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Low Glycemic Index Diet Plan For Weight Loss

Low glycemic index diet has proven to be an effective healthy diet. It has helped many to lose weight and learn how to eat a healthy balanced diet for life.

What is Low Glycemic Index Diet and Why is It Effective?

You have probably heard the term 'glycemic index' before, especially if you tried to educate yourself in the field of nutrition and weight loss.

To really understand what is the glycemic food index and how does the law glycemic index diet work and help to lose weight we have to understand why we gain weight in the first place.

Why Strict Low Calorie Diets Do not Work?

Contrary to what many believe it is not the extra calories that magically transform into fat that make us gain weight or more precisely become fat . Extra calories sometimes turn into muscles too.

Of course it sounds simple - eat less calories and you will lose weight.

But the reality is that low calorie diets will not give you satisfactory long term results. And they are difficult to maintain.

Indeed, by drastically restricting your caloric intake without making changes in eating habits you will lose weight at first. Your body will have to compensate the lack of energy from its reserves, but if you stay on a low calorie diet for longer you will notice that your weight will stabilize and at some point will even grow back.

Needless to say that the moment you get off your 'fad diet' you will start gaining weight again, because you will want to eat more food and your calorie intake will increase.

What FAD dieting does to our body?

It happens because our body eventually adjusts to a low calorie diet: after some time it gets to the point where it needs less calories to maintain its weight. So instead of becoming fit and healthy you will remain overweight, grow jiggly love handles, and increase your fat to muscle ratio. And the worst of it all is that now you will have to eat less than before to maintain your weight.

That is why many overweight people eat very little but don't lose any fat. And what is more, as a result of unbalanced dieting their metabolism slows down making them gain even more fat every time they slip.

Do you wonder how to reverse it?

I did too, until I have been introduced to low glycemic index diet and glycemic index food theory. According to low glycemic index diet theory we basically gain fat because of unhealthy food choices and wrong food combinations.

Why do we gain weight?

There are three main food types: proteins, fats and carbs. They are all necessary for a healthy balanced diet. Take one of them out and you will likely become deficient in one or more important minerals or vitamins which in turn will destabilize your immune system putting your health at risk.

While eating proteins and fats alone will not make you super fat, the minute you add carbs into your menu is the minute when things inside of you get complicated. And since it is virtually impossible to find and enjoy foods that have 0 carbohydrates, every time we overeat on protein or fats we put our body at risk of storing excess fat.

So it is not the evil carbs alone but rather proteins and fats consumed together with carbs that make us put on weight.

So what happens when you eat carbs?

After carbs are digested they turn into sugar and get carried away to our body cells by the bloodstream. When the sugar level in our blood rises as a result of consumed carbs the pancreas through hormone insulin into the bloodstream to help our body cells absorb the sugars from the blood.

Insulin is a 'key' that opens our cells when the sugar needs to enter them.

As a result the sugar level in the blood drops and stabilizes.

Each time the pancreas produce just right amount of insulin against the amount of sugar or glucose found in the blood at that time. If everything goes well the sugar will quickly be delivered to our cells and our blood will not have excess of it.

According to low glycemic index diet he amount of sugar carbs produce at its highest against the pure glucose is called the glycemic index and the lower is the index the better are the carbs.  But eating high glycemic index foods on its own is still not enough to make you fat.

So what exactly makes us fat?

It would be easy to control weight if we could easily take a whole group of vital foods out of our diet or substitute it with another group. But in real world it is nearly impossibly, unhealthy and even dangerous.

We need carbs, proteins and fats. We have natural cravings for foods from all those three main groups. So food alone should not make us unhealthy and fat. We need it to survive!

The thing that makes us fat is HOW we eat that food.

When you combine high glycemic index carbs (carbs that produce lots of sugar after digested) with proteins or fats, the sugar gets trapped in the blood for longer and doesn't react with insulin as effectively.

Insulin, on the other hand, has two primary functions - ferrying blood sugar into the body's cells so that they can utilize it for energy and as a fat storage hormone. The higher you spike your insulin levels with large intake of foods that will rapidly flood your blood with sugar, and the more frequently, the more excess sugar there will be in the blood.

If you add fats and protein to the mix that sugar will be less likely to reach the cells to feed them and instead be stored as fat.

Over time, your body's cells can even become resistant to its own insulin, which means more needs to be secreted by the pancreas to process a sugar load than before. (1)

How to Jump Start Fat Burning Process?

In other words if you are overweight, because of bad eating habits, each time you eat french fries with one of the highest glycemic index values your body will store it as fat. And with each time it just gets worse as your body becomes unable to properly regulate that process. Low glycemic index diet helps us to heal our body and reestablish healthy digestion.

Our body is much more complex machine and contrary to simple calorie counting approach you have to understand the fundamental rules of healthy nutrition and eat according to them.

Of course calories do count, but more importantly is the quality of food and its correct combination that helps us to be healthy and correct our weight. And that is what the low glycemic index diet explains us how to do.

Now that you have learned about low glycemic index diet and why we gain weight let us learn how to get rid of it the right way and forever, thankfully it is not that difficult if you just apply a little discipline to your weight loss.

Sources:

(1) Read more: Does sugar have calories and does it turn into fat? | Answerbaghttp://www.answerbag.com/q_view/374954#ixzz1FLQbNQyx

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