GI Diet

A low GI diet could help you in a big way if you often feel tired, have sugar cravings, want to lose weight or have to keep an eye on your blood sugar levels because of diabetes or some other medical condition. There are many benefits to a low glycemic diet.

Glycemic Index

Essentially, the GI rating of a food is calculated by observing how quickly the carbohydrates in that food break down into sugar within your body. All carbs break down into sugars at some point, but it’s the rate of how quickly this happens that determines a food’s GI rating. This decomposition rate is important because it determines how quickly and to what extent you will feel the effects of that sugar in your body. For example, if a food has a high GI rating, it means the carbs will break down into sugars very fast, which in turn means that you’ll experience the effects of that sugar much more than you would with a food that’s low on the GI scale which are characterized by a more consistent energy release over a longer period of time. The GI scale was invented by two professors in Toronto, Canada, in the early 1980s, to measure the effects of certain foods on a person’s blood sugar levels.

Blood Sugar

There’s a fundamental reason why a high GI diet isn’t good for you, these foods raise your blood sugar levels quickly, but only for a relatively short period of time, then comes the crash bringing hunger and sugar cravings – this is much like a rollercoaster ride.

As mentioned above low GI foods offer a consistent energy release over a longer period of time. This means nice steady energy levels and longer periods between meals. Low GI snacks between meals (before you get hungry) such as nuts are a great way to prevent sugar cravings that demand cakes and sweets. Note that many high GI foods don’t contain any obvious sugar (eg plain cornflakes).

Low GI Diet

50 years ago the average person’s diet contained fewer high GI foods than today, the main reason for this is processed foods. The easiest way for food manufacturers to sell us foods is to ensure they taste good, so they’ve invented all manner of ways of processing foods to ensure just that. What they don’t publicize is that all this processing raises the GI levels (of course not necessarily in every case but the majority).

Do you think there’s a link between artificial processed foods and obesity levels? Could this be one of the causes of rising obesity levels? Never before in history have we eaten so many processed foods, never before have we been so obese. YOU CAN take control of your hunger and diet, but first you need to understand the chemical processes involved in digestion.

Every gas station sells the same type of gas, there’s not much difference between them – the same is not true of food. Put the wrong type of fuels into your body and there are bound to be consequences!