The Glycemic Index Diet for Dummies - Meri Raffetto [62]
Finding Moderation with Medium- and High-Glycemic Foods
Moderation is one of those important secrets to long-term weight loss, even when you're following a low-glycemic diet. Eating only low-glycemic and low-calorie foods in just the right balance is easy to do for two weeks or even a month, but it's pretty darn hard to do 7 days a week, 365 days a year. I certainly can't, and I've yet to meet anyone who can. There will always be times when you won't have the best choices in front of you or when you're just craving a specific food.
Trying to be perfect with a diet typically backfires. People who do that often fall off the plan and go back to their old habits. I call this an all-or-nothing approach because you're either onboard with said diet or you completely stop and say you'll start up again at a later date. This all-or-nothing approach is the difference between following a temporary diet and making long-term lifestyle changes. Following a low-glycemic diet is a lifestyle change, which means you make the best choices but still leave yourself some wiggle room for fun.
If you're a perfectionist, accepting the concept that you don't have to perfectly follow a low-glycemic diet 100 percent of the time may be challenging. Just remember that moderation really is the best way to maintain weight loss long term. In the next sections, I explain how to use moderation with a low-glycemic diet and how to balance your glycemic load throughout the day.font>
Defining moderation
People in the diet industry tend to throw the term moderation around as if it has some concrete definition that everyone knows. But what I've learned as a registered dietitian is that people have different perceptions, or definitions, of moderation. For one person, moderation may mean having a high-glycemic item once a week. Another may say once a day, and yet another may consider it okay to have one a few times a day.
Here's a real-life example of just how confusing the concept of moderation can be: I once had a client who ate eight to ten Hershey miniature bars throughout each day, basically having a few after each meal. She considered this moderation as opposed to sitting down and eating more in one sitting. However, her "moderate" snacking still added up to way too many calories, sugar, and fat. This wasn't her fault. It was just her perception of moderation because no one had ever defined the term for her.
Having some guidelines around moderation will help you stay on track. (It also gives you some wiggle room for when you really want that jasmine rice with your stir-fry or you want to indulge in some chocolate cake at a birthday party.) Following are some quick guidelines to define moderation more clearly and make your weight-loss process much easier:
Eat medium-glycemic foods once or twice a day, or less.
Eat high-glycemic foods two or three times a week, or less.
Balancing your glycemic load for the day
Striving to balance your glycemic load for the day is another way to follow a low-glycemic diet in moderation. The idea is to always make the best choices.
Try one or more of the following suggestions to help you control your calorie level and balance higher-glycemic foods throughout the day:
Avoid eating multiple high-glycemic foods in one meal. If you're going to indulge, do it with one food item at that particular meal and make sure the rest of your foods are low-glycemic. For instance, if you choose to have spaghetti, don't eat a bunch of garlic bread with it.
Consume smaller portions of high-glycemic foods. Remember, portion size matters with glycemic load (as explained in Chapter 4). Eating less decreases your glycemic load a bit for that meal. Even switching from, say, 1 cup of rice to 2/3 of a cup makes a difference in a particular meal's glycemic load.
Avoid eating both high- and medium-glycemic foods in one day. Choose one or the other if you can and make the rest of your choices low-glycemic. For instance, if after lunch you have a slice of the special pumpkin pie (a high-glycemic