GI Living
What is GI Living?
It can be simply expressed in the term, "Gee, I..." that I said to myself after learning about the GI lifestyle…
- Gee, I ... didn’t know I could eat so much on a diet!
- Gee, I ... am getting full and cant finish my snacks!
- Gee, I ... can eat bread and pastas!
- Gee, I ... really feel like I am eating well without being a rabbit!
- Gee, I ... can do this for life and not just for 1 week.
- Gee, I ... am losing weight and feeling great!
- Gee, I ... wish someone had told me about this before!
Gee, I suppose I have whetted your appetite to learn more about this great lifestyle.
Whether you are looking to lose weight or just get healthy, I think you will find the GI lifestyle can help you meet your needs. I stress the word lifestyle because the following the GI way is so much more than a diet. If you learn these simple principles you will find that eating is enjoyable and nourishing to you.
The two main reasons for eating are these...
- To nourish the body, and...
- To bring enjoyment and pleasure to the senses.
You can stop the unhealthy ways of relating to food, where good food tastes awful and sensual food is bad for your body. With GI you can have your cake and eat it too, meaning the cake is good healthy food and eating it means sensory enjoyment and satisfaction!
Aren’t you tired of drastic diet plans that have you cutting carbs, eating pre-packaged foods full of chemicals or depriving yourself and starving yourself???
Maybe you are like me and you wonder if you will ever learn to eat right again. After years of low fat, low carbs and other diets, I was completely confused as to what good eating looked like. The GI diet taught me how to eat and enjoy eating again knowing I was not compromising good health and dietary principles in the process of trying to lose weight.
I mean does it make sense that trying to get healthy means eating crazily and in a way that is hard to sustain over the long term? Why not learn a way that is simple to maintain and adds quality to life as you lose or maintain weight? If you want this please read on and find out more about GI living…
GI what is that?
GI stands for Glycemic Index. The glycemic index measures the speed the body breaks down carbohydrates and converts them into energy for your body. The end process of carb conversion is glucose or sugar, and this sugar is the body’s energy supply.
Glycemia means the amount or presence of sugar in the blood. The glycemic index is simply a measure of how quickly the carbohydrates contained in the food enter your blood stream.
Nutritional scientist Dr. David Jenkins from Canada developed the index having studied the presence of sugar in the blood. It was originally to help understand diabetes and how each type of food effects blood sugar. We can use this knowledge today to help us understand how food effects out body and gain maximum nutritional benefit and enjoyment without unwanted weight gain.
How does GI work?
Although carbs have gotten a bad rap lately in the diet world, not all carbs are created equal! Some carbs break down very quickly in the body and spike blood sugar levels in the body. Other carbs break down slowly and have a more gentle effect on the overall blood sugar. As you may surmise, a spike in blood sugar is not good for our bodies and can trigger a chain of reactions that undermine our health, feelings of well being and weight loss efforts.
The more quickly your body digests a certain type of food, the higher its GI or glycemic index. For example, a donut is high at GI 76.
Let's imagine that you were hungry and ate a donut on the run. First your body would break the donut carbs down into glucose. The speedy and convenient break down of the simple carbs of the donut would make for a swift release of glucose (sugar) into your blood stream. Your body will release insulin to help move the glucose from the blood into the cells where it can be used. The higher the spike in blood sugar, the more insulin your body will pump out to deal with it.
So after eating a donut and spiking your blood sugar your body also spike insulin to deal with it. The sugar will be quickly dealt with and you will have dramatic surge of energy only to crash down again. So not long after eating the donut you will be hungry again.
Eating more food is not a good thing if you want to lose weight, a no-brainer for weight gainers!
And let’s not forget the insulin spike: It is likely that you will have a lot more left over than needed because the body flooded the bloodstream quickly, so you will feel a huge craving for sweets since there is excess insulin waiting to be used. You may also feel shaky and nervous and weak, the classic signs of low blood sugar. You went high sugar and now you are low. Isn't a balanced approach better?
If the metabolic havoc wrecked by this eating behaviour isn't enough to inspire change, how about the fact that this eating makes you fat? Not only do you get hungry more and crave sweets more, there is a well known connection between excess insulin in the blood stream and the build up of belly fat. This is not helpful for losing weight nor for the well being of your body. We all have seen kids on a sugar rush, hyper one minute, then crashing and tired and cranky!
Let's get off the sugar roller coaster! Let's never eat carbs again! Just kidding. That is not a reasonable approach. Thankfully there's something you can do. You can eat carbs. Carbs with a low glycemic index that release slowly into your bloodstream and keep you on even keel. Making you feel healthy, full, and consistently energised.
Know your Carbs
Healthy carbs have similar properties to them. One is that they are not over-processed. Give your gut a work out and let it process the carbs; don’t feed it already processed carbs that can quickly be dumped into the blood stream. Food with low fibre, white flour and chemicals make the job way too easy for your stomach! If you want great abs I suggest you start by working out the under abs part. Let that stomach have real food!
Here's your under ab workout..
No white flour like in processed baked goods, cookies, muffins, donuts, white bread, fast foods and cereal. Go for whole wheat and high fibre foods. There are many recipes that can help you bake them here on this web site. Fibre is your friend! First of all, fibre keeps the system moving if you know what I mean… It also keeps it moving slower and you digest things at a nice pace. Therefore the sugars are not dumped but trickled into your system. Secondly fibre is filler and gives you that full feeling.
Oatmeal may not stick to your ribs (and if it does you have anatomical problems and need to seek medical attention), but it sure feels like it is hanging around and that is a good thing. Feeling full and satisfied sure makes it easier to say no to donuts and cakes!
There are many ways you can add fibre without compromising taste or feeling like you are turning to Mr. Ed. Go here to find out any tips and suggestions. You will find many of our recipes will have fibre added. Now you know why! Fat.
