fault, your genes are. Well, you can't change your genes, but you sure can change your diet.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss: Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body – Proven ... Loss, Optimal Health, and Peak Performance

“Usually, cortisol production shifts back in gear after you get past that blip. But if you have certain bad habits in your lifestyle on a permanent basis, you might have chronically high cortisol levels. These bad habits include: Prolonged or intense exercise Stuffing yourself with large meals Skipping meals Excess intake of stimulants, such as caffeine Being overweight Low blood sugar from a very low-carbohydrate diet”
― Barry Sears, The Anti-Inflammation Zone: Reversing the Silent Epidemic That's Destroying Our Health

“Then in 1999 researchers began studying the population records of the women who were in their last trimester of pregnancy during the Dutch Famine. Their children were more obese and had higher rates of diabetes and heart disease compared to children who were born either before or after the Dutch Famine. It became apparent that the calorie restriction experienced by their mothers more than fifty years earlier had resulted in negative health consequences for their children in the womb. Scientists call this fetal programming. It is especially powerful in the last trimester of pregnancy when the mother’s diet greatly influences the epigenetic changes to the fetal DNA to prepare them for what their new environment will be outside the womb. During the Dutch Famine there was a complete mismatch of the mother’s diet during their pregnancy relative to what the dietary environment their child would experience after their birth. The result was these children had an altered metabolism—one that was suited to famine conditions, rather than abundance. This epigenetic mismatch resulted in increased incidence of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. The fact that all these conditions (obesity, diabetes, and heart disease) are linked by increased diet-induced inflammation suggests that some of those epigenetic changes taking place during the Dutch Famine may also have turned on selected genes that resulted in enhanced diet-induced inflammation once adequate food was available. This is because the fetus was programmed in the womb for highly restricted calorie intake conditions, which was totally mismatched for abundance of calories available after the birth.”
― Barry Sears, The Mediterranean Zone: Unleash the Power of the World's Healthiest Diet for Superior Weight Loss, Health, and Longevity

“The answer lay buried deep in some rather obscure journals. But it was a relatively simple answer: the delta 5 desaturase enzyme is under profound hormonal control. Although EPA could provide some limited control of delta 5 desaturase enzyme activity, consistent control could only be achieved by controlling hormonal balance. And which hormones? Of course: insulin and glucagon. I finally began to understand why women seemed to need a more or less continual readjustment of the EPA to GLA ratio to stay in the Zone. Women tend to eat relatively lower amounts of protein than men, simply because more women are perpetually on low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets—which are also low in protein. As a result of these high-carbohydrate diets, the supplemented GLA was constantly being driven toward arachidonic acid because the activating effect of insulin was overwhelming the inhibitory effect of EPA. So for women the ratio of DGLA to arachidonic acid would initially increase, and then begin to decrease as arachidonic acid built up over time. This was especially true if they were eating a high-carbo-hydrate diet. That's why the women constantly needed less and less GLA and more and more EPA to stay in the Zone. At that point I realized that to get to the Zone on a consistent basis, it was far more important to control the insulin-to-glucagon ratio than it is to supplement the diet with activated essential fatty acids. That's when I shifted gears, and started to put more and more emphasis on the control of the protein-to-carbohydrate ratio as the primary portal to the Zone. With this new emphasis on the macronutrient content of the diet came a surprising discovery, a discovery applicable to both men and women. The closer a person maintained an ideal protein-to-carbohydrate ratio of 0.75, I found, the more there was a significant increase in the activity of the delta 6 desaturase enzyme.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss: Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body – Proven ... Loss, Optimal Health, and Peak Performance

“Surprisingly, the second group of individuals who tend to be protein malnourished are elite athletes—especially women. Their protein demands are often exceedingly high because of their greater amounts of lean body mass and higher levels of physical activity. These hard-working athletes tend to consume more than enough calories, but they rarely eat adequate levels of protein.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss: Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body – Proven ... Loss, Optimal Health, and Peak Performance

“Being in the Zone is determined by clinical evidence, not hope. Your blood chemistry will tell you with absolute clarity whether you are in the Zone, and if not, you will have a clear indication from your test results what you have to do from a dietary standpoint to get there. Broadly speaking, there are three distinct metabolic measurements that determine if you are in the Zone: (1) your levels of cellular inflammation, (2) your long-term control of blood sugar levels, and (3) your levels of insulin resistance. This is not a multiple-choice test. Only when all three markers are in the appropriate ranges can you be considered to be in the Zone. Unfortunately, when we use those criteria, it appears that less than 1 percent of Americans can be considered to be well.”
― Barry Sears, The Mediterranean Zone: Unleash the Power of the World's Healthiest Diet for Superior Weight Loss, Health, and Longevity

“The liver is the primary manufacturing site for taking in fats and repackaging them in the form of lipoproteins for delivery to peripheral tissues. Insulin resistance disrupts this lipid repackaging process. Triglyceride levels rise, high-density cholesterol levels decrease, and low-density lipoproteins become smaller, more dense, and more atherogenic (more likely to increase the formation of plaques in the arteries). All of these risk factors increase the likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease. The reason that these small dense LDL particles are atherogenic is that it appears they are more easily oxidized in the blood. This is why the levels of oxidized LDL are far more predictive of future heart disease than total LDL levels are. As insulin resistance (really cellular inflammation) spreads to the muscle, the glucose in the blood stays elevated, increasing the production of more glycosylated proteins (AGE) that increase inflammation throughout the body. The best way to measure insulin resistance is by using a euglycemic insulin clamp, which is an extremely complex procedure done only under research conditions. The best surrogate marker of insulin resistance is the ratio of triglycerides (TG) to high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol in the blood. The higher the TG/HDL ratio, the greater the level of insulin resistance in the liver. So what are good levels of the TG/HDL ratio? These are shown below: Ideal Fair Poor At risk <1 1–2 3.5 >3.5 You usually find a TG/HDL ratio of less than one in elite athletes or people who follow the Mediterranean Zone. The average American has a TG/HDL ratio of 3.5, indicative of developing widespread insulin resistance. By the time the TG/HDL is greater than 4, you have metabolic syndrome (pre-diabetes) or fully developed type 2 diabetes. An alternative method of determining insulin resistance is the levels of fasting insulin. This is a more expensive test than the TG/HDL ratio so insurance companies don’t like to reimburse it. If you are able to get such a test, here are the numbers you are looking for in terms international units per ml (IU/ml). Ideal Fair Poor At risk <5 5–10 10–15 >15 Since insulin resistance is the result of cellular inflammation, by following a strict Mediterranean Zone dietary program supplemented with purified omega-3 fatty acids and polyphenols, you can expect to see significant changes within thirty days. Once you are in the Zone, your challenge is to stay there for a lifetime. These markers of wellness will provide continued clinical sentinels in the blood to alert you if you are moving out of the Zone. The correction to get back into the Zone is easy. Just follow the dietary instructions in this book.”
― Barry Sears, The Mediterranean Zone: Unleash the Power of the World's Healthiest Diet for Superior Weight Loss, Health, and Longevity

“Any carbohydrates not immediately used by the body will be stored in the form of glycogen (a long string of glucose molecules linked together). The body has two storage sites for glycogen: the liver and the muscles. The glycogen stored in the muscles is inaccessible to the brain. Only the glycogen stored in the liver can be broken down and sent back to the bloodstream so as to maintain adequate blood sugar levels for proper brain function. The liver's capacity to store carbohydrates in the form of glycogen is very limited and can be easily depleted within ten to twelve hours. So the liver's glycogen reserves must be maintained on a continual basis. That's why we eat carbohydrates.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss: Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body – Proven ... Loss, Optimal Health, and Peak Performance

“Control your eicosanoids, and you control your levels of inflammation and thus your wellness. It’s that simple, and in the process you will change your future.”
― Barry Sears, The Anti-Inflammation Zone: Reversing the Silent Epidemic That's Destroying Our Health

“Since the brain needs about 130 grams of glucose per day, it makes sense to eat approximately that amount of carbohydrate each day. The rest of your body can easily live off stored fat, but the brain can’t.”
― Barry Sears, The Mediterranean Zone: Unleash the Power of the World's Healthiest Diet for Superior Weight Loss, Health, and Longevity

“To call off these storm troopers in your inflammatory army that are derived from AA, you need to increase the “good” anti-inflammatory eicosanoids. These are derived from long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, such as eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). Ultimately, the balance of AA to EPA in your blood determines the levels of silent inflammation in your body. That’s why I call this ratio of these two fatty acids your Silent Inflammation Profile (SIP). The higher the SIP, the less well you are and the more likely it is that you are going to develop some type of chronic disease. In other words, the SIP gives you a glimpse into your future. This is why I believe it is the single best test in medicine—because it reveals your state of wellness (or lack of it) with laserlike precision.”
― Barry Sears, The Anti-Inflammation Zone: Reversing the Silent Epidemic That's Destroying Our Health

“The industrialization of food is the primary reason for the growth of high-glycemic carbohydrates in the diet. High-glycemic carbohydrates are those that enter into the bloodstream as rapidly as glucose. Yes, these carbohydrates are in junk food, but let’s not forget white bread, white pasta, white rice, and white potatoes. Sad but true, the whole-grain versions of these same carbohydrates are also high-glycemic carbohydrates. As you increase any of these foods in your diet, you will increase the secretion of the hormone insulin.”
― Barry Sears, The Mediterranean Zone: Unleash the Power of the World's Healthiest Diet for Superior Weight Loss, Health, and Longevity

“Eating more (but not excessive) protein will increase your levels of the hormone glucagon, which enables your body to maintain constant blood sugar levels for mental energy. You will feel more refreshed in the morning and more energized throughout the day.”
― Barry Sears, The Soy Zone

“The hormonal benefits generated by a Zone-favorable diet produce unprecedented gains in athletic performance. In the Zone, fatty acids are released from adipose tissue at a faster rate, meaning increased muscular endurance because muscle glycogen is conserved. Stored fat is better utilized, both during training and at rest, and this provides the desirable fat loss that almost all athletes seek. Oxygen transfer is increased and muscle fatigue minimized. And stable blood-sugar levels provide increased mental alertness—indispensable if an athlete expects to achieve maximum performance.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss: Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body – Proven ... Loss, Optimal Health, and Peak Performance

“Maintain a beneficial ratio of protein to carbohydrate every time you eat. This one simple rule is the foundation for constructing a Zone-favorable diet. And what is that beneficial ratio of protein to carbohydrate? The ideal is about 0.75—that's three grams of protein to every four grams of carbohydrate. That's the ideal. But there's a range of beneficial protein-to-carbohydrate ratios that are still Zone-favorable—between about 0.6 and 1.0 (see”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss: Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body – Proven ... Loss, Optimal Health, and Peak Performance

“The strength of an anti-oxidant molecule can be measured by its ability to neutralize free radicals. This can be quantified in a test tube to provide a quantitative ranking system known as the oxygen radical absorption capacity (ORAC), which estimates the potential of a given amount of a food product to act as an anti-oxidant. It has been shown that the ORAC value of a food ingredient is correlated with the levels of polyphenols in the same ingredient. Some polyphenols are best at neutralizing free radicals in the water-soluble environment (such as in your blood) whereas others work best in the lipid environment (as in lipoprotein particles or in cell membranes). Therefore what you need is a total ORAC value that represents the combination of both types of anti-oxidant activities. The higher the total ORAC level of a food ingredient, the better its potential ability to act as an anti-oxidant. Listed below are some of the total ORAC values of common foods. A more complete list can be found in Appendix G.”
― Barry Sears, The Mediterranean Zone: Unleash the Power of the World's Healthiest Diet for Superior Weight Loss, Health, and Longevity

“If you have balanced your plate correctly, then for five hours after the meal, you will not be hungry because you have stabilized blood sugar levels. Because of those stable blood sugar levels, you will also have peak mental acuity for the same time period. The lack of hunger and improved mental focus also indicate that you have been successful in reducing inflammation in your body during that same five-hour period. That’s it. It seems easy enough, except you have to do it every five hours for the rest of your life to maintain hormonal balance and the resulting control of inflammation. That’s a small price to pay for a longer and better life. And if you have a bad meal (and we all will), don’t worry, since you are only one meal away from getting back into the Zone.”
― Barry Sears, The Mediterranean Zone: Unleash the Power of the World's Healthiest Diet for Superior Weight Loss, Health, and Longevity

“If you find yourself hungry and craving sugar or sweets two to three hours after a meal, you probably consumed too many carbohydrates that last meal. Whenever you have a problem with hunger or carbohydrate cravings, look to your last meal for a clue to the reason why.”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss: Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body – Proven ... Loss, Optimal Health, and Peak Performance

“As you develop insulin resistance in the liver and muscle, you are also beginning to develop insulin and leptin resistance in the hypothalamus. As a consequence, both insulin and leptin (which act as satiety signals) are not recognized and hunger increases. As you eat more calories to try to satisfy your hunger, you gain more body fat due to increasing hyperinsulinemia. In addition, the excess calories also cause increased inflammation in the hypothalamus, which further increases hunger by interfering with incoming satiety signals. If left untreated, metabolic syndrome eventually becomes type 2 diabetes. This usually occurs within ten to twenty years after the initial diagnosis. The insulin producing beta cells of the pancreas simply become exhausted by the continued demand to make more insulin to control the ever-increasing levels of blood glucose. It appears part of this exhaustion is due to the infiltration of macrophages that attack the beta cells. As the pancreas becomes less able to produce insulin, the blood glucose levels begin to skyrocket, increasing the levels of oxidative stress throughout the body. Oxidative stress activates NF-κB, and cellular inflammation increases correspondingly. With the development of diabetes comes a host of other inflammation-related diseases, such as heart disease, Alzheimer’s, ocular disorders, kidney failure, neuropathy, and impaired wound healing (which can lead to infection, gangrene, and eventually amputation). Not a very pleasant picture.”
― Barry Sears, The Mediterranean Zone: Unleash the Power of the World's Healthiest Diet for Superior Weight Loss, Health, and Longevity

“Now fast-forward to present-day America. We have no more famines, and we’re constantly feasting on unlimited amounts of inexpensive food that is rich in carbohydrates. But our DNA still lives in the Stone Age, even if we don’t. Our genes haven’t had time to adapt to the Krispy Kreme doughnut generation. So if we eat too much on a regular basis, our cells pump out more and more insulin. As a result, we sock away more and more fat, and voila! We now have an obesity epidemic on our hands and that means a corresponding epidemic of silent inflammation. The very genes that saved us tens of thousands of years ago are now our biggest liability. The same is true of our ability to generate a strong inflammatory response. This was the only way to survive microbial or parasitic invasions. As recently as seventy years ago, we had very few weapons against infectious diseases except a strong inflammatory response to kill such organisms. All we could do was hope and pray that our immune system would protect us against these ravages. Picture the Norman Rockwell painting of the physician wringing his hands over the patient, hoping the fever would break. That’s the way medicine was practiced seventy years ago. Those of us with overactive immune systems had a better chance of survival than those with weaker immune defenses. Thus, we’ve inherited a genetic predisposition for an intense inflammatory response from our ancestors who were the only ones to survive these constant microbial attacks. Today, we are faced with far fewer infectious disease threats. Vaccinations, clean water, and increased sanitation have banished many of these microbes. What’s more, we have a whole arsenal of drugs to take against microbial infections. Unfortunately, we no longer need our genetic propensity for mounting an excessive inflammatory response. Yet, again, we are stuck with this propensity since our genes haven’t had time to evolve. This sets the stage for increased silent inflammation, which gets activated by our diet and lifestyle. Our dramatically increased intake of vegetable oils (rich in the building blocks for pro-inflammatory eicosanoids) and our decreased consumption of fish oil (rich in the building blocks for anti-inflammatory eicosanoids) is one dietary habit that has activated this inflammation. It’s like adding kerosene to the already burning fire of silent inflammation that’s fueled by the obesity epidemic.”
― Barry Sears, The Anti-Inflammation Zone: Reversing the Silent Epidemic That's Destroying Our Health

“Let’s start with insulin. If you consume too many high-glycemic load carbohydrates, then blood glucose levels rapidly rise. Because blood glucose is toxic at high levels, the body responds by secreting insulin to drive excess blood glucose into your fat, muscle, and liver cells. If the rise in blood glucose is too rapid, then there is often an over-secretion of insulin, and then blood glucose levels drop too low, leading to hypoglycemia. This is what happens when you eat a big meal of pasta at noon, and two hours later you have a difficult time keeping your eyes open. To address the low blood glucose problem caused by consuming high-glycemic load carbohydrates, the brain implores you to begin searching for any high-glycemic food (candy bar, chips, or ideally a sugar-laden soda) that can quickly restore the low blood glucose levels. The use of these foods becomes a way of self-medicating to elevate low blood glucose levels. This may explain why the most popular spot in a hospital at the end of a work shift is the vending machine. However, if you can’t find a convenient source of glucose to quickly restore blood sugar levels, then the brain has an alternative mechanism to do so: increasing cortisol secretion to break down muscle into glucose via a process known as neo-glucogenesis. This is what happens when you follow ketogenic low-carbohydrate diets such as the Atkins diet. The common party line for advocates of ketogenic diets is that the brain prefers ketones to glucose for energy. I simply don’t buy that argument. Even under total starvation conditions, the brain levels of glucose never drop to less than 40 mg/dl due to neo-glucogenesis. At lower blood glucose levels (such as 25 to 35 mg/dl), the brain goes into lethargy, convulsions, and potentially a coma. If ketones generated by ketogeneic diets were such great sources of energy for the brain, then theoretically blood glucose levels could drop to zero and the brain would be completely happy. Researchers at Harvard Medical School demonstrated that cortisol levels increased by 18 percent after three months on the Atkins diet. Some of the consequences of increased cortisol levels are (1) you are hungrier (due to increased insulin resistance), (2) sicker (due to depressed immune function), and (3) less mentally sharp (due to destruction of neurons in the hippocampus region of the brain by their continuing exposure to excess cortisol). Three pretty good reasons to maintain adequate levels of blood glucose—not too much so the body secretes more insulin to reduce potentially toxic glucose levels in the blood, but not too little, which would cause the overproduction of cortisol in order to produce enough glucose for the brain.”
― Barry Sears, The Mediterranean Zone: Unleash the Power of the World's Healthiest Diet for Superior Weight Loss, Health, and Longevity

“What did I expect? A weight loss of about one pound per week. (It's genetically impossible to lose more than 1 to 1½ pounds of body fat per week—you just can't lose body fat any faster. You can lose more weight, but that will be primarily water loss and muscle-mass loss. That's why people on quick weight loss programs look so haggard—they're losing muscle mass.)”
― Barry Sears, The Zone: A Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss: Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body – Proven ... Loss, Optimal Health, and Peak Performance