Low GI Diet – What to Stay Away From

Make it a point to avoid high starch foods like potatoes. These can significantly increase your blood sugar levels. You can however, have sweet potatoes and yams.

You should also include any cereals that you have for breakfast in this list, along with refined flour products, rice cakes, snacks, desserts, etc. You also need to stay away from certain types of rice; certain other types you can continue to have (we will mention these in the next section).

Besides these, also make it a point to stay away from fatty foods. These include sweets as well as oily food. You also need to stay away from candy, pies, granola bars, and also soft drinks.

Among vegetables and fruits, you need to stay away from overripe bananas, and also raisins.

Low GI Diet – What to Have

You can definitely have whole wheat bread. You also can have muesli, oatmeal, as well as whole wheat pita and Indian chapattis. Besides these, there are still some other starchy foods that you can have – any products from leguminous plants (legumes, baked beans).

Other food products that you can continue to have are most fruits, as well as dairy products, such as soy drinks, unsweetened yoghurt, and unsweetened milk as well as other such similar milk products.

Low GI Diets –The Good and the Bad

Whether you like it or not, as with everything else in this world, the low GI diet has its proponents as well as opponents too. The proponents harp on the good effects, while the opponents concentrate on the ill effects.

Advantages

One of the main advantages being highlighted about low GI diets is the fact that they, unlike high GI diets, cause lower amounts of insulin to be released after each meal. Lower amounts of insulin are easy to manage, and therefore bring health benefits.

The advantages of lowered GI are manifested in the health of the individual – a person on a low GI diet will have much lesser chances of suffering from type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancer, heart disease, etc. Such a person will have increased blood sugar control, and decreased insulin resistance.

Disadvantages

On the other hand, the low GI diet plan has its fair share of critics as well. First of all, critics insist that the manner of measuring the GI (one food product at a time) is itself not a very accurate one, and certainly not the way we actually consume food.

They have other problems with the diet as well. Some critics say that eating larger amounts of low GI food is itself not very helpful.

Imagine that you decide to consume a slab of your favorite ice cream. Doing so would not be entirely wise because while ice-cream itself is low glycemic, it has other content as well, such as animal fat.

Who does the low GI diet benefit?

It is meant for all those people that are obese, or have high blood sugar levels that need serious regulation, or people with type 2 diabetes too. It is good for people with insulin resistance as well. Even people that want to lose weight fast can enroll on this program.