The Idiots Guide to the GL Diet
Read the idiots guide to the GI diet first The GI diet is good and the research shows it works, but there is one small aspect that lets it down.
The GI value of a food tells you how quickly a food releases its energy, but it doesn't tell you how much energy it releases altogether.
For example a carrot and a chocolate bar have roughly the same GI value, that is to say they release their energy at the same speed, but the chocolate contains more energy overall. If you ate a carrot and the equivalent sized piece of chocolate although they both have similar GI values the chocolate is worse for you overall because, despite releasing its energy slowly, over time it will release more energy than the carrot.
How the GL (glycaemic load) diet differs from the GI diet is that a GL value not only takes into account the speed with which a food releases its energy, its GI value, but also the amount of energy it contains overall.
So whereas a carrot and chocolate may have the same GI value chocolate has a much higher GL value than a carrot.
Values in the GL diet range from 0 upwards and are calculated as follows:
(GI value * grams of carbohydrates)/100
The lower the value the better, with a value of 20 or above being high, 11-19 medium, and 10 or less low.
By eating foods with a low GL not only will you be eating foods that release their energy slowly, so as you have more energy for longer and feel less hungry, you'll also be taking in less energy overall so you're even less likely to have excess energy available to be stored as fat.
Top tips
1. Not only is Perfect Sweet a great substitute for sugar in the GI diet, having a GI value of just 7, its also a great addition to the GL diet as, further to releasing its energy slowly, it contains 40% less energy (calories) than sugar.
2. Replace white bread with wholegrain bread
3. Try porridge oats instead of sugary cereals
4. Watermelon has a high GI value, but is great for the GL diet
