Checking your food's Glycemic Index is healthier than a low Carb diet

Checking Your Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are basic energy producers. They come from a variety of
foods including bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, fruit and vegetables.
These are complex Carbohydrates releasing energy into the bloodstream,
our basic energy providers. Other energy producers are cakes, sweets
and sugar. These are simple Carbohydrates. All of these foods break
down into sugar to produce Glucose for our fuel but some foods do it
more quickly than others, e.g., cakes and sweets. If the energy from
these foods is not used up then it will be stored as fat.

If we work on reducing the amount of quick releasing energy
Carbohydrates, we will gain more valuable energy from our food as it
slowly releases the Glucose we need. An alternative way of rating your
Carbohydrates can be by their Glycemic Index. This is the rate at
which Carbohydrates are broken down into Glucose. The higher the
Glycemic rating the quicker the Carbohydrate is broken down and
therefore reaches your bloodstream. When you pay attention to this
there will in turn be a drop in the level of Insulin produced.

Insulin stores incoming nutrients in appropriate cells. If we didn't
have Insulin then cells would not be fed and they would starve to
death. When we eat a lot of quickly absorbed Carbohydrates and simple
sugars, a lot of Insulin is required to distribute the amount we are
eating. The Insulin then stores the excess energy as body fat.

Insulin also regulates hormones in our body which become unbalanced
due to the intake of high Glycemic Indexed Carbohydrates which cause
the over secretion of Insulin. As we get older our Insulin levels
become less able to process the incoming sugars. Therefore, we store
more body fat and are more likely to suffer from Diabetes.

It is very important to maintain your Carbohydrate levels. If the body
has no Carbohydrates at all then it starts to find energy from other
sources other than fat and this can cause nausea and fatigue.

Some low carb diets encourage you to replace your Carbohydrates with
more protein and more dairy products, even encouraging you to have as
much as you like, however this is a very unhealthy, unbalanced way of
eating.

The reason why you see so many people turning to these diets is
because they produce weight loss results fast, if only for the short
term. Also, if you are starving the body of vital energy it may start
to feed itself from living muscle and this is going against what you
are trying to achieve.

A Carbohydrate exclusion diet is not a healthy one but a diet which
adapts your carbohydrate intake via the Glycemic Index, may be a
better alternative.

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