The Glycemic Index Diet for Dummies (15 page)

A low-glycemic diet not only helps you manage blood sugar and insulin levels but it also serves as a natral appetite suppressant. Who needs scary over-the-counter diet pills when you can just use food? Better yet, incorporating low-glycemic foods helps you deal with a reduced calorie intake so you don't feel starved all day. The following sections highlight the two main reasons a low-glycemic diet can work to control your appetite.

Feeling fuller with fiber

Fiber is nature's natural appetite suppressant. It provides bulk and slows down digestion to help you feel full for a longer period of time. So what does fiber have to do with a low-glycemic diet? Well, many low-glycemic foods are also higher in fiber.

Not
all
low-glycemic foods are high in fiber, but you may naturally increase your fiber intake as you begin following a low-glycemic diet. (To discover foods that are both low-glycemic and high in fiber, head to Chapter 2.)

Another reason why fiber makes you feel fuller is that high-fiber foods take longer to chew, causing you to take a little longer with your meal. Your brain needs 20 minutes before it can register that you're full, and many people can wolf down a second helping before that 20-minute mark is up. High-fiber foods take a bit more time to get through.

Bumping up your fullness hormones with low-glycemic foods

Appetite is controlled by an intricate dance of hormones that trigger hunger and fullness. Have you ever felt that "way too full" feeling for hours after a big meal? You know, like when you've eaten a huge Thanksgiving dinner and all you want to do is curl up on the couch like a beached whale afterward. That feeling is the effect of your fullness hormones.

One of these fullness hormones, called
GLP-1,
has been shown to be of particular importance in preliminary studies with a low-glycemic diet. GLP-1 is one of two hormones that works by telling your brain you've had enough. It really brings things to a halt by telling your stomach to stop moving anything along to your intestines until what's already there has been broken down.

Early in 2009, researchers from King's College in London took a closer look at GLP-1 in respect to a low-glycemic diet. Volunteers who ate a low-glycemic breakfast ended up with 20 percent higher levels of GLP-1 in their blood afterward compared to those who ate a high-glycemic breakfast. This preliminary study shows a direct correlation between a low-glycemic diet and GLP-1, but more research is needed to confirm this finding.

Until that research is available, why not conduct your own experiment? Here's how:

1. Maintain your current diet for several days and keep food records.

2. Rate your level of fullness/satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 1 being hungry and 10 being full) two to three hours after a meal or snack.

3. As you begin including more low-glycemic foods in your meals, note any differences in your overall hunger/fullness levels.

Combining Low-Glycemic Foods with Calorie Awareness

Following a low-glycemic diet isn't a stand-alone solution for weight loss. Like it or not, you still need to pay attention to the amount of calories you take in each day.

If you eat a low-glycemic diet that's still high in calories, you aren't going to get very far with your weight-loss goals. A low-glycemic diet is an important piece of the weight-loss puzzle, but it's not the solution to the puzzle. Successfully losing weight requires a holistic approach that includes eating a combination of low-glycemic carbs, healthy protein, and fats; counting calories; exercising; and doing what you can to pump up your metabolism.

In the sections that follow, I explain why paying attention to calories is still essential on a low-glycemic diet and how to get the most out of your daily calorie allotment.

Understanding why calories still count

Calories are always going to be one of the most important aspects of weight loss. If you consume more calories than your body can convert into energy, your body turns that unspent energy into body fat and stores it somewhere. Think of it like a car. Gasoline is similar to calories in that it provides energy for the car to function just like calories provide you with the energy you need to function. If you fill a car's gas tank past capacity, the extra gas overflows onto the ground. Unfortunately your body's overflow system doesn't just land on the ground; it winds up on your thighs, your rear, your stomach, and wherever else your body deems fit to store fat.

To lose weight effectively, you need to reduce your calorie intake through dietary changes and exercise. Table 3-1 gives you an idea of the calorie deficit needed to lose a specific amount of weight.

Cutting back on your calorie intake doesn't mean you need to diligently count calories. Who in his right mind actually wants to do that all day every day? Instead, you just need to make small changes that lead to a calorie deficit. Adopting a low-glycemic lifestyle is one of those changes because many low-glycemic foods are lower in calories. People who start choosing lower-glycemic foods tend to naturally lower their calorie level without even having to think about it.

Following are a few examples of how switching to a low-glycemic diet can impact your calorie level:

Choosing a side salad with your sandwich rather than a small bag of potato chips saves you 50 to 100 calories.

Switching from a large bagel (about 4 ounces) with cream cheese for breakfast to 1 cup of low-glycemic cereal with milk saves you around 200 calories.

Skipping the baked potato with all the fixings at your steak dinner and replacing it with steamed broccoli saves you around 300 calories.

See? Changing even one meal a day to incorporate low-glycemic foods can be enough to impact your weight loss each week. These changes may seem small, but they add up to big calorie deficits when you stick with them over time.

Knowing that low-glycemic doesn't always mean low-calorie

Although it'd be great if eating low-glycemic foods always resulted in lower calorie levels, it doesn't always work out that way. The calorie deficits you experience on a low-glycemic diet really depend on what your diet looked like before. If you're exchanging a lot of unhealthy or high-calorie choices for more healthy, low-calorie foods, then yes, you may see a difference in your calorie level. However, if you already eat a fairly healthy diet and you're simply replacing your high-glycemic grains and veggies for their lower-glycemic counterparts, you won't see much of a difference in your overall calorie level. For example, brown rice is lower-glycemic than jasmine rice, but both contain the same amount of calories.