The GL Diet Made Easy: How to Eat, Cheat and Still Lose Weight. Nigel Denby
too good to be true? Read on and see why we and so many other experts and dieters now trust and believe in low GL.
‘Rather than being just a fad diet, GL represents a sustainable lifestyle choice, which is healthy and satisfying in the long term. The science is well founded, and has been talked about in academic circles for years, but now, as we are becoming expert nutritionists, we should all be more aware and conscious of GL as part of a healthy balanced lifestyle.
Dr David Haslam,
Clinical Director of the National Obesity Forum
How to Use this Book
There are lots of extra bits and pieces in the book to help you along your journey to find your own ‘diet freedom’ but if you can’t wait to get started you can go straight to the Plan in Chapter 4 or the 10-day Starter Plan in Chapter 5.
For those of you who want the lowdown on the science behind the GL, Chapter 2 explains how your body uses the food you eat and how GL works with your body to help you stay in control of your food intake.
Chapter 3 looks at why the GL Diet is good for you – it’s great at helping you to manage your weight but there are some incredible health benefits too.
Chapter 4 is the ‘how to’ planning chapter. You can jump straight to it if you want to skip the whys and wherefores. This chapter gives you everything you need to begin your journey to better health and ‘feeling fabulous naked’ – the low-GL way.
Chapter 5 has a 10-day Starter Plan for guidance to kick-start that weight loss. You can drop a dress/clothes size if you stick to the basic principles—you’ll be amazed that it’s not restrictive at all!
Chapter 6 tells you all you need to know to become a GL-savvy shopper. Our ‘Angels and Demons’ section gives you an idea of some of the best and worst foods GL-wise so that after just a few days you can cruise the supermarket aisles with confidence, knowing you are making the right choices.
Chapter 7 is all about keeping it real. We hope that, like us, you can’t manage to be perfect all of the time! Cheats, treats or just plain slip-ups, we’re all human and they will happen from time to time – it’s human nature. Whether you choose to cheat, fancy a treat or make a mistake, this chapter will help with some damage limitation tips and guidance towards ‘guilt free’ indulgence.
If you’re struggling for motivation, head for Chapter 8. We wrote this chapter to help you understand yourself and the best way to tackle making changes that fit in with you and your lifestyle.
It is proven that being more active helps you to lose weight more quickly. Not only that, but it also makes you feel fantastic. Chapter 9 is there to help you get moving, be more active and feel great. Don’t panic – the emphasis is on being active and having fun, and it’s not necessary to become a total gym bunny (unless you want to, of course!).
Last but not least, in Chapter 10 Tina and Deborah have been busy in the development kitchen creating more stunningly tasty, yet simple low-GL recipes. And wait for it … ALL of them take no more than 10 minutes to make! It really couldn’t be any easier to eat well.
We sincerely hope this book will free you from the dieting trap and make it extremely easy for you to get to your right weight and stay there. Together we have over 90 years of dieting experience – yes, we tried almost every diet under the sun until we finally worked out what actually works! Since then, between the three of us, we’ve been treating patients with weight and hormonal issues, working in dietetics, carrying out health and diet research, running diet trials in health clubs, developing recipes and eating plans for easy weight loss, running restaurants and writing books to help people like you. We really do know what works and what doesn’t!
Everything you need to know is in this book. All you need to do is to get reading … Enjoy!
This chapter examines the science behind GL. We look at how our bodies use food to make energy, and how that energy is used. We then go on to see how switching to low-GL foods works with your body to help you lose weight and keep it off. If you just want to get started on the diet, go straight to the plans in Chapters 4 and 5 – you can always come back to this section later.
A Bit about Fuelling the Body
There are three main nutrients in foods that give us energy in the form of calories – carbohydrate, protein and fat (alcohol also gives us energy but we’ll put that to one side for a moment!). When we eat a meal, carbohydrates are digested and absorbed first, followed by proteins and then fats. Carbohydrates are broken down into simple sugars (glucose); proteins are broken down into amino acids; and fats are broken down into fatty acids before being absorbed into the bloodstream.
The carbohydrates in foods affect our blood glucose and insulin levels the most. Insulin is needed by most cells in the body to act like a key and ‘let in’ the glucose from the blood so it can be used as fuel by the cell or so it can be stored. The amount of glucose that is floating around in our blood has to be carefully controlled within tight limits – too low and we will feel faint and dizzy; too high and our internal organs can be severely damaged. So it is the job of insulin to ensure that it keeps blood glucose levels under tight control.
Glucose is mainly stored in our muscle and liver cells to be used for energy as needed. Much of this stored energy is used when we are physically active. When the muscles and liver are full and can’t store any more glucose, the only thing insulin can do is transfer the excess to other body tissues. This excess of energy is stored as FAT. Yes, those awful wobbly bits!
The carbohydrates in high-GL foods are very rapidly broken down to glucose and absorbed. This causes a huge rush of glucose into our bloodstream (glucose spike). The more glucose there is in the blood, the more insulin is produced (insulin spike). As a safety mechanism, insulin has to rapidly move this large amount of glucose flooding the bloodstream into our muscle and liver cells to be stored for later use. This can happen very quickly and cause blood glucose levels to drop suddenly (blood glucose crash). Don’t worry if this seems complicated – you don’t have to understand it all for the diet to work and we have a diagram on page 12 to show you what we mean.
When our blood glucose and insulin levels fall below a certain level, this triggers hunger signals in the brain. It tells us that we need to eat more because our blood glucose levels are falling quickly – as a result we crave more high-GL foods to satisfy the apparent hunger! What the brain doesn’t realize is that we ate a doughnut (or any high-GL food) only an hour ago! This turns into a vicious cycle as the rapid fall in blood glucose prompts us to crave more high-GL foods – which actually caused the problem in the first place!
High-GL foods eaten = blood glucose spike = blood insulin spike = blood glucose crash = craving for more high-GL foods = weight gain!
Fear not – this vicious cycle can easily be broken.
The carbohydrates in low-GL foods are broken down to glucose and absorbed more slowly, causing only a small rise in blood glucose levels and a corresponding small rise in blood insulin levels. As a result, glucose is moved into our muscle and liver cells at a slower pace and blood glucose levels are more stable. Eating low-GL foods every three to four hours helps keep our blood glucose levels steady – meaning no glucose and insulin spikes, no blood glucose crash and (you guessed it) NO CRAVINGS AND OVEREATING!
If we eat low-GL foods, we store less excess energy and blood