Now Available! Lean System Success Plan

Getting to Know the Glycemic Index Impact on Your Body Composition

Excerpted from Stephen Adele's The Lean System Success Plan: The Perfect Plan for Targeted Fat Loss, Customized to Your Metabolic Body Type

Q: What is the glycemic index, and why do you feel it's important to pay attention to this when you are trying to lose bodyfat?

A: To keep it simple, Glycemic Index (or GI) measures how much a food you eat raises sugar within the blood. In other words, the higher the GI (number), the more it spikes blood sugar; conversely, the lower the GI (number), the less it raises blood sugar.

What's important to note is that large changes in blood sugar prevent the use of fat as fuel and, if continued over time, promote obesity and heart disease. In fact, a recent study in the American Journal of Epidemiology concluded that people who consumed diets high in simple sugared foods (such as white bread, potatoes, and jam), which, as you can guess, are higher on the GI scale, had higher body mass indexes (BMI) than people who consumed more complex sources of carbohydrates (which are lower on the GI), like whole-wheat grains, nuts, and low-fat dairy products.

Another study recently conducted by Boston University revealed that diets lower in GI keep your metabolism from slowing down and prevent hunger cravings longer, which ultimately makes it easier to take weight off.

And yet, in another study I feel is important to point out (which was an eight-year study on more than 27,000 subjects), Harvard scientists discovered that people who ate more whole-grain carbohydrates, as opposed to higher GI foods, experienced less weight gain, and the whole grains played an important role in a weight-control plan.

For these reasons, I think it's important to at least pay attention to the types of carbohydrates you put into your body. And using the GI is a fairly simple way to help do this. That's why I have provided a list below, which contains some of the most common foods you and I might eat (or be tempted to eat) rated on the GI chart. As you can clearly see, some of the obvious foods you should stay away from are simple sugars, like table sugar, candies, soda, and dried fruits. Surprising to most people, manmade sugars like high fructose corn syrup (115) and maltodextrin (135) are in fact the absolute worst foods/ingredients you can consume, with GI's that are practically off the chart. Which, unknown to most people who consume them, cause a huge spike in blood sugar levels—way beyond even natural sugar (which is 85).

A great example of this are meal replacements and nutrition shakes. They commonly use maltodextrin as their primary source of carbohydrates. Normally, this is because it's so "cheap" to use, but as you can clearly see, at a GI of 135, it might be advisable to steer clear of any shakes that contain maltodextrin in their ingredient list!

Over the years, I've basically found that it really pays off, especially when you are trying to lose bodyfat, to pay more careful attention to the GI. For this reason, in the "You Are What You Eat" section of The Lean System Success Plan, I pointed out "good" foods that are contained on the "Foods you should eat" list, and just as important, I've listed "bad" foods you should stay away from eating in the "Foods you should avoid" list.

Another way you can be more careful about the carbohydrates you eat is simply to choose foods that are not refined and haven't had their nutrients stripped away. Examples of these foods are brown rice, instead of white. Whole-wheat bread, instead of white bread. Whole-wheat pasta, instead of pasta made from white flour. And pretty much stay away from any pastries, cakes, chips, crackers, and other processed "convenience" foods—as these foods are normally loaded with sugars, not to mention trans fats and preservatives.

I have a strong hunch that after the "low-carb" diet craze wears off here pretty soon, you will start to see more and more companies placing a small symbol on the front of their food packaging which tells you—the customer—what the GI number is for that food. I also predict this trend will become the standard by which people will choose their foods from the grocery store within five to seven years. Literally every company will have to reveal the GI of their food product. The goods news is, in turn, this will help you and I choose healthier, low GI foods and, just as important, it will probably force the manufacturers of foods to rethink what they are selling and possibly start to focus on producing more healthy foods with lower glycemic indexes.

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