Glycemic Index Diet
Glycemic index diet is one of the most effective ways known to lose or control weight these days.
By not giving an instant spike to your blood sugar, this diet has the ability to help you control your feeling of hunger and it comes with many health benefits such as reducing the bad cholesterol, preventing heart disease, managing diabetes and even increasing the endurance.
GI allows you to classify foods according to the way they affect the blood sugar within two hours of eating it. Low GI is ’55 and under’ on a scale of 1 to 100, ’56 to 69′ is medium and ’70 and above’ will be high GI.
Glycemic Index is now being recommended by many doctors to patients with diabetes or obesity and nutritionists are choosing to favour the GI over trying to explain complex or simple carbohydrates to people.
Diabetic Nutrition and Glycemic Index
The Rules and Limitations of Glycemic Index Diet
• Please don’t forget that GI applies to the carbohydrate component in foods and not protein and fat.
• Processed foods that are low in fibre tend to be high in GI.
• The way you cook affects the glycemic levels. Fried chips are higher in GI than boiled potatoes.
• If you have a high GI food combined with something low in GI, overall glycemic index will be reduced.
• The time that you have your food: If you have a dessert or pastry after a nice healthy meal, your blood sugar will be less affected than when you have it on its own in the afternoon.
• The glycemic index response can also vary from person to person.
• Glycemic Index Diet includes foods that are generally good for your health but it does not measure the quality of foods for nutritional value. Certain high GI foods are needed by your body as well. It is a measure of the rate of sugar release into your blood, not how high quality a certain food is.
Simple Guide to Having a Low Glycemic Index Diet:
• Choose oats and muesli over processed high sugar cereals.
• Wholegrain biscuits over low in fibre biscuits.
• Breads with grains and seeds and high in fibre over white processed breads.
• Cakes with fruits, oats and seeds.
• Basmati rice over normal rice.
• Sweet and new potatoes over older potatoes.
Diabetics Should Avoid Fruits?
The Very Basics of a Good Diet:
• Keeping blood sugar under control by keeping an eye on glycemic index values.
• Eating high fibre foods.
• Lowering the intake of saturated fats and having more of monounsaturated fats.
• Eating foods lower in sugar and salt, or you may want to try out stevia– a safe sugar substitute, that is claimed to be beneficial in the treatment of diabetes.
• And exercising regularly.
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