The Glycemic Index Diet for Dummies (109 page)

Crustless Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin pie is one of those classic fall comfort foods. It's also likely one of the pies with the lowest calorie count and lowest glycemic load you'll ever find. You can make pumpkin pie even better for you (and for your weight-loss goals) by simply omitting the crust for a sweet treat without all the calories and high-glycemic ingredients.

Preparation time:
10 minutes

Cooking time:
45 minutes

Yield:
8 servings

1 can vegetable cooking spray

One 16-ounce can pumpkin

1/2 cup egg whites (about 4)

1/2 cup sugar

2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

One 12-ounce can evaporated skim milk

1
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2
Lightly spray a 9-inch glass pie pan with vegetable cooking spray. Mix all the ingredients in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Pour the mixture into the pie pan and bake until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, about 45 minutes.

3
Allow the pie to cool before slicing into 8 wedges or storing in the refrigerator.

Per serving:
Calories 111 (From Fat 3); Glycemic Load 12 (Medium); Fat 0g (Saturated 0g); Cholesterol 2mg; Sodium 79mg; Carbohydrate 22g (Dietary Fiber 3g); Protein 6g.

Apple Crisp

This is a lighter version of apple crisp that keeps your calories and glycemic load down while still allowing you to enjoy a yummy, hot dessert.

Preparation time:
15 minutes

Cooking time:
30 minutes

Yield:
8 servings

6 cups peeled, sliced apples

1/4 cup water

4 teaspoons brown sugar, plus 1 tablespoon

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup oats

1/4 cup whole-wheat flour

1/4 cup canola oil

1
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Combine the apples, water, 4 teaspoons brown sugar, lemon juice, and cinnamon in a medium-sized bowl and mix well.

2
Coat an 8-x-8 baking dish with nonstick cooking spray and then arrange the apple mixture in the dish.

3
Combine the remaining ingredients (including 1 tablespoon of brown sugar) in a small mixing bowl and sprinkle over the apples.

4
Bake for 30 minutes, or until the apples are tender and the topping is lightly browned.

Per serving:
Calories 314 (From Fat 138); Glycemic Load 9 (Low); Fat 15g (Saturated 1g); Cholesterol 0mg; Sodium 4mg; Carbohydrate 45g (Dietary Fiber 5g); Protein 3g.

Part V

In this part . . .

Following a low-glycemic diet isn't really "going on a diet" — it's making a genuine lifestyle change. Discover how to make lasting change for you and your family by focusing on the positive, avoiding dwelling on the negatives, and working together to make small changes that, over time, add up into a new, healthier lifestyle.

Exercise goes hand in hand with a low-glycemic lifestyle, and it's a big part of overall health and weight loss as well. Exercise strengthens the heart and cardiovascular system, and it's one of the best ways to reduce your stress level. Incorporating regular exercise into your life will help you feel great and lose weight. (In fact, research shows that you not only lose more weight when you change your eating habits and exercise regularly but that you also keep the weight off longer.)

Adopting a lower-glycemic way of eating has an added benefit besides weight loss: It's an effective way to improve your overall health. Choosing lower-glycemic foods can help decrease your blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels. Plus, the disease-fighting antioxidants and phytochemicals naturally found in many low-glycemic foods boost your immune system.

Chapter 20
:
From Goals to Habits: Making True Lifestyle Changes

In This Chapter

Differentiating lifestyle changes from traditional diets

Reviewing tactics for making healthy changes you can stick with

Getting your family involved in your new low-glycemic lifestyle

C
reating true lifestyle changes is an internal process that takes time, practice, and commitment. This is the one area that can be more challenging than you may have ever thought. Although you may be able to follow some new dietary and exercise guidelines for a short time, doing so gives you purely short-term results, which is one big reason why so many people lose weight only to gain it back again.

The trick to losing weight and keeping it off is to embrace lifestyle changes that get you focused on practicing new behaviors until they become lifelong habits. To stick with a lifestyle change, you have to really
want
to make the change, which means you must accept that the positive side of, say, walking three days a week before work outweighs the negative aspects (like getting up 40 minutes earlier than you're used to). Of course, you can't forget about the external factors. Any new lifestyle change needs to work realistically within all aspects of your life, from work and errand running to family and friends. Clearly making such long-term changes can get complicated, but it's far from impossible. In this chapter, you explore what it means to make lifestyle changes and how to achieve those changes for yourself.

Making Lifestyle Changes Rather Than Going on a Diet

I can't tell you the exact number of people who go on diets each year or the exact numb
er of people who fall off the dieting wagon. What I can tell you is
why
they fall.

The majority of people tend to get stuck in the "on again, off again" mentality of dieting. This mentality is often a result of trying to follow something rigidly, be it a strict menu plan or calorie counting. Real weight-loss success is found by taking weight loss one step at a time and developing habits you can live with that support your new goal weight. In other words, losing weight for good requires a commitment to making lifestyle changes.

In the sections that follow, I describe the true differences between lifestyle changes and diets, present the pitfalls of on-again/off-again diet plans, and reveal a simple strategy for making lifestyle changes so you can start off on the right path.

Knowing the difference between lifestyle changes and dieting

Have you noticed that
lifestyle change
is the hot new ph
rase these days? You see it in magazines, on television, and in the materials for popular diets. Plastering this phrase on products and touting it over the airwaves is a great marketing tactic because science shows that long-term weight loss is the result of healthy lifestyle changes. However, just because a diet program uses this phrase doesn't mean following the diet is equal to making a change in your overall lifestyle. Diet programs that provide you with menus you have to follow strictly often call themselves "lifestyle change programs" when in fact they're the traditional model of a diet that has been used for the last 50 years. These diet programs haven't really changed; they've just added the phrase
lifestyle change
to their marketing materials.

The small percentage of people who've maintained weight loss over a several-year period have made true lifestyle changes. That's the key to success, not adherence to fad diets. However, the phrase
lifestyle change
has gtten so muddy lately that determining whether you're really creating lifestyle changes has become difficult. Following is a breakdown of what distinguishes true lifestyle changes from diets:

Lifestyle changes aren't temporary.
If you follow a precise low-glycemic plan, stop for a month, go back to your old habits, and then start up again, you're not really making changes to your lifestyle. No, you don't have to be perfect in your efforts to follow a low-glycemic plan (that's impossible to do for long), but you do have to make the best choices from what you've picked up about your body and meal planning — each and every day.

Lifestyle changes are all about balance.
Discovering balance is the key to making long-term changes work. Without balance, you can wind up feeling deprived and defeated, or even overwhelmed with the need to be perfect. Know that there'll be times when flexibility is the name of the game and allow yourself to indulge without losing your focus.

Lifestyle changes become a natural part of your routine.
In the beginning, trying to lose weight requires some focus as you find ways to incorporate low-glycemic foods and cut back on the amount of overall calories you consume. Yet eventually the new actions you're taking (such as diet changes and exercise) turn into a habit.

The most effective way to create a habit is to set goals and take action toward those goals over and over until that action feels like a normal part of your routine. Focus on the areas of your diet and exercise that can use some tuning up, decide what you're going to change, and then make that change each day. (
Note:
You may need to switch up your strategies once in a while if your current path isn't working well in your lifestyle.)

Lifestyle changes must be things you can do on your own.
Following someone else's plan is only a temporary fix. Working as a registered dietitian in the weight-loss industry, I've never met someone capable of following a strict meal plan long term. Doing so would be truly difficult due to the loss of personal preference and choice. Figuring out how to plan healthy meals on your own is the more realistic option. When you know how to plan your meals, you can plan healthy eating anytime, anywhere, whether you're on vacation or at the office.