The Glycemic Index Diet for Dummies - Meri Raffetto [14]
The key here is to enjoy food. I want you to enjoy your meals, savor your foods, and look forward to mealtimes. If you enjoy your food choices, you're more likely to continue with this healthier way of eating. Sure, you may be able to tolerate a bland, low-caorie diet for a few days or weeks. But over time food has to taste good or else you're simply not going to put up with it. You don't need to worry about that with the glycemic index diet, though, because you're eating foods you already enjoy!
With just a small amount of thought, you can easily and quickly plan satisfying meals that will help you lose weight. Use Appendix A to identify lower-glycemic foods you already enjoy or as a way to find lower-glycemic swaps for higher-glycemic favorites. Also check out Chapter 9 for a bevy of healthy-eating strategies.
If you love to cook, check out the delicious and satisfying recipes in Part IV. I've included everything from quick-and-easy breakfasts and lunches to satisfying dinners and even snack and dessert recipes. Leery of diving into new-to-you recipes and prefer to rely on your old stand-bys? Good news! You can still enjoy them thanks to the recipe makeovers in Chapter 15 that convert family favorites into their lower-glycemic counterparts.
Making exercise a part of your life
I like to encourage my clients to think about activity and exercise like brushing your teeth. You brush your teeth at least once every day, right? You may not like brushing your teeth, but you do it because you don't want to get cavities, you like the way your breath smells afterward, and you don't want to walk around with mossy teeth. The benefits of exercising regularly are just as important as those of brushing your teeth daily, perhaps even more so if you're looking to lose weight.
To lose weight long-term, you need to be in energy balance — something that's difficult to achieve when you focus on food intake alone. That's why exercise is so important to weight-loss efforts (not to mention the huge benefit exercise has on overall health!). To lose weight in a healthy way, you can't just keep cutting back on the amount of calories you consume. You need to get up and burn calories through movement (which stimulates your metabolism hours after you exercise; see Chapter 8 for details).
If the word exercise makes you think of sweaty gyms, loud music, and instructors who yell at you to do things that hurt, try thinking of exercise as activity and movement instead. Dancing, gardening, puttering around in the garage, walking, biking, sledding, and playing hopscotch with your kids all fall into the activity-and-movement category. Countless other things do too. See for yourself in Chapter 21, which offers guidance on making daily exercise a part of your life, just like brushing your teeth.
Looking at Other Benefits of a Low-Glycemic Diet
Research continues to accumulate showing the health benefits of eating a low-glycemic diet. At this point, health professionals see the value in following a low-glycemic diet, along with other healthy nutrition guidelines such as consuming less saturated fat and cholesterol, choosing high-fiber foods, and maintaining a lower sodium intake. In addition to weight loss, a low-glycemic diet has been connected to better blood sugar and insulin control, disease prevention, increased energy, and improved mood. The next sections delve into these added benefits in detail.
Just because a food is low-glycemic doesn't mean it's healthy, and just because a food is high-glycemic doesn't necessarily mean it's an unhealthy food choice. The glycemic index is one additional tool for healthy meal planning, not the only tool. So don't forget all you know about good nutrition.
Better blood sugar and insulin control
The American Diabetes Association acknowledges