The glycemic index is an incredible tool in the fight against obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and more.
In order to know how to use it to your advantage, it is important to know what it is.
What is the glycemic index? The simplest way to describe the glycemic index is that it is a scale that measures how much a particular food affects your blood sugar.
It gives foods a numeric score, and the higher the score, the worse the food.
Foods that are high on the glycemix index will cause spikes in your blood sugar levels, which eventually lead to plummets in your blood sugar levels.
This is a very bad pattern to have going on in your body, and for a variety of reasons.
What are high glycemic foods doing to your body? The fluctuations that these foods cause lead to cravings, hunger pains, mood swings, a higher caloric intake, and yes, weight gain.
You will also notice that you have energy bursts, which are followed by crashes.
These foods are typically highly processed and sugar loaded.
When you decrease the amount of high glycemic foods in your diet, and replace them with low glycemic foods, you will start to see changes occur.
What foods are low glycemic, and what will they do for you? The foods that tend to score lowest on the glycemic index are all natural, and low in sugar.
Think vegetables! Anything under a 55 is considered low glycemic, and you want those foods to be a large part of your diet.
While some fruits actually score fairly high on the GI, apples are only a 38.
Milk is also lower than most people think, coming in the 30's, depending on the milk.
Other foods that are considered low glycemic include peanuts, oranges, pineapple juice, baked beans, and bananas.
So, what are these foods going to do for you? Foods that are low on the GI help you maintain level blood sugar, which is huge in the fight against diabetes.
They will also keep you feeling full longer, help prevent cravings, help with mood swings, reduce overall caloric intake, and in the end, they will help you lose weight.
They will also help you maintain a more stable level of energy throughout the day, preventing the spikes and crashes that lead to you feeling wiped out.
While it would be great of you could just switch your entire diet around, and suddenly you are eating low glycemic, that is too much for most people.
The key is to slowly replace your highly processed, sugar loaded, and high glycemic foods with healthier, low glycemic options.