THE GROWTH HORMONE ENHANCEMENT DIET
Using the nutritional information given here, you can put together your own diet that incorporates all seven elements of the Growth Hormone Enhancement Program. These are
1. Take GH-releasers.
2. Bulk up on protein.
3. Keep fats low.
4. Eat carbohydrates that are low on the glycemic index.
5. Keep meals at least four hours apart.
6. Fast one day every two weeks (optional).
7. Do GH-releasing exercises.
1.GH-RELEASERS
The key to losing fat and gaining muscle is taking growth hormone releasers. By stimulating higher levels of endogenous growth hormone and IGF-1, you will prime your body to do naturally what it did when you were younger, burn the fat for energy and use the amino acids to build muscle.
Most people should take growth hormone releasers only before going to sleep. (You can also try supplements that combine most effective growth hormone releasers all into one product – like Genf20 Plus.)
This will do two things: give you the best sleep you’ve had in years and cause the biggest spurts of GH to occur in the first two hours of sleep when they do naturally. If you are exercising heavily, especially if you are doing heavy weight lifting, taking GH releasers an hour (for powders) to an hour and a half (for pills and tablets) before exercising will enhance your strength and performance levels.
2. HIGH PROTEIN
Most of us grew up at a time when protein was the hero, lauded for its contribution to strong muscles, bone, teeth, and hair. Then it got slammed for the bad company it kept, especially saturated fats like red meat. More recently, some nutritionists have pointed out that high protein puts a burden on the digestive system and kidneys and have recommended even lower levels of 12 to 15 percent. Now we’re telling you to raise protein! What’s going on?
Okay here’s the skinny on protein. If you’re going to sit around and sedentate, stick to the protein levels of 15 to 20 percent or even lower. But if you take GH-releasers and exercise vigorously, your body’s requirements are going to change.
Brawn Food
Muscles don’t appear out of thin air. They are made from the amino acid that the body gets from breaking down protein. If not enough protein is supplied from the outside in the form of food or nutritional supplements, the body draws on its own tissue, in effect eating its own muscle. This is muscle-wasting.
When this occurs the body is in a state of negative nitrogen balance. That means it does not have enough nitrogen, which comes from the amino acids, for tissue-building. Some athletes use anabolic steroids to keep themselves in positive nitrogen balance, which means that they are retaining more nitrogen, and thus more protein building blocks for muscle growth. This is the anabolic state versus the catabolic state, in which more tissue is being broken down than built up.
But anabolic steroids are a dangerous and unnatural way to bulk up muscles. The right way to do this is by increasing the percentage of protein you eat in your diet and replacing your growth hormone levels with GH-releasers.
Effect of GH on Protein
Remember what growth hormone does to lean body mass??? It builds it up by increasing protein synthesis. And it puts this protein into the lean body mass, including muscles. Ordinarily your body likes to convert some of the calories in protein to sugar and then changes that sugar into fat, which it stores for future use. But growth hormone performs this alchemy trick where it uses the protein for muscle-building and mobilizes the stored fat so that it can be used as fuel. This means that you have to feed the protein-making machinery with more protein, so that you don’t get into negative nitrogen balance, where you are digesting your own muscles to get the needed protein.
How Much Protein Do You Need?
We can get some idea of the protein needed for a GH-enhancement diet from studies of elite athletes. According to a 1984 article by Peter Lemon and co-workers in Sports Medicine, “Athletes should consume 1.8 to 2.0 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day (or .8 to .9 grams per pound). This is approximately twice the recommended requirement for sedentary individuals.”
Other researchers suggest even higher percentages. A study of elite weight lifters in Rumania found that when they increased their dietary program to 1 to 2 grams per pound of body weight (225 percent to 438 percent of the U.S. Recommended Dietary Allowance), they increased their muscle mass about 5 percent and their strength performance by about 5 percent. Russian researchers who experimented with high-protein diets and vigorous weight rifting found that during periods of intensive training, the athletes required about 2.2 to 2.6 grams per kilogram of body weight, or about 1 to 1.2 grams per pound. Some athletes even went into negative nitrogen balance when they went below 2 grams per kilogram during intensive training.
We recommend that you get anywhere from .5 to 2 or even more grams per kilogram of body weight. If you are a diabetic, have kidney problems, are sedentary, or are over age sixty-five, it is best to stay on the low side. However, many of you will want to increase your exercise levels, including resistance weight training. Depending on your level, you can go between 1 and 2 grams, or even higher. It is important that you drink between 10 and 12 glasses of water to help the kidneys flush out toxins.
The best sources of dietary protein are lean chicken, fish, occasional lean meat, soy products, egg whites, and whey protein. Some bodybuilders swear that they get bigger muscles when they eat chicken and turkey instead of red meat. And who are we to argue with bodybuilders? But red meat also contains carnitine, a metabolic enhancer.
Then there is the wonderful, versatile soy protein. Tofu, or “to-faux” as we like to call it, can be made to resemble almost everything under the sun from chicken salad to hamburgers to ice cream. Orthodox Jews who always secretly craved cheeseburgers can now indulge in real hamburgers made with “to-faux” cheese. Soy protein contains a powerful antioxidant, genistein, and a protease inhibitor that provide a double whammy against cancer.
It also boosts HDL levels, lowers triglycerides, and maintains blood glucose at healthy levels. The best sources of soy protein are soy flour, soy milk, tofu, soy nuts, miso, and tempeh. Not soy sauce or soybean oil, which contain very little of the protein.
Soy protein has yet another remarkable effect that will light up the life of anyone trying to lose weight.
Egg whites are pure protein. You can make egg whites from hard-boiled eggs palatable by chopping them up with low-fat mayonnaise and a little salt. Whey protein is another favorite of bodybuilders. Whey is the runny stuff that’s left when you make, cheese.
The easiest way to get your protein, and the one we recommend if you are going in for the whole program, is a high-quality protein shake. Here is one recipe:
PROTEIN EGG SHAKE
2 to 6 boiled eggs with the yolks removed
lto2 bananas
Half cup strawberries
1 teaspoon vanilla
Mix in blender at high speed until well blended.
You can vary your shakes by adding skim milk or soy protein or even vegetables like broccoli. You can also buy commercially made
protein shakes at the health food store and add water, milk, juice, or fruit, and blend it, according to the instructions. If you are using protein shakes to meet your protein requirements, take one or two protein shakes a day, the first between breakfast and lunch, and the second between lunch and dinner or immediately after exercising.
3. LOW FAT
Fat is the enemy of growth hormone. It blocks both the production and the release of GH. “If you’re eating 40% to 50% every day and you’re taking growth hormone, it’s like putting on the heat and the air conditioner at the same time,” says Dr. Terry.
We give you a range of up to 30 percent because many people find it difficult to go below this. But for best results, aim for the low end, with most of this coming from unsaturated fats or monounsaturates like olive oil. While growth hormone raises HDL levels and lowers LDL levels, there’s no sense in working against this action by eating saturated fats that increase cholesterol.
4. EAT LOW-GLYCEMIC CARBOHYDRATES
The glycemic index is a measure of how fast a carbohydrate enters the bloodstream and raises your blood sugar level. The index forms a basic part of the GH diet because when blood sugar is raised, it triggers the release of insulin. The higher the food is on the glycemic index, the more insulin is secreted. And high insulin blocks the fat-melting action of growth hormone just as growth hormone interferes with the fat-storage action of insulin.
Many of the carbohydrates you would expect to be low on the glycemic index are, such as most vegetables. But then there are surprising exceptions like carrots, corn, and beets, which are all very high. Most fruits, even very sweet ones like berries, are low because their fiber content slows the entrance into the bloodstream and because fructose, the sugar in fruits, has a slower entry rate than glucose.
This brings us to the most surprising and least intuitive carbohydrates that are high on the index. Glucose is the sugar found in grains and starches like bread, cereal, potatoes, rice, and pasta. These are the very foods that have been touted as the basis of the new healthier, low-fat way to eat. But these are also the foods that raise the level of insulin, which encourages the storage of fat.
In fact, some nutritional experts believe that the glycemic index helps explain why Americans are getting fatter while they claim to eat less fat than ever before. As a nation, we are eating less fat, especially saturated fat, which helps account for the significant drop in the rate of heart disease. But the pasta and grains we conscientiously substitute for meat have raised insulin levels, generated weight gain, and caused the rate of insulin-resistant, type 2 diabetes to rise dramatically!
This does not mean that you should cut out all high-glycemic foods. Almost everything, including a dish of Haagen-Dazs, is all right if done in moderation. Incidentally, ice cream is low on the glycemic index and low-fat ice cream or frozen yogurt is even better. But it does mean that you should familiarize yourself with the glycemic index (see table below) and try to eat foods that are on the low end rather than on the high end. This means, for instance, eating sweet potatoes rather than regular potatoes and whole wheat spaghetti rather than white rice. Adding fiber is a good way to retard the rate of insulin’s entry into the bloodstream. High-fiber oatmeal, for instance, has a glycemic index of 49, while cornflakes are 80.
5. SPACE YOUR MEALS
Take advantage of the feast-fast cycle (see above) by spacing your meals and snacks so that they are between four hours and five hours apart. This time interval will allow the insulin to disappear from your bloodstream so that the growth hormone can work unimpeded to build muscle and lean body tissue. But don’t go beyond five hours or you will suffer from the effects of hypoglycemia. The slower-absorbed proteins in your diet should keep you from becoming hungry. Have your last meal at least four hours before you plan to go to bed. When you go to bed at night, you’ll be taking your growth hormone releasers on an empty stomach so that they can be fully absorbed.
6. TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR FAST
As we mentioned, the greatest spikes of growth hormone occur during fasting. In fact, the anti-aging effects of growth hormone may help explain why caloric restriction, or fasting every other day, has doubled the life span of experimental animals.
It is probably one of the body’s survival mechanisms in times of food shortage, maintaining stamina and strength. People who are in good health can try fasting for one day every two weeks to really get their growth hormone levels surging. Roy Walford, M.D., one of the nation’s pre-eminent gerontologists and author of the 120-Year Diet, has used fasting for two days of every week for years as an expedient way to cut down calories for life-extension purposes.
Since you will not be taking in energy in the form of food, plan to fast when the physical and mental demands on your time are at their lowest. For most people, not eating for twenty-four hours makes it difficult to perform vigorous exercise or other taxing activities. To prepare your body for a fast, a day or two before, switch to a simple diet of cooked vegetables, salads, and juices, while avoiding grains, breads, dairy products, meat, and fish. Another pre-fast approach is to skip a meal or two for a few days before beginning the fast. Fasting for a single day is not very difficult to do, and many people report that they experience a euphoric feeling similar to a runner’s high.
In addition to hiking GH levels, fasting allows the digestive enzymes to move through the empty stomach directly into the bloodstream and intestines, cleanses the bloodstream of metabolic wastes, purifies the colon, and relieves allergies, headaches, inflammations, blood pressure problems, and various skin diseases. Important: Do not attempt to fast without consulting your physician, especially if you suffer from diabetes, heart disease, or other medical conditions.
When fasting, here are a few simple rules to follow:
1. Drink two to three quarts of liquid, or eight to twelve glasses. This can be in the form of fresh vegetable or fruit juice, divided up during the day, with one to two glasses in the morning as breakfast; one glass at midday; one to two glasses for lunch; and one to two glasses for dinner. The rest of the time, drink water.
2. Do not maintain a busy schedule this day. Relax, do light exercise, and nap when necessary. You shouldn’t really need as much sleep as usual, since your body doesn’t have to work to digest food.
7. GH-RELEASING EXERCISES
Both aerobic exercise at very high levels and weight training will stimulate growth hormone. The workout plan together with growth hormone releasers and the GH diet will take decades off your body.
I’ll be updating all workouts in TheHGHPlan here on TheHGHBlog, so stay tuned and subscribe!