The Glycemic Index Diet for Dummies (18 page)

Figuring out what the numbers mean

Knowing how to calculate the glycemic load of a food is great, but it's not quite enough. The end measurement is what's most important to know. Similar to the glycemic index, the glycemic load is measured as low, medium, and high, rankings that help you determine your best choices for realistic portion sizes.

The measurements for glycemic load are as follows:

Low:
10 or less

Medium:
11 to 19

High:
20 or more

After you know the glycemic load of a food, think of these rankings and plop your food into place. Thanks to the preceding section you know that carrots have a glycemic load of9. That's less than 10, so carrots have a low glycemic load. White rice, with its glycemic load of 26, has a high glycemic load because 26 is greater than 20.

When you don't have time to calculate the glycemic load and match it up with the right measurement, keep in mind that foods with the least amount of carbohydrates (think vegetables and fruits) tend to have a lower glycemic load than starchy foods (such as rice and pastas).

Factoring in portion sizes

Perhaps one of the greatest beauties of the glycemic load is that researchers have embraced it as the main standard of measurement, which means it's already calculated for you in most any glycemic index list. Three cheers for not having to drag a calculator with you everywhere you go! The variable in this info, however, is portion size. If you're eating more or less than the portion size stated in the list you're looking at, you need to account for possible fluctuations in the glycemic load.

To better see what I mean, consider the following different portion sizes of jasmine rice:

You can clearly see how the different portion sizes have a dramatic impact on the glycemic load. The higher the portion size, the greater the glycemic load will be. You can also see that, regardless of the calculation, the glycemic load for jasmine rice is so high that this food item isn't going to dip into the medium or low category very easily.

To see what happens in the case of a food that borders on being low-glycemic, take a look at brown rice, which has a glycemic index of 50:

The smaller portion size still doesn't bring the glycemic load of brown rice down to a low level, but it does keep it within the medium range. Increasing the portion size raises the glycemic load to the high level.

Last but not least, check out what happens to the glycemic load when you play with the portion size of a low-glycemic food such as kidney beans, which have a glycemic index of 34:

In this case, the two smaller portion sizes fall into a low glycemic load, and the larger one moves into the medium range.

I've shown you these three examples so you can see exactly how portion size affects glycemic load, but I promise I won't make you do math every time you eat! Just knowing the portion size used in Appendix A's list will help you determine how much to eat. If the portion used is 2/3 cup and that food ends up being low-glycemic, you know you can easily eat that amount or less.

Of course, determining glycemic load based on portion size isn't an exact science, so sticking to low- to medium-glycemic foods within a reasonable amount is just fine. The beauty of this tactic for weight loss is that it keeps you eating portion sizes within a good calorie range. Limiting your rice servings to 1/3 to 2/3 of a cup is a great place to be. If you increase that portion size to 1 to 2 cups, then you begin to not only increase your glycemic load but also your calorie intake.

Embracing High-GI/Low-GL Foods

In the early days of the glycemic index's popularity, experts appeared on television screens next to a table full of foods, talking about which ones were good and which ones were bad. Almost always they came to high-glycemic foods such as potatoes and watermelon and announced them as being equivalent to pure sugar. First of all . . . of
course
foods that contain mostly carbohydrates are all sugar . . . all carbohydrates break down into sugar, so that's a bit of an unfair comment to begin with. But in the experts' defense, they were operating with the glycemic index alone.

Thanks to the glycemic load, carrots and other high-glycemic fruits and veggies that got such a bad rap aren't considered so bad for you anymore. That's a darn good thing in my book because those same fruits and veggies are loaded with important nutrients.