THE G.I. FACTOR AND WEIGHT REDUCTION
If you are overweight (or consider yourself overweight) chances are that you have looked at countless books, brochures and magazines offering a solution to losing weight New diets or miracle weight loss solutions seem to appear weekly. They are clearly good for selling magazines, but for the majority of people who are overweight the ‘diets’ don’t work (if they did, there wouldn’t be so many!).
At best, (while you stick to it), a ‘diet’ will reduce your kilo joule intake. At its worst, a ‘diet’ will change your body composition for the fatter. This is because many diets employ the technique of reducing your carbohydrate intake to bring about quick weight loss. The weight you lose, however, is mostly water (that was trapped or held with stored carbohydrate) and eventually muscle (as it is broken down to produce glucose). Once you return to your former way of eating, you regain a little bit more fat. With each desperate repetition of a diet you lose more muscle. Over years, the resultant change in body composition to less muscle and more fat makes it increasingly difficult to lose weight.
Take it as read, that the real aim in losing weight is losing body fat. And perhaps it would be better described as ‘releasing’ body fat. After all, to lose something, suggests that we hope to find it again some day!
Research in Australia and overseas has shown that the type of food you give your body determines what it is going to burn and what it is going to store as body fat. It has also revealed that certain foods are more satisfying to the appetite than others.
This is where the G.I. factor plays a leading role. Low G.L foods have two very special advantages for people wanting to lose weight:
• they fill you up and keep you satisfied for longer,
• they help you burn more of your body fat and less of your body muscle.
Eating to lose weight with low G.1. foods is easier because you don’t have to go hungry and what you end up with is true fat release.
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