The Glycemic Index

Understanding Weight Loss Through Balanced Blood Sugar

If you read the article on insulin you will know realize how blood sugar has a dramatic affect on us getting fat. In fact most people can lose all the weight they need to just by controlling their blood sugar.

In order to control it you need to be able to measure what affect a food will have on your blood sugar. This measurement is known as the glycemic index.

Glycemic index is a measure of influence of carbohydrates on levels of blood glucose in the body, in other words how high the levels of sugar go in our blood after we have eaten them. It's measured on a scale of 1 to 100 with glucose being 100.

Foods with low GI have glucose content that are slowly digested and absorbed, leading to lower demand in insulin. Those with high GI are simple carbohydrates that are easily and quickly converted into sugar and leads to abrupt blood sugar spikes in the bloodstream.

The High GI Diet

This Graph below is what our blood sugar does on a normal western diet, a red bull to get the day started, a cream cheese bagel for breakfast with a soda, pizza for lunch, a bag of chips, a few beers and a snack platter at the bar for dinner.

All the red area and spikes in the graph are causing a surge of insulin. At this point all the glucose in your blood stream gets cleared out by the insulin and directly stored into your fat cells.

So, not exactly going to lose you a lot of fat there.

The graph below is what we are aiming for, a nice flat distribution of energy with all of it going to feed your muscles and organs. Add some interval training and you have a deficit where your body will have to start making withdrawals.