Losing Weight With The Glycemic Index Chart

By Kathleen Adams


If you want to lose weight, have energy throughout the day, and stay healthy, you need to choose the food you eat carefully. There are many things to consider, like freshness, pesticide and herbicide load, fiber content, and protein count, but perhaps the first is a food's place on the glycemic index chart. This information will tell you how consuming any particular food will impact your blood sugar.

The process of metabolism is complex, but the basics can be simplified. When you eat a food, it is digested and the resulting glucose is released into the bloodstream. If a lot of glucose is released at once, the 'blood sugar level' rises dramatically. In response, your pancreas releases insulin, which causes this sugar to be stored in the body. Later, if needed, it will be burned for energy. Extra sugars are stored in fat cells, maybe forever.

Simply counting calories doesn't take into account the way foods are digested. A bagel, made of white flour and water, is easily digested and quickly turned into glucose. Eating one causes a spike in blood sugar and a fast insulin response. In contrast, a chocolate chip cookie contains sugar as well as flour, so it takes longer to digest. This explains why a Snickers bar is ranked lower on the index than plain popcorn.

A candy bar, even if loaded with peanuts, is not a good choice, of course, Its sugars still promote tooth decay, further an addiction to sweets, and count as empty calories. It's better to just eat peanuts, dry roasted and seasoned with a little sea salt. Peanuts have an extremely low number on the chart.

For any weight reduction program, you need to know how each food impacts your system. Using the chart, you can select low-glycemic foods. After also checking their fiber and protein content, and making sure they are additive and pesticide-free, you may choose to include them in your diet. This way you lose weight while boosting health and energy.

It'll be no surprise that you already know to avoid foods that top the chart. Candy, dried fruit, sodas, french fries, and ice cream are obviously not diet foods. However, you may be surprised at some of the foods in the 55 and up range that you should omit or limit. Orange juice, raisins, rice, flavored instant oatmeal and yogurt, and granola are in this too-high range.

That's one reason these charts are so helpful. You can avoid mistakes (like thinking a plain baked potato is OK, or a slice of watermelon) while getting menu suggestions. You may have forgotten about lentils, sweet potatoes, and hummus. Planning a week's worth of meals off the chart is fun, and you can eat a lot of hummus before you derail your weight loss momentum.

The index is a useful tool when you want to achieve an ideal weight or eat better. Knowing how a food impacts your blood sugar keeps you on a heart healthy track and reduces the risk of diabetes to almost nothing. Check it out!




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