Weight Loss
Weight Loss
There are many weight loss programs available online and offline.
One of the most popular weight loss programs is to choose foods according to their Glycemic Load (GL). All food has a glycemic index (GI) which is a qualitative measure that tells you whether the carbohydrate it contains is fast or slow releasing. The Glycemic Load tells you more about the effect that food will have on your weight, and whether or not it will cause you to put on weight. A most interesting weight loss program that makes sense.
If we believe the most effective weight loss program is to shed pounds by stabalizing your blood sugar and insulin response to food, then we need to pay attention to the ways to achieve this. Keeping the blood sugar balanced depends not only on what we eat but also when we eat it. If it works for you then luse it.
First we need to reduce the amount of carbohydrate in our diets. We also need to choose foods with a low glycemic-load (GL), combine carbohydrates with protein and cut back on stimulants and stress. For weight loss on this diet it is important to make sure that you eat no more than 40 GL a day and at main meals you should eat low GL carbohydrates with protein rich foods.
How food is processed, is a key element in the GL of a type of food and effect it will have on your blood sugar. If you eat spaghetti if example your blood sugar levels and your insulin levels will rise quite gently until the body produces insulin and then they drop. However if you eat white bread they will rise twice as high and then drops down much lower. It is the peaks that damage your arteries making them less responsive to insulin and the troughs that leave you tired and sleepy and craving carbohydrates and or stimulants. It is strange that two foods made of roughly the same flour can have such different effects on the body. This is probably because bread is cooked longer than spaghetti. Needless to say eating white bread will do nothing to help you in your goal of weight loss.
The Glycemic Index levels indicate which foods raise your blood sugar compared to the effect of pure glucose. The more complex the carbohydrate, the lower the GI, as it will take longer for the sugar to be broken down and released into the blood stream . For example apples and oats are slow releasing and raisins and puffed rice cereal are fast releasing. Therefore, foods you choose to help you to lose weight should be from the Low Glycemic Index foods.
There is a problem with using just the GI score because as you will discover, certain foods such as carrots and chocolate have similar scores and it would be foolish to choose the chocolate over the carrots if you want to avoid the blood sugar highs and lows and ultimately weight loss. The Glycemic Load (GL) is a far better way of predicting the right foods to eat as it is an indicator of what a given serving of food will do to your blood sugar. Remember, balancing your blood sugar and insulin is the only sure way to lose weight and keep it off.
Janet Matthews
+44 7815614557
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