The Glycemic Index Diet for Dummies (78 page)

Tracking consistency

Whethe
r you've hit a plateau after losing some weight or you've had a hard time getting your weight to budge in the first place, take the time to track your food intake and physical activity. You may feel like you're eating the right foods and exercising regularly, but until you track your food intake and physical activity for at least a week, it's hard to tell. For pointers on starting a food journal, head to Chapter 6.

You'd be surprised how easy it is for excess calories, the wrong food choices, and exercise inconsistency to slip in without you knowing it. When keeping a food journal, you may notice that you increased your starches to three servings at breakfast and lunch rather than two. That adds up to 160 calories right there. You may also find that you really only went on two walks this week rather than four or that you ate more high-glycemic foods than low ones for the week. These are the small, subtle differences that can really affect your results.

Take a look at this food journal in Figure 13-1 as an example.

If you just look at the food choices and balance, this food journal seems great. This person is using low-glycemic foods, eating every four to five hours, and balancing her intake of carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Her exercise looks good too. However, this person's weight isn't moving. When you take a closer look at the portion sizes, you realize that her calorie intake adds up to approximately 2,385 calories and that she has increased carbohydrate servings with a few meals, which can make her glycemic load higher than she may want.

This person has several options. Because nuts are high in calories desp being healthy and low-glycemic, she can decrease her almond servings to 1/4 cup. She can also decrease her toast in the morning to one slice and omit the whole-wheat roll with dinner. These moves would not only decrease her glycemic load for breakfast and dinner but they'd also lower her total calorie level to 1,885 calories, which may be enough to jump-start her weight loss again. By omitting one of the nut servings altogether, she can bring her total calorie level down to just 1,700.

When you review your own food journal for consistency, you want to look for the following:

Food choices

Balance of protein, carbohydrates, and fat

Portion sizes

Exercise intensity and frequency

You don't have to count calories like I did in this example. Just review the portion sizes presented in Chapter 9 to ensure you're on the right track. Portion sizes that are a little too big are one of the subtle ways calories sneak in even when you're eating all the right foods.

Switching up your exercise routine

When you hit a weight-loss plateau, you're certain your goal weight is appropriate, and you've been tracking your food intake and physical activity, then there's only one surefire way to break through the plateau without resorting to lowering your calorie level: Change your exercise program.

Doing a certain kind of physical activity regularly over a length of time conditions the muscles involved in that activity. After your muscles are conditioned, they become more efficient and burn fewer calories. Different exercise routines work out different muscle groups, and when you change your exercise routine to use new muscle groups, your muscles have to work harder, burning more calories in the process. So by changing your exercise routine every once in a while, you can break through weight-loss plateaus. For example, if you've been walking daily, you may want to change two of those days to riding a bike or swimming so as to use new muscle groups and improve your chances for weight loss.

If you really love your routine, then make it more challenging by increasing the intensity. For instance, if you're a walker, try going farther, faster, or hitting some hills. All of these actions will help increase the intensity of your walk.

Chapter 14
:
Finding a Support System