One of the biggest discoveries in the health community when it comes to weight loss is the “Glycemic Index” or GI for short. So what is the glycemic index? The GI is a measure of the effect various foods will have on your blood sugar levels. Here’s how this works.
If you eat foods with a GI rating that’s high, then those foods will raise your blood sugar level more dramatically than foods with a low glycemic index value. Here’s why this is important to you.
If you eat foods with a low GI value, you will notice those foods tend to provide a feeling of fullness for a longer length of time than foods with a high GI value. In other words, if the bulk of your diet consists of low GI foods, you likely won’t overeat or feel hungry often, that’s because the energy released from the food is slowly fed into the bloodstream. If this were to happen for you, then you could lose weight much faster and easier than by following almost any other diet long term. This is the reason many doctors and physicians prescribe a low GI diet to their obese patients.
On the other hand, by eating high glycemic foods after you exercise, you will recover sooner from your workout. Generally speaking you’ll benefit from high GI foods when doing short periods of intense exercise and from low GI foods when doing long periods of exercise.
In the past, conventional thinking was that you should stick to complex carbohydrates like rice and potatoes since they were absorbed slowly. Today, research shows that this isn’t really the case as there are more factors involved than just simple versus complex carbohydrates. The low carb vs. high carb diet system has been replaced with the GI.
Glycemic index values are measured with a value of 1 to 100, where pure glucose has a value of 100. To be able to benefit from the GI, you need to know what the GI values are of foods and which values are considered low, intermediate or high. Let’s start with determining what GI value is considered low, intermediate, and high.
Low GI Foods: Foods that have a GI value of less than 55. These foods cause a slower and lower rise in your blood glucose levels and they’ll leave you feeling full much longer and won’t cause sugar crashes or leave you feeling ravenous soon after eating.
Intermediate GI Foods: These foods have a GI value of 55 to 70 and they will only cause blood glucose levels to go up at a moderate rate.
High GI Foods: These foods have a GI value of greater than 70 and will cause a rapid spike in blood glucose levels. Obviously due to the high GI value, a diet rich in these foods will leave you feeling hungry all of the time and can give you that ill, sugar crash feeling. You won’t want to eat many of these foods.
The next step is to know what the GI values of commonly eaten foods are and then plan your meals accordingly. You could even create a low food list of low GI foods you like and work your diet around that. Of course it’s always best if you consult your physician or a licensed dietician. What follows is a simple chart listing food GI values.
Table of Glycemic Index and Load Values
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Data are means. *Low-GI varities were also identified.
†Average of all available data.
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