If you’re conscious about your weight or eating healthfully, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard about the glycemic index diet or the term “glycemic index” thrown around – but do you really know what that means? The glycemic index can be a very useful tool for measuring the healthiness of carbohydrate based foods, especially for diabetics. Even if you aren’t diabetic, however, the glycemic index diet has been shown to be an effective way to lose weight and get healthy!
The glycemic index is a scale created to help rank carbohydrates based on how quickly your body digests and absorbs them when you eat them. Carbohydrates are the main source of fuel for the body, but not all carbohydrates are created equal. There are simple carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates, which your body breaks down into the simplest carbohydrate for fuel, glucose or sugar. Simple carbohydrates are easier for your body to break down, so they can be released into the bloodstream as blood glucose relatively quickly to be delivered to the muscles for fuel. Complex carbohydrates are harder to digest into blood glucose, so it takes the body longer to get these fuels into the bloodstream.
So what are the effects of eating one type of carbohydrate or the other? Simple sugars, when they rush into the bloodstream, require a rapid insulin response. This insulin response, in healthy people, causes a rapid drop in blood sugar after the initial spike, causing fatigue, irritability, and more hunger – often causing people to board the “blood glucose roller coaster”. They eat simple sugars, feel energized for a brief period of time, and then crash, causing them to crave more simple carbs to bring their blood glucose back up again. In diabetics, injected insulin must often be taken to handle this rapid influx of blood glycogen.
Complex carbohydrates, on the other hand, are released slowly and steadily into the bloodstream, causing less of a dramatic swing in blood sugar. This is easier for the body to handle, particularly for diabetics who want to avoid these extremes.
The glycemic index helps tell you how quickly a particular kind of food will be absorbed into the bloodstream. A higher number means that the food is absorbed quickly, with the highest score being around 100. A lower score indicates that the food is absorbed more slowly into the bloodstream as blood sugar.
The glycemic index, or GI, diet suggests that dieters focus as much as possible on low GI foods, defined as those foods with scores lower than 55. Moderate GI foods are acceptable, with scores between 56 and 69. High GI foods, with scores over 70, should be avoided.
Here are some quick tips for following the GI diet:
- Choose fruits and vegetables over sugary, processed snacks.
- Choose whole grains over more refined grains (i.e. whole wheat bread over white bread).
- If you must eat high GI foods, try to balance them with low GI foods in order to neutralize their effects.
- Many lists of foods’ GI scores can be found on the internet for your reference.
- Ask your doctor before starting the GI diet to make sure it is right for you.
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