I’ve spent the last 10 minutes pondering whether this is worth a thread. I decided it’s worth it… just.
So, I only just found out about this diet (why??), but apparently it’s the next big thing, and supermarkets are already starting to label their products according to their Glycemic Index.
I found out from “Tonight, with Trevor McDonald”. And they seem to give it a thumbs up.
Basically, Like Atkins, it claims you can eat what you like and not have to feel hungry.
But unlike atkins high-carb foods are not restricted. IMO high carb foods are the most enjoyable so the idea that I can ‘eat what I want’ on that diet is highly misleading.
I’ve been on South Beach on and off since the beginning of January. It’s a low-GI diet.
I’m not sure I believe the science of low-GI, but I can tell you, that for me, this is the easiest diet I’ve ever been on. I read all the stuff about GI and why you should go for the low GI stuff, and maybe that’s why the diet works, maybe it’s not. But I can tell you that it’s been working.
Really, if you look at what South Beach tells you to eat, most of it is common sense. My WAG is that just doing two things - cutting white flour and sugar out of your diet - is enough to make most people lose weight. Think about it - it eliminates fast food, almost all sweets, and most junk food. Go a few steps farther and eliminate starchy vegetables - potatos, for most people - and there goes the rest of your junk food options.
Now start eating whole grain items and a lot of vegetables, and suddenly you find yourself not nearly as hungry as you were before, even if your daily calorie intake is much lower. It’s pretty damn hard to be hungry between breakfast and lunch when breakfast was oatmeal (the real stuff, not the instant) flavored with fake sugar (no blood sugar spikes) and cinnamon. Have a big chef’s salad for lunch - go ahead, put the cheese and fatty dressing on - and tell me you’re hungry before dinner. It simply fills you up more, and removing sugar eliminates blood sugar spikes that simulate hunger.
It was my understanding that we didn’t understand GI in real world applications too well yet. The GI charts you look at are done on fasting individuals who eat specific foods one at a time. Eating 2-8 kinds of food (which people do in meals all the time) can give unexpected GI readings.
However there are some things that can lower blood sugar. Fats, fiber, protein and acidic foods have all been shown to lower GI. So even if a potato has a GI reading of 100 if you eat it with alot of fiber and something acidic like lemon juice the GI may go down to 60 or so.
So eating things like high fiber foods, eating acidic foods (vinegar or lemon juice in salads, for example) and eating protein drinks can be just as important as following the charts.
If right now your diet consists mainly of pizza and candy bars, the low GI diet is definitely a step in the right direction. It’ll definitely keep you from feeling hungry all the time, and that can help eliminate snacking.
One thing to keep in mind is that the glycemic index doesn’t give you the whole picture. Roughly speaking, the GI of a food is determined by how much one unit of it raises your blood sugar after two hours. Eat enough units of a low GI food, and it’s just like eating high GI stuff.
Well this is encouraging. I am probably lucky in that I don’t have a sweet tooth (I almost never eat sugary snacks) and have recently eliminated sugar from the liquids I drink (except beer which is a little more difficult to eliminate)
I’ve always been reluctant about specific diets, prefering to hope that by simply being more sensible about what I eat, and increasing the amount of light excercise (walking) I do, I will lose weight slowly and steadily. But this diet I’ll definitely look into (won’t get my hopes up too much though. There’s still the challenge of finding the foods, and my fussy sense of taste)
I don’t know what flavor of low-GI that you’re planning on doing, but we started doing SB simply because it was easy. I read the books after starting the diet.
We started with this list of Phase 1 foods then after 2 weeks went to this list of foods. I went to the grocery store and bought a whole pile of stuff I liked, just made sure not to buy anything NOT on the list, and from then on made all meals using that food.
Was very easy, but we tended to eat pretty healthy even pre-diet.
Thats a pretty good idea and its what I do. I manage to lose about 1.5-2 lbs a week just eating sensibly and exercising (I exercise anyway though).
One of the big things you can do is switch from white bread to whole wheat bread. Thats if you eat alot of bread (ie 6-8 slices a day like I do). When I switched I ended up getting in an extra 30-40g of fiber a day on average just by doing that and the bread, although texturally different, does not taste than white bread its just different tasting. But if you rapidly introduce fiber into your diet (which you will if you start eating fruits, vegetables and whole grains all at once and end up eating 50g fiber a day) you could get stomach upset for a while until you adjust to the new diet.
It’s a measure of how quickly a particular food causes blood glucose levels to rise. This is of interest in diabetes (and pre-diabetes) management, but there are also claims that eating low on the GI scale will help you lose weight, by helping to manage hunger, and possibly in other ways. The most common index arbitrarily sets white sugar at 100 and rates everything else in comparison.
Low GI foods tend to be those that are low in simple carbohydrates and/or high in fiber.
Foods with a high index are converted into sugar quickly in the body. Your body responds by releasing insulin to mop up the sugar. After that happens, your blood sugar and insulin levels crash and you are hungry again so high GI foods cause an insulin roller coaster which is tied into higher levels of hunger.
Aside from hunger low GI diets are used for diabetes & syndrome X
which is a little more difficult to eliminate)