As mentioned in a previous post titled, “What is the Glycemic Index”, the glycemic index tells us how fast the carbohydrates within a particular food enter into the blood as sugar.
Foods that rank high on the Glycemic Index have a tendency to short circuit weight loss efforts by triggering excess insulin to enter the blood thus shutting down the fat burning process.
TheGlycemic index, however, does not tell the entire story about how a particular food impacts the blood sugar and insulin levels because it ignores the quantity of carbohydrate within the food. For example: Watermelon has a fairly high Glycemic Index score of 76, however, because the majority of watermelon’s mass is WATER it has a low Glycemic Load of 3. (Low Glycemic Index = 55 or less | Low Glycemic Load = 10 or less)
In my opinion, Glycemic Load is far superior to Glycemic Index because it looks at the whole food and considers average serving size. There is a wonderful site that give the Glycemic Load of thousands of foods in addition to other nutritional information. Best of all it is FREE to use! The site is www.nutritiondata.com.
If you’ve used the Glycemic Index and/or Glycemic Load in your weight loss program, please tell us about your experience by leaving comments below.
If you use an iPhone or other smartphone, there are plenty of applications dedicated to helping you plan your meals around the Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load.