Monday, January 16, 2017

Control 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.

Digestion and metabolism are complex processes, but you only need to understand the basics. When a food is digested, glucose passes into the bloodstream. When more glucose is released than can be burned for energy, the pancreas releases its hormone, insulin, to signal that the extra be stored in fat cells. Some of this overload will later be used in energy production, but some may linger in your fat cells 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.

Of course, eating a peanut candy bar is not a good choice. Just eat the peanuts, avoiding tooth decay and addiction to sweets. Choose the dry roasted kind that are seasoned with a moderate amount of sea salt.

Knowing how much impact a food has on your insulin response is important. If you select complex carbohydrates and high protein foods from the chart, all of which have a low number, you can then cross-reference them for fiber content and nutritional value. This is the key to losing weight quickly and safely and feeling good while you're reaching your goal.

A lot of the chart will make sense. Ice cream, candy, dried fruit, sodas, french fries, and white bread are generally known to cause weight gain. These are all ranked at the top of the chart. Some of the things in the 'to be limited' range of above 55 may surprise you, however. Granolas, flavored instant oatmeals and yogurts, orange juice, and rice do not promote weight loss. Fortunately, there are many, many foods that have a count of 54 or lower, so there's no need to feel deprived.

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.

Use the index to lose unwanted pounds, boost health, and have fun with your menus. At the same time, knowing the glycemic ranking of foods can help you cut the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other conditions you might have thought an inevitable part of growing older.




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