Holiday Fat Fighting Secrets

By James Wagner, DC

. http://mdweightlossdoc.com

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Holiday Fat Fighting Secrets

Here’s something to remember about the holiday “eating season”. This is very important, but nobody seems to pay attention…

You can cut calories and still gain weight. You can work out until you pass out and still have that spare tire.

The truth is, we don’t get fat because we eat too much. And it’s not because we’re lazy.

Staying slim boils down to this: Hormones can make you fat.

Case in point: the hormone insulin is your number one fat builder and storer. It tells your body to pack on the pounds.

You produce a storm of insulin when you eat foods that are high on the glycemic index (GI). As a general rule of thumb, carbs are the foods highest on the GI.

Do you know what one of the highest GI foods is?

Care to guess?

It’s corn bread, a holiday favorite. Every time you take a bite of corn bread, insulin pours into your blood. And it tells your body to store the calories as fat.

All that blood sugar means you have to produce insulin to process it. Eventually, your body gets tired and stops responding, which is called insulin resistance.

Blood sugar that your body can’t or won’t process gets stored as fat. So, it’s foods with excess starchy or sugary carbohydrates that can make you fat.

The idea is to eat foods that don’t spike your blood sugar, and to also let your blood sugar come back down after eating. You don’t want your insulin to stay elevated for too long.

This means eating foods with a low glycemic load (GL).

The GL is simply a number you get when you multiply a food’s glycemic index rating by the total amount of carbohydrate in each serving you eat.

That makes it much more practical for your everyday life because the GL tells you how fattening a food is. It’s a fresh way to look at everyday foods. Some GL ratings may surprise you – especially foods like watermelon…high GI, but low GL.

Foods with a glycemic load under 10 are good choices. They are a green light. Foods that fall between 10 and 20 on the GL scale are more like a yellow light: not bad, but proceed with caution.

Foods above 20 are a red light. They will not only make you gain weight but keep you from dropping weight. Eat those foods sparingly and try to eat protein instead. Protein has a GL of zero.

By following our weight loss food management plan, you will be doing the right thing to lose weight and keep it off.

Examples of foods that score high on the glycemic index chart are fructose/glucose, cereals, white flours, white rice, cookies and crackers, banana, grapes, melons, all sodas, Gatorade, ice cream, candy bars, pretzels, white potato.

Examples of low glycemic foods are whole grains, full fat milk products, most vegetables, beans, and nuts, and especially peanuts and hummus.