Holiday Fat Fighting Secrets

Here’s something to remember before the holiday “eating season” begins. 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. 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. As a general rule of thumb, carbs are the foods highest on the GI.

Do you know what one of the highest GI food 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 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 (GI) 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.

I consider foods with a Glycemic Load under 10 as 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. Here’s a Glycemic index chart below:

Glycemic index and glycemic load for 100+ foods

Glycemic index and glycemic load offer information about how foods affect blood sugar and insulin. The lower a food’s glycemic index or glycemic load, the less it affects blood sugar and insulin levels. Here you’ll find a list of the glycemic index and glycemic load for more than 100 common foods.