How to Live on a Low Glycemic Diet

The glycemic index is a scale which ranks carbohydrates on how quickly they are digested (thus determining how much they affect blood sugar levels). The crux of a low glycemic index is eating foods that cause only a nominal impact to blood sugar, keeping it stable---controlling the symptoms of your diabetes along with helping you lose weight effectively. Making the change to a low glycemic lifestyle can be difficult, but it is a very livable way of dieting.

Things You'll Need

• Journal or notebook
• Glycemic Index

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Instructions

Low Glycemic Diet

• 1

  Snack to curb cravings. The most difficult aspect of a low glycemic diet is that you will no longer be able to enjoy many types of food, so you need to actively work to break your addiction to these items in order to be able to adhere to the diet itself. Whenever you find yourself craving or fantasizing about forbidden foods, immediately go yourself a low glycemic snack like fruit, vegetables, nuts or beef jerky. Keeping yourself full will help to diminish the impact of cravings while following a low glycemic diet.

• 2

  Stick to natural low glycemic index (GI) foods like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains for the whole of your diet. Supplement them with plenty of lean protein and natural fat sources from nuts, seeds, coconut, avocados, and oils. Each meal you prepare should contain a fruit or vegetable, a low GI whole grain like barley, wheat or rye, a source of lean protein (fish, fowl or low-fat meat) and a natural fat source.

• 3

  Keep a journal in which you track the foods that you consume along with their value on the glycemic index. At the end of the day, calculate an average GI rank for all the foods that you consumed that day. Make a game out of challenging yourself to get your GI average as low as possible. You will likely find yourself losing more weight and feeling better as your average GI drops, providing you with motivation and making it easier to live on a low GI diet.