Balance Bar
The Balance Bar -- 40/30/30 Nutrition That's Easy and Convenient
The Balance Bar -- How Important Is It Really?
Many people are asking how important the Balance Bar is to their health, fitness and reaching or keeping their optimum weight.
If you haven't read any of the Zone books by Dr. Barry Sears, you may be puzzled by the stories you hear, of ordinary people such you and I, and celebrities such as Charlie Sheen, Renee Zellweger, and Kevin Costner, losing weight, keeping it off and feeling a lot better in the process.
And improving our health. That isn't as obvious, and can't be proven in the short run, perhaps, because the real proof is in living longer, but I'm sure it's real nonetheless.
A Balance Bar is an Easy Way to Remain in the Zone
The Zone is Dr. Sears' catchy name for the state of your body's metabolism where the important hormone insulin is in a range where there's enough of it to meet your body's needs (that is, to store nutrition), but not too much of it.
If you have too much insulin in your bloodstream, your body is storing excess calories as fat, not burning them for energy as you go through your daily life.
Plus, lots of other stuff, especially hormones, are affected by this. That's hard to describe. Dr. Sears is the expert and he has written quite a few books about all the related health aspects to insulin, including the negative consequences of letting it go above its optimum level.
It's easy to summarize, though. Too much insulin makes you fat(ter), less healthy and biologically older.
So now you're wondering how and why your insulin gets too high.
The answer is simple: Too many carbohydrates.
Too Many Carbohydrates Jack Up Your Insulin to an Unhealthy Level
Basically, the food we eat consists of three "macro" nutrients. Yes, there are vitamins and minerals, etc, but more even more important and basic are the three macronutrients:
Carbohydrates
Protein
Fat
Most people have a good idea of what foods they eat are high in protein (anything from an animal) and fat. Foods from plants are generally high in carbohydrates.
This includes of course fruits, vegetables and food from grains (flour, bread, rice, potatoes, pasta etc).
And the foods we think of as snack foods are also mainly carbohydrates: sugar, cake, pies, soda, and so on.
So if it's sweet and/or starchy, it's a carbohydrate and you shouldn't eat much of it.
Many years ago, before the U.S. government glorified grain products, people who wanted to lose weight knew they were supposed to stop eating sugar and starchy foods.
Later, the U.S. government started promoting cereal foods, Nathan Pritikin made people afraid to eat meat, eggs or anything else high in cholesterol (which means any food from animals, which means all foods high in protein and fat) and so somehow people got the idea that to lose weight they should eat cereal based foods, so long as sugar was not included.
In some circles, the cereal based food had to be a whole grain. Bread became virtuous as long as it was not made from white flour.
Balance Bars are Healthy "Candy" Bars
In fact, your healthy carbohydrates are fruits (within limits varying by kind -- some contain more carbs than others) and vegetables.
Dr. Barry Sears did a lot of research and discovered that the healthiest meals to keep your insulin within proper limits was 40% carbohydrates (primarily vegetables, with some fruits), 30% lean protein and 30% fat.
As you may guess, this is not the diet most Americans eat.
It can also be somewhat difficult, given our modern lifestyles, to eat only meals and snacks that meat this guideline.
The beauty of the Balance bar is that for just a small sum, you can eat a delicious bar which is Zone balanced, so your insulin remains in the health Zone, that's only 200 calories and which contains a lot of healthy micronutrition (vitamins and minerals), and it's affordable and convenient.