Use The Glycemic Index For Healthy Weight Loss
The Glycemic Index is a great tool for healthy weight loss. It’s a scientific measure of how quickly particular foods cause an increase in your blood sugar levels. The faster the increase, the higher the GI rating, and the worse it is for your body. Anyone looking to drop a few pounds or maintain a trim figure must understand how to use the Glycemic Index in their daily life.
The fad of cutting carbohydrates completely out of the diet has now been replaced with clear thinking about how to control carb intake instead. Since your body needs high quality carbs to function properly, this is a much more sensible approach.
So, how do you learn how to control your carbs? You get a clear understanding of what this index is and how to use it in your daily life. In fact, paying attention to just this listing and choosing lower indexed foods has led to dramatic weight loss in many people.
The best news: it has led to weight loss that actually stays off long term if the eating pattern stays in place.
First, let’s get a clear understanding of what the Glycemic Index is. It deals exclusively with carbohydrates, so you will not find meats or other exclusive protein sources on the list. Carbohydrates range from vegetables and fruits to all varieties of grains, cookies, cake, and other sweets that use flour.
You may be quite amazed how much of the food you eat is a carbohydrate! This is what makes it so incredibly difficult to follow a diet that advises to completely cut them out. It leaves you with very few options.
All of these carbs are either cooked with lots of sugar or will have sugar in them naturally. The issue is how your body processes them.
When you eat whole grain bread, pasta, rice, or non-starchy vegetables and fruits, your body has to separate the fiber from the sugar. This takes time and will burn of calories as the sugar is slowly separated and released into your blood stream over time. It creates a long term source of energy.
When you eat sweets like cakes and donuts or refined white bread, pasta, and rice, the fiber has already been taken out of the food during processing. This means there is no work to be done separating and your body immediately starts rushing all of that sugar (natural and added) into your blood stream. The result is a sudden rise in blood sugar and energy, and then a quick drop that leaves your body craving more food.
Obviously, craving more food is not good for weight loss or a trim figure. It also is not good for your energy levels when your sugar drops so drastically.
The fastest and most accurate way to judge which foods are going to have this undesirable effect is by looking at the Glycemic Index and learning which foods have a higher rating. The higher the GI rating, the worse it is for your body. Therefore, make the bulk of your food choices from the low GI foods and you will find yourself feeling and looking better in very short time.
