Weight Loss - Diet Follow up on The Glycemic Index: (GI)?
In summary, although it does have some merit, it's of much less concern if you're combining protein and/or healthy fats with your carbs and eating regularly throughout the day.
So what's the best criteria for choosing your carbs? It's whether or not they are natural vs. processed (man-made). To avoid natural foods like potatoes simply because they are high on the GI is unwarranted. Potatoes, for example, are an outstanding source of starchy complex carbs and contain protein as well.
Cooked exactly as it is found in nature, an 8-oz. potato has only 170 calories and almost no fat; it is loaded with essential nutrients and it is satisfying to eat. Compare that to 8-oz. of processed carbs, such as white pasta, which has 840 calories...
Which do you think is the better choice when you're counting calories and you want to lose body fat? If you said the potato, you're right!
If a food is all natural, if it is starchy rather than sugary, and if you are eating it as a part of a mixed meal (with a complete protein and a little unsaturated fat) every 2 - 3 hours, then you shouldn't worry if the food is high on the glycemic index.
The foundation of your Diet Plan should be based upon choosing foods that are all natural and unrefined. And the "acid-test" for whether a carb is natural and unrefined is to ask, "Did this food come out of the ground this way?" If the answer is yes, then it's a natural, unrefined food.
Here are some good natural carbs...
- Fruits
- Vegetables
- Oatmeal (dry rolled oats and/or steel cut oats)
- Yam
- Potato
- Sweet Potato
- Brown rice (basaltic and long-grain rice are also fine)
- Beans (black, kidney, lima, etc.)
- Lentils
- Couscous
- Squash
- Peas
Broadly speaking, processed carbohydrates include all white sugar and white flour products, such as bread and pasta.
In the processing of a whole grain into white flour, the carbohydrates are converted from a complex carb to of a more simple carb. The milling of the grains in essence causes them to lose their complexity while at the same time increasing their caloric density.
In fact, one cup of regular flour contains 400 calories. One cup of high-gluten flour, which is used to make bagels, contains more than 500 calories! White flour is a simple carbohydrate that is processed in the body much like sugar. Most white-flour products are also lower in nutritional value.
If you want the best results, you would be wise to limit processed carbs including white sugar and nearly all products made from white flour including baked goods, bread, crackers, pretzels, pasta, bagels, and so on. Switch mostly to natural, unprocessed carbs like vegetables, oatmeal, yams, brown rice, potatoes, beans, lentils, etc.
You could probably consume small amounts of sugar and refined carbs and still lose weight as long as you continued to burn more calories than you took in each day. But the high calorie density isn't the only reason to avoid processed carbs...
Refined carbohydrates provide little or no nutritional value. You shouldn't just be concerned with the number of calories you eat each day; you should also be concerned with the quality and nutritional value of those calories.
Your goal is to get the most nutritional value out of every calorie you consume.
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