The Glycemic Index Diet for Dummies (127 page)

Irritability or anxious feelings

Eating a low-glycemic diet counteracts hypoglycemia by maintaining an even level of blood sugar your body throughout the day because you're not overindulging in high-glycemic foods. Following a low-glycemic diet also helps control a situation called
rebound hypoglycemia,
which occurs when you eat a high-glycemic food that causes you to first experience a high blood sugar spike and then come crashing down quickly. (This description holds true even if you don't have a clinical diagnosis of hypoglycemia but do feel some similar symptoms of low blood sugar.)

Avoiding the highs and lows of blood sugar can certainly make a big difference for people with hypoglycemia (or anyone who's just plain sensitive to her blood sugar levels). Following are some tips for incorporating low-glycemic eating habits to help reduce blood sugar sensitivity:

Eat frequent meals and snacks every three to four hours.

Incorporate low-glycemic carbohydrates with protein and/or fat.

If you're diabetic, monitor your blood sugar regularly to catch times when it's dropping. (Your physician can help you determine whether you need a change in your medication.)

Wellness and Disease Prevention

Many diseases can be prevented through lifestyle changes, starting with embracing a low-glycemic diet. This is another one of those messages that's heard
so much it somehow loses its value. You may think you have to make drastic changes in your diet and exercise to see a positive effect on your health, but the reality is that very small changes can make a big impact.

Perhaps the best change you can make is to increase your daily consumption of fruits and vegetables. Plant-based foods are powerful and can affect your health in many ways. I strongly encourage you to do two things: Work toward eating five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables each day and add beans, lentils, and whole grains to your daily menu. If you haven't noticed the trend yet, the answer to weight loss, disease prevention, and managing existing diseases is increasing your intake of these plant-based foods, all of which are low in calories. Better yet, most are also low-glycemic and provide a significant source of fiber. So if you change up your plate to include more plant-based foods and fewer meats and starches, you'll find the key to permanent weight loss and living your healthiest life.

In the following sections, I explain some of the ways in which the small dietary changes that come with a low-glycemic diet strengthen your body's overall wellness and disease-prevention abilities.

Lowering your risk of chronic diseases

Did you know you don't have to hit your goal weight to gain health benefits? You don't need to eat a perfect diet to lower your risk of disease either. Rese
arch shows you can improve your overall health just by incorporating simple dietary and exercise changes. I don't know about you, but this information increases my motivation because it means I don't have to be perfect to optimize my health outcomes.

A low-glycemic diet works well for most people because it focuses on eating high-nutrient, plant-based foods. Guess what. Eating those same foods is also the key to weight loss, disease prevention, and wellness.

Following are some research statistics that show how making simple dietary changes (such as eating low-glycemic, high-nutrient foods) helps protect you from developing a chronic illness:

Losing 5 to 7 percent of your body weight reduces the risk of chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.

Estimates from a multistudy report show that if the only change people made was to include five servings of fruits and vegetables in their daily diet, overall cancer rates would decline by 20 percent.

According to an article in the
Journal of the American Medical Association,
men and women with the highest consumption of fruits and vegetables, a median of 5.8 servings per day among women and 5.1 servings per day among men, were found to have a 31 percent lower risk of suffering from a stroke. One stroke can lead to a host of chronic health conditions (one of which is being at higher risk for having a second stroke).

People consuming four or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day had a decreased risk for coronary heart disease. Those with an intake of at least eight servings a day produced an even greater decrease. Green leafy vegetables and vitamin C-rich fruits and vegetables appeared to contribute most to the apparent protective effect of total fruit and vegetable intake.