Tag Archives: carbohydrates

Low Carbohydrate Diets to Lose Weight

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Our body needs carbohydrates, but to lose weight, we can cut down on carbohydrates.
Especially the refined and processed carbs we find in white bread, white flour, white pasta, white rice and many snack foods.

The USDA changed the old food pyramid and replaced it with one that emphasizes whole grains over refined carbohydrates. In the mean time, Americans are trying to lose those extra pounds. In the US about 45% of women and 30% of men are trying to slim down.

A low-fat diet is one way to drop the pounds, but today, many Americans – one-third of those who are trying to lose weight – are cutting the number of carbs they eat in order to slim down. And many find it easier to jump-start weight loss on a low-carb diet.

How carbohydrates work
To much of our food we eat today contains too much refined carbohydrates, and that can wreak havoc in our bodies and causes weight gain.

All carbohydrates, which include fruits, vegetables, pasta, grains and bread contain sugar. When you eat refined or processed carbohydrates, your body will quickly convert the sugar into glucose. When you’ve eaten a large amount at one time, your body produces more glucose than it needs, and the excess is stored as fat.

Unrefined carbohydrates, such as whole grains, beans and whole fruits and vegetables, contain fiber that helps your body absorb the food more slowly which results in less being stored as fat.

The hormone that transports glucose into the cells is insulin. When the body can’t handle the glucose in the blood any more, it results in type 2 diabetes.

Most people will have an insulin response to carbohydrates that causes to gain weight easily when we eat too many of the wrong type of carbohydrates. The rest of us are genetically blessed and can eat what they want without gaining weight.

One reason low-carb diets seems to work is that it keeps away the hunger feeling longer than low-fat diets. Eating more protein and controlling blood sugar levels help you feel fuller. Besides having a positive effect on blood sugar levels, low-carb diets also proved to lower the risk off heart disease.

An even better benefit of eating fewer carbs is a flatter stomach. Insulin causes fat to be stored in the belly, and belly fat is related to heart disease and diabetes. When you eat a diet that controls your insulin level, you will get a slimmer middle.

What is the minimum level?
We can’t leave out carbohydrates all together, because we need carbohydrates for our brain. Otherwise we lose concentration, we feel fatigued, and we experience mood swings.

The Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C., which sets the daily intake of nutrients, advises getting 130 grams of carbohydrates daily. Americans are usually getting double or triple that amount.

The type of carbohydrate you eat is just as important as the amount. That is the reason why Americans are the fattest nation in the world. They are eating the wrong type of carbohydrates in the wrong amount.

The following guide lines will help you to choose the right carbs in the right amount to lose weight.
Limit your meals to 500 calories or less. Eating more than 500 calories in one meal will create an insulin response in the body that leads to weight gain.

Select Low-GI foods.
To lose weight and avoid type 2 diabetes, it’s better to select foods with a low glycemic index, because they create a gradual rise in blood sugar. Choose artichokes, peppers, apples, old-fashioned oatmeal, and kidney beans. Intermediate-GI foods include sweet corn, rice, and beets. Foods that have a high GI and that will make your blood sugar spike fast include: bagels, french fries, and mashed potatoes.

Look for lean cuts of meat
London broil, top round, sirloin, and T-bone steaks are good options for a low-carb diet. Pair the steak with low-GI sides, like baked sweet potato and broccoli rabe, and you have a perfect low-carb dinner.

Eat the way Mother Nature intended
Fat wouldn’t stand a change if we avoided processed foods and ate only the carbohydrates that Mother Nature gave us, such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Mother Nature never made white rice or white pasta. So choose brown rice, whole-wheat pasta and bread and other whole grains, such as barley and oats.

Top your meal with a glass of wine or beer
Wine has only 2 to 3 grams of carbohydrates in a glass. Some experts believed beer contained maltose, a sugar with the highest GI, but they’ve recently discovered that the brewing process eliminates the maltose. Twelve ounces of light beer actually only contains 6 grams of carbs while a can of regular beer carries about 13 grams of carbs.

Eating to Maximize Energy Levels

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leader of marathon young athlete runner running on road in autumn Park

Carbohydrates are the main energy source for your brain and muscles. They are broken down in our gut and released into our blood stream as glucose. This glucose is used by our brain and muscles as fuel. By supplying our body the carbohydrate it needs at meal times, we are supplying it with the fuel necessary to maximize energy levels and minimize fatigue.

The key to optimizing energy levels is controlling your blood glucose levels. There are many ways of achieving this.

Firstly, when it comes to carbohydrate, it’s important to consider how much you need to eat for your size and activity levels (i.e. the quantity) and to focus on the type of carbohydrate you’re eating (or in other words the quality).

Plants contain carbohydrate, with starches providing more than fruit or veggies. It’s a good idea to ensure that half your meal is fruit or vegetables and allow starches to occupy ¼ of your plate. When choosing which starchy carbohydrates to include in your meal, always focus on two things… variety and fiber content. More often than not, the more natural it is the more fiber it will contain. So eat your carbohydrates as near to how they grew out of the ground as possible. For example, oats, brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat and bulgur are all excellent sources of carbohydrate and great suppliers of steady energy.

Another trick is ensuring balance… protein, fat and fiber help to slow down the release of carbohydrate from the stomach into the gut, thereby creating a steady absorption of glucose into the blood stream. There are foods that are naturally quite high in the necessary protein, fat and fiber such as nuts, seeds and avocado which, when added to meals, will have beneficial effects on energy levels. However, another trick is to ensure a healthy balance of the food groups at meal times. As half of the meal should be fruit or vegetables and ¼ starch, aim for the other ¼ of your meal to be a good quality source of protein.

Lastly, another tip is to add soluble fiber to meals. Soluble fiber forms a gel-like matrix in the stomach, thereby slowing digestion and the subsequent release of food from the stomach into the gut for absorption. Good sources of soluble fiber include fruit, vegetables, oats, linseeds or flaxseeds as well as chia seeds.

that protein’s Happy Happy Hemp and Baobab Super Protein is an excellent choice when energy is lacking. High in protein, it is also high in fiber and high in Vitamin C which is proven to help reduce tiredness and fatigue. Adding some to you favorite recipes will help you feel less tired.

Best Weight loss Program

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For a weight loss program to be able to claim to be the “Best Weight loss Program” on the market, we have to be able to guarantee that the different systems used in this “Best Weight loss Program” really delivers success and satisfies the demands of all different types of people.

It’s not complicated to become lean, if you know how your body works.
Body fat is dependent on life style.

There are three main keys to losing fat and gaining muscle, and you can’t
miss any of them.

1. The only way you can lose weight ever is to eat less calories than you burn off.
2. Do high repetition, wide-variety resistance exercises
3. Eat enough protein to maintain muscle mass.

First we have to distinguish the difference between male and female, which is explained in “The Venus Factor”. It is designed to increase female metabolism, based on the fact that everything to do with weight loss for both men and women, is controlled by the Leptin hormone.

Then we have to take into account, that there are three body types, based on a person’s metabolism.
We can distinguish the Endomorphs: they have a rather slow working metabolism.
Then there are the Mesomorphs, with a higher metabolism, and the third type are the Ectomorphs,with the highest metabolism. The last group could eat anything without gaining any weight.
They need more carbohydrates and less protein, but the same amount of fat.

According to a nutritionist, Charlie Remington, a lack of exercise was not America’s overweight problem, but rather three mistakes in people’s eating habits:
1. not portioning foods properly
2. eating poor quality foods
3. not eating frequently enough, preferable four to five times a day, small portions of food.

Another factor to be taken into account is the Glycemic Index (GI)
The GI is a classification of carbohydrates based on their potential for raising blood glucose levels. Those foods that result in a rapid rise in blood sugar and therefor in insulin, have a high Glycemic Index. Carbohydrates that are broken down slowly and consequently only cause moderate increase in blood sugar, have a low Glycemic Index.

The Glycemic Load (GL) is a more accurate way to assess the impact 0f carbohydrate consumption that takes the Glycemic Index into account, but gives a fuller picture than does Glycemic Index alone. A GI value tells you only how rapidly a particular carbohydrate turns into sugar.
It doesn’t tell you how much of that carbohydrate is in a serving of a particular food.
You need to know both things to understand a food’s effect on blood sugar.

Short term fasting, a 24-hour fast, once or twice per week can be a great way to get you into total calorie deficit for the week. Eliminating two full days of eating help to consume fewer calories than we use, and that in turn can help us to reach our goal of weight loss.

In order to get the classification of “Best Weight loss Program”, we have to add some other systems to make up our total picture.

First we have a program called: “Old School, New Body”.
It claims that you should never workout more than 90 minutes per week.
Also “slow go” cardio is OLD news and extremely ineffective when compared to short-burst intense exercise, and there are three studies to support this.

1. A 30-minute circuit style resistance training session was put to test.
The result was a 38 hour increase in metabolism, thanks to massive AFTERBURN.

2. This study showed that those who added short burst intense exercise to a reduced calorie diet burned up to 44% more fat than those who dieted alone.

3. The last study compared slow-go aerobic exercise to short burst intense resistance training and found that the resistance group lost significantly more fat without losing ANY lean muscle, even at an extremely low calorie intake.

The 3 Week Diet
This product promises the fast results that most dieters want: 23 pounds in just 3 weeks!
It’s based on the fact that at certain times of the day, your metabolism is burning at it’s peak. And those are the times you should eat to burn fat.

The system is so accurate and efficient that some people are able to lose up to 1 pound a day! Combined with a few extra types of foods, this diet is FOOL PROOF!

The next system I like to introduce is called: “The E-Factor Diet”.
It’s based on the fact that some foods you can eat in the morning, that are guaranteed to turn your fat burning switch to ON as soon as you wake up.

Then there is a special diet for men. Men want to fight aging, have better romantic lives and more energy. The key to much of this is: increasing their testosterone levels.
Not as a “body builder”type of way, but just a return to normal levels experienced in younger years, but with simple changes to men’s diet, that will naturally increase testosterone levels.
Testosterone is an important factor when it comes to burning fat and building muscle.

The “Fat Loss Factor” promote eating natural food. There is the #1 food ingredient that secretly makes us fat. It’s High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), which is a man-made sweetener, cheaper than sugar.
It travels straight to the liver, which turns this sugarly liquid into FAT.
It doesn’t cause the pancreas to produce insulin. As a result, our bodies are “tricked” into a vicious circle, eating food that gets immediately stored as fat and never feeling full.

This fact is associated with blood sugar problems. ADD/ADHD depression, fatigue, B vitamin deficiency, indigestion, tooth decay, and most importantly: WEIGHT GAIN!
The “Fat loss Factor” tells you how to avoid this problem.

Finally, there is another “quick solution” for fat loss. It’s the “14 Days Rapid Fat Loss Program”.
This plan encourage people to eat carbohydrates and makes them to work by using Macro Patterning. It shows you how to eat carbohydrates which never get stored as fat.

This conclude the “Best Weight loss Program”. I have included the most important factors associated with weight loss. I’m open for any comments regarding this “Best Weight loss Program” or anything I may have forgotten to include in this program.

Facts about the Glycemic Index

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One important factor when trying to lose weight is to choose
foods that keep your insulin levels fairly constant.
This is especially true in regards to carbohydrates.
When we eat foods that contain carbohydrates, the carbohydrates
are digested in the stomach and intestines and are absorbed
into the bloodstream, generally in the form of glucose.

When the carbohydrates we eat cause the blood sugar to quickly
rise to high levels,excess insulin can cause to much sugar
to be absorbed by the cells.This results in a condition of
low blood sugar. The subsequent stress on the body stimulates
the adrena glands to secrete hormones into the blood.
Metabolism rises, glucose is manufactured from stores in
the liver and the entire body may be activated in what is
called “fight-or-flight response.”

The Glycemic Index (GI) is a classification of ranking of carbohydrates,
based on their potential for raising blood glucose levels.
Carbohydrates that are broken down slowly and cause only a moderate
increase in blood sugar, have a low Glycemic Index.
Some carbohydrates fall in between.

Specifically, the Glycemic Index measures how much a 50-gram portion
of carbohydrates raises your blood sugar levels compared with a control.
The control is either white bread or pure glucose.
Glucose is absorbed into the bloodstream faster than any other
carbohydrate and is thus given the value of 100.
Other carbohydrates are given a number relative to glucose.
Foods with low GI indices are released into the bloodstream at a slower
rate than high GI foods.

All carbohydrates cause some temporary rise in your blood glucose level.
This is called the glycemic response. A number of factors influence
this response: the amount of food eaten, the digestion and absorption
rate of food, including the physical structure, ripeness, particle seize,
the degree of processing and preparation, the commercial brand, the
nature of the starch, acidity and the characteristics of the diabetic
patient. These factors naturally effect each food’s glycemic index
position or rank.

The slower your body processes the food, the slower the insulin is
released and the healthier the overall effect is on your body.
In addition, differences exist in the glycemic indexes due to the choice
of reference food, the timing of blood sampling or the computational
method used to calculate the glycemic index.

When you desire to lose weight, you choose the foods that raise your
blood sugar level slowly. You’ll discover that many of those foods are
high in fiber and will keep you feeling fuller for a longer period of time.
And if you have been on a diet, you will be thankful for this.
The longer you feel satisfied, the less temptation you will have to eat
something in between your meals that will spike your blood sugar.

As fructose is a slow moving sugar, almost all fruits, except bananas
and dried fruits, have a low GI. Also, all vegetables that contain
lots of fiber, except carrot and corn. Whole grains, starches and pasta
have a higher GI. On top of the list are white bread, refined grains
and some potatoes.

The Glycemic Load (GL) is a relatively new way to assess the impact of
carbohydrate consumption that takes the glycemic index into account,
but gives a fuller picture than does glycemic index alone.
A GI value tells you only how rapidly a particular carbohydrate
turns into sugar. It doesn’t tell you how much of that carbohydrate
is in a serving of a particular food. You need to know both things
to understand a food’s effect on blood sugar.
That is where glycemic load comes in. The carbohydrate in watermelon
for example, has a high GI, but there isn’t a lot of it, so watermelon
glycemic load is relatively low. A GL of 20 or more is high, a GL of
11 to 19 is medium, and a GL of 10 or less is low.

Following the latest research it appears that women experience cravings
about 10 times during the day. The most common times for these cravings
to appear are at 10 am and 4 pm. Interesting enough, these cravings
correspond almost exactly to your low blood sugar levels as well as
your low levels of serotonin. This is a chemical that drives women to
start eating. And because the drive is so strong, it’s quite difficult
to overcome.

Research performed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s
Clinical Research Center uncovered this truth when it found a
relationship between carbohydrates in the brain and weight loss.
Dr. J. Wurtman, lead researcher of the study, demonstrated, that
eating carbohydrates high on the GI raised the levels of serotonin
in the brain.

The results also showed that women suffering from premenstrual syndrome
eat to many carbohydrates and as a result gain weight.
Others overeat when they are depressed, stressed or angry in an effort
to balance these serotonin levels.

The objectives of diet management in diabetic patients are to reduce
hyperglycemia, prevent hyperglycemic episodes, and reduce the risk of
complications. For people with diabetes, the GI is a useful tool in
planning to achieve and maintain glycemic control.
High GI foods are absorbed quickly into the bloodstream, causing an
escalation in blood glucose levels and increasing the possibility
of hyperglycemia. The body compensates for the rise in blood sugar
levels with an accompanying increase in insulin, which within a few
hours can cause hypoglycemia. As a result, awareness of the
glycemic indices of food assists in preventing large variances in
blood glucose levels.

A low GI pre-event meal may be beneficial for athletes who respond
negatively to carbohydrate-rich foods prior to exercise or who
can’t consume carbohydrates during competition. Athletes are advised
to consume carbohydrates of moderate to high GI during prolonged
exercise to maximize performance, approximately 1 gram per minute of
exercise. Following exercise, moderate to high GI foods enhance
glycogen storage.

The fat content of food is one of the components that affect the GI.
Like fiber, fat acts like a brake on the absorption process.
Apart from this fact, fat just make food to taste better.
Fats also play an important role of signaling your body to stop eating.
This is vital to any weight-management program. The fat that you eat
causes the body to release a hormone called cholecystokinin.
This hormone is stored in the stomach until notified by the presence of
fat and is responsible for informing the brain that you’re satisfied.
It really is a marvellous thing and it means you don’t have to
deprive yourself.

Another factor that influence the absorption rate of glucose is
the protein content of the food. Protein seems to have the greatest
effect when it comes down to satisfying those hunger pangs,especially
for a long period of time and makes you feel fuller.
Protein also helps you to stay alert. However, we have to be aware of
the good and the bad protein. Always make sure you choose the lean
protein in either beef, fish, chicken or plant-based protein.

Protein itself rates zero on the GI scale, this means you don’t have
to be sparingly by adding it to your diet, only watch the calorie content.
It slows down the rise in insulin that happens when you eat any form of
carbohydrate. This means, if you add some protein to a food that ranks
high on the GI scale, you will counteract the spiking effect in insulin
rise. Another benefit of protein is, that it keeps you feeling full
longer after you eat it.It is therefore a good idea to add some protein
to your breakfast. And if you take a snack, make sure it contains some
form of protein.

If you like fish, you are doing yourself a favor. Fish not only
slows down the spiking in your insulin level, it also contains a rich
source of Omega-3 fatty acids. Eat fish at least twice a week.

The Glycemic Index is an excellent tool. It provide you with a
weight-management system that puts you in control of the foods you eat,
how much you eat, the way you eat and when you like to eat.
When you have a good variety of foods from which to choose, it makes
it easier to stay with the system.

Try eating according to the Glycemic Index, you will be pleasantly
surprised how easy it is to keep your weight under control and
you’ll also find that your energy level will rise as a bonus!

You can find the Revised International Table of Glycemic Index (GI) and Glycemic
Load (GL) Values—2008 By David Mendosa by visiting:www.mendosa.com/gilists.htm