Lose Weight With The Glycemic Index Chart

By Kathleen Adams


If you want to lose weight, have energy throughout the day, and stay healthy, you need to choose the food you eat carefully. There are many things to consider, like freshness, pesticide and herbicide load, fiber content, and protein count, but perhaps the first is a food's place on the glycemic index chart. This information will tell you how consuming any particular food will impact your blood sugar.

Metabolism is a complex process, but understanding the basics is all that's necessary. When a food is digested, glucose is released into the blood stream. This is a normal process that fuels your body, giving you energy and allowing the body to carry out its many functions. However, extra glucose is a signal to the pancreas to secrete insulin. This hormone causes the extra to be stored, to be burned later for energy or accumulated as fat.

It's important to understand that not all food is digested in the same way. That's why simply counting calories doesn't always result in weight loss. For example, a bagel is primarily white flour and water. This combination digests very quickly, causing a quick rise in blood sugar. In fact, a bagel will trigger a faster rise that a jelly doughnut. The process of digesting flour, sugar, and fruit is more complicated and proceeds more slowly, so less glucose is released at one time. This is why a Snickers candy bar is lower on the glycemic index than popcorn.

Of course, eating a peanut candy bar is not a good choice. Just eat the peanuts, avoiding tooth decay and addiction to sweets. Choose the dry roasted kind that are seasoned with a moderate amount of sea salt.

Knowing how much impact a food has on your insulin response is important. If you select complex carbohydrates and high protein foods from the chart, all of which have a low number, you can then cross-reference them for fiber content and nutritional value. This is the key to losing weight quickly and safely and feeling good while you're reaching your goal.

A lot of the chart will make sense. Ice cream, candy, dried fruit, sodas, french fries, and white bread are generally known to cause weight gain. These are all ranked at the top of the chart. Some of the things in the 'to be limited' range of above 55 may surprise you, however. Granolas, flavored instant oatmeals and yogurts, orange juice, and rice do not promote weight loss. Fortunately, there are many, many foods that have a count of 54 or lower, so there's no need to feel deprived.

That's one reason these charts are so helpful. You can avoid mistakes (like thinking a plain baked potato is OK, or a slice of watermelon) while getting menu suggestions. You may have forgotten about lentils, sweet potatoes, and hummus. Planning a week's worth of meals off the chart is fun, and you can eat a lot of hummus before you derail your weight loss momentum.

The index is a useful tool that can make this your most successful diet ever. Knowing more about the foods you eat can also help you avoid conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure.




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