Why a low glycemic index diet is best

Glycemic index is a neasure of how fast the carbohydrates in any food will be absorbed into your blood stream as glucose. Glucose itself is given a GI of 100. Thus if you have ten grams of glucose on an empty stomach they measure the amount of glucose entring your blood each fifteen minutes and call this the baseline 100. If you eat ten grams of a food they want to measure they note how much glucose has entered you blood stream in fifteen minutes and divide by the glucose amount and mutiply by a hundred and that becomes that foods glycemic index. All you need to know is that high glycemic index is bad for you and low is good

so a high GI food like French baguette bread has a GI of 96 which means it gives you an increase in blood sugar as though you ate plain glucose. However non-fat plain yogurt has a GI of 14. Apples have a low GI of 38 and grape fruits are even better at 25, but dates have a GI of 105 which means they actually raise your blood sugar faster than if you ate plain glucose. I noticed that most (if not all) commercial cereals have high GI and most fruits have relatively speaking low and of course most vegetables are again low GI.

Sugar is transported in the blood only in the form of glucose. Glucose is stored in the liver and muscles ias glycogen which is a polymer of glucose (many glucose molecules linked together ready for use). Muscle can burn sugar and fats (lipids), however, the brain can only burn glucose aerobically (using oxygen).

That is one of the reasons you cannot live without enough oxygen and glucose in your brain. Your brain glucose metabolism is very delicate and your brain needs just the right amount of glucose in the blood stream to function effectively.

Too much glucose leads to becoming hyper and too little blood glucose makes you tired and drowsy and if it goes too low you'll faint. Please do not give sodas to children its like giving them drugs. In fact many brain researchers believe refined sugars (the type in all our foods) are mind altering drugs and nutritionists believe they are slow acting poisons.

Insulin is a hormone (small bioactive messenger molecules which affect the body at multiple sites like adrenalin, testosterone, progesterone, and thyroxin) which is secreted by the pancreas and regulates blood glucose levels When the blood sugar (glucose) levels go up the pancreas secrets Insulin into the blood stream which makes most cells to burn glucose rather fats and to store the glucose as glycogen in the liver and muscle. This lowers the blood glucose level.

When too much glucose enters the blood (you have eaten a high glycemic index snack or a soda), the pancreas having developed the insulin response over millions of years of evolution with natural foods (lower GI) pumps a huge amount of insulin to control the blood glucose levels. However, the sugar in the high GI food dumps into the blood rapidly and yet the insulin level is still going up and too much glucose is removed from the blood and now the blood glucose level is too low and from the sugar high we go into the low sugar blues.

The glycemic index values published are based on eating individual foods and when you eat a meal the glycemic index is not the same as the average of the foods you eat. If you start with the low glycemic index foods (eg don't eat bread in the beginning of the meal if at all) and slowly go the higher GI foods you end up affecting your blood sugar much less than if you eat the high glycemic index foods first.

So eat the protein and low GI vegetables as broccoli first and later move to the higher glycemic index portions of your meal. And of course eating slowly is the best way of eating and allows you to stop when you have eaten enough and eating fast (even a low GI meal) will by pass your brain's natural way of knowing that you are full and you'll eat too much.

So select a low glycemic index diet and eat slowly while increasing your activity and you'll notice that your weight will start going down while you become more healthy and are satisfied with smaller portions. Among the commercial diet programs the only one I know which is based on both portion control and a low glycemic index menu is NutriSystem.

Of course it is much better to just eat correctly a combination of low glycemic index mostly plant based foods but this may not be possible for all people and that's where I can recommend NutriSystem over Jenny Craig or La Weight Loss. As I do more research I'll review other programs too. Here I have reviewed the costs of different programs

Before refined foods, especially sugar came about obesity was a disease of the kings and very rich. As more and more sugar is consumed our average weight keeps going up but diet foods are no better. Aspartame and other sugar substitutes have their own problems and may mess up your insulin biochemistry. Avoid them. Even plain soda water leaches calcium and it's better to drink the best drink in the world, plain uncontaminated water.