What Is Glycemic Index
Keeping up with your fitness routines can be utterly difficult to follow especially if you are a beginner. You just can’t shoot arrows in the dark, which means that you need some proper and right program to guide you on your endeavor. Depending on hearsay and some fitness mythologies will keep you on a plateau. Knowledge is the key for an effective and successful weight loss.
If you are a newbie, you may get confused on such hundreds of slimming programs floating just around every corner. This includes different dieting regimens, fitness workouts and other wellness activities. But these are the common things with regards to weight loss, what you really need to know are the simple things that offers basic information with regards to fitness.
What I am talking about are the simple terms that can greatly help you on your weight loss program. This includes body mass index, calorie calculator and many others. Today, I will give you another important weight loss aspect, the glycemic index.
Many people are asking, what is Glycemic Index? You may already encountered this term in some of my articles here but you probably have no idea what this index is for. To better understand the many aspects of weight loss, you need to know the true purpose of glycemic index and how it can help your fitness program.
Understanding Glycemic Index
WikiPedia published a broad and detailed report regarding this topic. Glycemic index (sometimes referred as glycaemic index – GI) is a measurement of how fast blood sugar level is increasing after consuming a particular food. As you know, every food has its own effects on blood sugar and determining how fast your blood sugar rise after a meal is very important to health.
Since its application in the 80′s, you may find a glycemic index GI symbol on various foods, indicating its probable blood sugar measurement effect. I said probable because the index is only an estimation of how much gram of carbohydrate there is in a particular food, raises an individual’s blood glucose level, relative to consumption of pure glucose. Pure glucose has a glycemic index of 100.
However, there is a limitation as it doesn’t consider the amount of carbohydrates that are actually consumed. To get the glycemic load, you need to multiply glycemic index of the food, by the actual carbohydrate content.
Glucose is released into the bloodstream mainly because of carbohydrates from the foods we eat. The quicker carbohydrates are absorbed during digestion, the higher the glycemic index. In contrast, the slower carbohydrate absorption, the lower the glycemic index.
What does it mean? It means that a lower GI shows a slower digestion and absorption of foods carbohydrates. It is also an indication of greater extraction from the liver and other elements of carbohydrate digestion. If a certain food has lower glycemic index, it may result to lesser insulin demand, improve blood glucose control and blood lipids.
The following list of foods are properly classified into three GI categories (not a complete list):
Lower Glycemic Index – 55 or less
Beans, nuts (all kinds), seeds (sunflower, flax, sesame, etc), whole grains (spelt wheat, millet, oat, rice, barley, etc), vegetables (all kinds), sweet fruits (peaches, mangos, berries, etc), fructose.
Medium GI – 56 – 69
Whole wheat (not intact or enriched wheat), pita bread, basmati rice, potatoes, grape juice, raisins, prunes, cranberry juice, ice creams (all kinds), sucrose, bananas.
High GI – 70 and above
Breakfast cereals (extruded), glucose, maltose, white bread, white rice, corn flakes
A significantly low GI releases glucose steadily and slowly, while high glycemic index causes a more sudden rice in blood glucose levels. As you can see, fiber foods such as fruits and vegetables have low GI. So what are the relevance of these information to dieters like you?
How can Glycemic Index-Based Diet Help with Weight Loss
Hundreds of diet experts today are suggesting their clients to a low glycemic diet. This is one of their approach on how to control their eating habit. Glycemic index of different foods shows an estimate on how it can quickly be digested in our system, which constitutes on how much our blood sugar levels fluctuate.
Obviously, a rising blood sugar level is not ideal for diabetic people as they need more insulin to break down glucose. This can highly cause serious diseases such as cardiovascular problems, kidney issues, eye diseases and many others.
But for those who are not suffering from diabetes, the effects of high blood sugar level constitutes to weight gain, primarily by increasing your appetite. In contrast, low-glycemic foods can keep you feel fuller in much longer period of time, another good reason why dieters are encouraged to eat low glycemic foods.
So, to help yourself on your dieting regime, you have to carefully choose what foods have lower glycemic level. You don’t have to totally avoid middle and high range GI foods as this will likely make your diet imbalance. You can find a big list of GI related foods in other sites, just be persistent on your Google search.
Summary on Glycemic Index
Glycemic Index symbol are widely available in most food products for the consumer’s benefits. Just remember, you don’t have to be overly conscious about every food’s GI range. It will just confuse you and most probably, you will run out of foods to eat because you will sooner restrict yourself from high GI foods.
In my opinion, following a “glycemic-based” diet is not that too important just to control your appetite. As I am always suggesting in this site, you need to apply a balanced and healthy diet and this includes varying your foods with of course, different GI range.
In addition to a carefully charted diet one should also consider supplements that complement their diet and make their results mor effective and visible. It gives one confidence boost and motivation. If you are looking for one such supplement check out this review of Instant Knockout. It is effective and the best product offered.
