The Glycemic Index Diet for Dummies (31 page)

You don't have to love every change you try. The trick is to find the changes you
do
like and put your focus there so they become habits. You can find many strategies to make a low-glycemic diet work in your unique lifestyle. For example, most people feel that finding low-glycemic rice and pastas that work in their lifestyle is a bit challenging. On the flip side, they may find it simple to add in low-glycemic fruits and vegetables because a wider amount of options exist. Focusing on the positive changes helps you feel accomplished, which in turn helps you achieve your goals.

Feeling out of your comfort zone at first

Changing habits is critical for long-term weight loss, but it comes with one large challenge — stepping out of your comfort zone. Anytime you do something new that's different from your prior conditioning, your habitual brain tells you to stop and return to your old habits because this change feels different and uncomfortable. You turally feel tension when changing habits, which in return forces you to act. You either slip into default mode and go back to your old, comfortable habits, or you stick to your decision and move forward to create new habits.

Maybe you're starting a new job that requires you to be in the office at 8:00 am. Now you have to get up at 6:00 am when you're used to getting up at 7:30 am. Pretty uncomfortable, huh? You're tired, it's dark outside, and your body clock feels completely off. Can't you just feel your body pulling you back to bed? Well, you have two choices: You can get up, despite how uncomfortable you feel, and go into work on time, or you can choose to go back to your old habits and stay in bed, accepting the consequences of losing your new job.

Eating a low-glycemic diet works the same way. If you go back to your old habits to avoid the temporary discomfort of change, you'll be accepting the undesired consequences (in this case, not losing weight, not feeling better, and not developing a healthier lifestyle). Developing a new habit is really only uncomfortable for the first couple weeks or so. After that, you're in a new, better-for-you comfort zone.

After you start consistently incorporating low-glycemic foods in your diet, you'll feel more comfortable. Just be prepared for a brief period of being out of your comfort zone first.

Chapter 7
:
Adding Low-G
lycemic Foods to Your Meals

In This Chapter

Understanding how the glycemic index can help you make good food substitutions

Swapping high-glycemic grains and breads for lower-glycemic varieties

Adding in plenty of fruits, veggies, and beans to provide bulk and help with weight loss

I
ncorporating delicious, low-glycemic foods into your everyday meals and snacks is easier than you may expect. You probably already enjoy several low-glycemic foods, which gives you a head start on meal planning. Putting the glycemic index to work is a matter of knowing whether a food is low-, medium-, or high-glycemic. You don't have to memorize a whole bunch of numbers, because several published glycemic index lists are readily available. You can seek them out or just head to Appendix A for lists of popular foods, including foods found in this book's recipes, to see whether they have a low, medium, or high glycemic load (see Chapter 4 for the scoop on glycemic load).

This chapter helps you understand how to choose low-glycemic whole grains, pastas, and
legumes
(also known as beans). It explains which fruits and vegetables give you the most volume, help fill you up, and promote a healthy weight. It also features tips on simple and easy ways to begin overhauling your diet so you can reap the benefits of choosing low-glycemic foods.

Using the Glycemic Index

In this section, you discover how to begin using the glycemic index to make gradual, lasting changes in your diet. You don't have to know the actual glycemic number of a food to follow an overall low-glycemic diet. Simply choose foods with a low or medium glycemic ranking, and you can be confident that you're making smart choices.

Several foods have already been tested for their glycemic index, and that information is readily available through
www.glycemicindex.com
, the official database compiled by Australian researchers.

Starting with small steps

Making just one or two changes in the foods you choose each day, switching from a higher-glycemic food to a lower-glycemic one, for example, can lead to big differences over time. The first step is to focus on simple changes that are easy to incorporate into your usual eating habits, such as the following:

Include one low-glycemic food with every meal and snack.
Refer to Appendix A for help finding low-glycemic foods, or check out the resource mentioned in the preceding section.

Eat smaller portions of high-glycemic foods.
By cutting your portion of a high-glycemic food such as instant mashed potatoes in half, you decrease that food's impact on the overall glycemic load of your meal.

Swap out a high-glycemic food for one that's low- to moderate-glycemic.
So instead of eating a smaller portion of instant mashed potatoes, you could try the made-over potato salad recipe from Chapter 15.

Take your time adjusting to these changes in order to give yourself a better chance of sticking with them. Set a goal to include a low-glycemic food at just one meal the first week. The second week, include a low-glycemic food at a second meal. By the time one month has passed, you'll find incorporating low-glycemic foods is a habit, not a chore. You'll also notice improved health and mood benefits.

As long as you start with small, reasonable changes in the foods you routinely eat, you'll gradually consume more low-glycemic foods and fewer high-glycemic foods over time. The end result will be an overall moderate- to low-glycemic eating pattern.

Comparing your current food choices to see wher
e you can make swaps

When you want to identify where your favorite foods fall on the glycemic index list, a good approach is to start looking up the glycemic index of the foods each time you eat a meal or a snack. Note how often you choose high-, medium-, and low-glycemic foods. Perhaps lunch most often includes lower-glycemic foods, but breakfast relies on higher-glycemic breads and cereals. Watch for broad patter such as these in the foods you eat regularly.

As you identify your current high-glycemic food choices, think about the low-glycemic foods you also have on hand. Can you substitute a lower-glycemic food for something higher? For example, instant mashed potatoes are high-glycemic (around 97 on average), but boiled new potatoes with their skins are low-glycemic (around 54 on average). Or you can use quick-cooking brown rice (with a glycemic index around 48) rather than potatoes in order to keep dinner preparation quick and simple.