The GL Diet Made Easy: How to Eat, Cheat and Still Lose Weight

The GL Makes Sense of the GI

The GL goes a practical stage further. It takes the GI rating we’ve just outlined, but then very cleverly (thanks to Professor Walter Willett of Harvard Medical School who came up with the equation) takes into account the amount of carbohydrate in a portion of food we would normally eat. So now we know the effect a normal portion of food would have on our blood glucose levels, and that’s what gives us the GL rating:

• Foods with a high GI but with only a small amount of carbohydrate will generally have a low GL.

• Foods with a low or medium GI and a large amount of carbohydrate may have a high GL.

It’s so simple and, more importantly, relevant to what we actually eat!

Foods rated using the GL do still get a number:

10 and under is low GL 11–19 is moderate GL

If you did want to count your daily Glycaemic Load (GL) for the first few days in order to gain confidence that you are on the right track, you would be aiming to have a GL score of 80 or under on a low-GL day. A high-GL day would be 120 or over. If you are overweight and inactive it’s likely that your daily GL score is high and you are storing your excess energy as fat.

BUT don’t worry – although we do give some basic portion guidelines and GL references, you don’t have to count at all! Counting points, rigidly measuring and weighing foods is what turns us all off when it comes to diets. It’s the bit that makes diets boring, boring, boring – and besides, who has the time? Counting can also reinforce the obsessive behaviour around food that got quite a few of us here in the first place! Pay attention to what you’re eating and what your body is telling you. Once you’ve found your low-GL feet, it will all become second nature.

So What’s Right about GL?

The Glycaemic Load (GL) gives you the whole story:

• The GL allows you to understand with confidence how foods will affect your blood glucose levels.

• The GL is based on carbohydrates in the portion sizes we usually eat, rather than the amount needed in a laboratory setting to work out the GI.

• The GL means far more food choices.

• The GL makes practical sense of the GI science. It’s the final chapter in carbohydrate management and offers a real solution to weight loss.

There’s one other thing that can affect the GL of a food. Let’s get a reality check here. We don’t often eat single foods at a time. When we eat a meal there’s going to be a mixture of different kinds of foods, each with a different GL – so what happens then? Eating a food with a fairly high GL, such as white rice, could cause the spike in blood sugars we mentioned earlier. To avoid this you have two options. You can simply swap it for one of the recommended alternative lower-GL foods, like pearl barley. Alternatively you can just cut down the amount of it you eat and combine it with lower-GL foods, such as lentils or beans. This will give you a lower overall GL score for that meal. You can do this with all kinds of foods, which is one of the main reasons why the GL Diet is so flexible and fits in with the real world.

So now you understand:

• how our bodies deal with the food we eat.

• that high-GL foods perpetuate a vicious cycle of hunger and cravings.

• that the GL of a food is a more realistic measure of its effect on the body.

• that low-GL foods = more slowly absorbed = less hunger and less fat storage = weight loss.

Brilliantly simple, hurrah!!

All you need to do is read through the rest of the book and start enjoying healthy, low-GL foods, losing weight – and best of all, be able to keep it off forever as the GL Diet quickly becomes a way of life.

As serial dieters, we are all searching for our own elusive ‘diet freedom’ or ‘freedom from diets’. The GL finally brings this within everyone’s grasp without deprivation or hunger.

‘I started with the GI, but found it contradictory and really confusing, then a friend told me about GL and I bought the book. I liked the fact that it’s based on the GI but it makes more sense to me by taking the amount of carbs you eat into account.’

Christine from Bournemouth

‘I was already GI-ing before GL-ing but it made a difference to me in that I lost the last half a stone I needed to.’ Caz from Rainham

‘When I followed a low-GI diet, I really overate on pasta, which I now know has a high GL. Plus I was afraid of watermelon, which I love. Now I know watermelon is okay and it was ridiculous to avoid it. Those are just two minor examples of why I think GL is better! There are many more. I find the more I read the more I can apply my new knowledge to the way I eat. I’m so grateful for finding this new way of eating!’

Sheryl from California, USA

diet freedom online club member

The GL Diet is:

Science made simple – no magic wands or pseudo-science here!

A healthy eating plan you will want to (and can) follow forever.

Safe and suitable for all the family.

Bursting with loads of delicious food choices and recipes.

About having three meals and two snacks every day.

About making educated food swaps to change the types of carbohydrate you are eating – not about cutting out food groups altogether.

About eating for health – it is so much more than just another weight loss diet! You will feel fantastic on it – we promise you that.

A great way to live and eat healthily, so even if you stop following it you will come back to it – everyone does! The improvements in how you feel will make sure of that.

A common sense, no nonsense approach that will fit in with the way we live today in our fast-paced society.

Brilliant for foodies and ‘fast’ foodies alike!

So effective because it workswithyour body, not against it.

But most of all …

GL is about results – it’s the perfect plan for losing weight because the weight comes off at the right rate for your body and so is more likely to stay off. There is no severely restricted start-up phase. The GL adjustments you are about to make are for good, and with the odd cheat and treat it is doable and enjoyable and will make you feel better than you have in years!

Chapter Three THIS DIET IS SERIOUSLY GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH (#ulink_9f7ea9d9-92e6-5b92-9220-5257c2ff3b06)

The GL Diet is not just a great eating plan for weight loss, it also embraces the importance of a healthy balanced diet and being physically active.

In this chapter we take you through some of the science and research that demonstrates how a low-GL diet:

• is beneficial to your health and wellbeing;

• improves the overall health of people with specific conditions;

• helps to improve symptoms of some common conditions.