The GL Diet For Dummies

Nigel Denby, Sue Baic

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9780470027530
• eBook ISBN:
  9781119998037
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine

If you're sick of no-carb diets, or just looking for a healthy eating plan, then the GL Diet is for you. No more calculations, no calorie-counting and no more cravings for carbs – as long as you stick to foods that are low in GL, you can stay healthy and lose weight without having to go without. The GL Diet For Dummies explains the science behind the plan, helps you to incorporate GL into your everyday life and gives readers 80 recipes to try.

Chapter 1

Introducing GL: Healthy Eating in the Real World

In This Chapter

Discovering a healthy eating plan that makes scientific sense

Understanding the key principles of easy GL eating

Putting the pieces into practice

Embracing the GL lifestyle for good health – for keeps

Hearing from the professionals

T he diet industry is worth millions because people are continually searching for that elusive perfect diet. Diet fads come and go; some diets are effective and some are downright dangerous. Industrialised countries face an obesity epidemic with huge implications in terms of individual suffering and medical costs. Therefore, people turn in hope to the latest eating trends fuelling the quest for the perfect diet – diets that seem to become more and more extreme.

Working with patients, training the dietitians of the future, and sifting through the mountain of scientific evidence surrounding different dietary theories means that we can see the problem of finding an effective diet from many different angles.

We work with people who need help improving their diet and lifestyle, and we have access to the evolving science along with the skills to translate new findings into real-life strategies and real foods. As registered dietitians, we’re at the frontline in the battle to find a diet that’s satisfying, good for you, and promotes a healthy weight. We have great news for you – we’ve found it!

In this chapter we introduce you to the Glycaemic Load Diet (GL Diet), the most significant breakthrough in nutritional science by far. The GL Diet is balanced and provides all the nutrition you need to be healthy. We share with you why the easy-to-follow low-GL way of eating can give you more energy, reduce your risk of disease, stamp out your food cravings, and enable you to maintain a healthy weight.

Weight-loss diets often forget about the complete nutritional package you need to achieve not only a healthy weight but a healthy body, too. The GL Diet is sustainable for life – that means it’s both safe and nutritionally complete.

Easy to Choose, Easy to Use

The GL Diet is based on eating certain carbohydrates, as part of a healthy diet, that slowly release energy keeping you going for longer, rather than storing the fuel away as fat. (Head to Chapter 2 for more of the science behind the eating plan.)

One of the best things about the GL-way of eating is the flexibility that you have with food. Whether or not you’re trying to lose weight, you won’t feel at all as if you’re on a restrictive diet. Think of the GL Diet as an eating plan, rather than a diet – much nicer!

The two most important factors for healthy eating are:

Enjoy your food: Eating is a pleasant aspect of your life. The GL Diet doesn’t ban any foods nor make other foods obligatory. Enjoying your food the GL-way means getting a better balance of foods in your diet in order to be healthy and to minimise the risk of disease.

Eat a variety of foods: The greater the variety of foods you eat, the more essential nutrients your diet will contain, especially the necessary vitamins and minerals.

These two concepts are the very pinnacle on which to base a healthy, happy, balanced diet. The idea of avoiding any food forever fills us both with horror. As well as being registered dietitians, we’re also both real foodies. We love to cook and we love to eat – and that’s why we love GL.

Putting GL into Practice

We want to make sure that you have everything you need to start the GL Diet today – hassle-free. We spent hours searching the supermarket aisles for GL-friendly foods; we picked our way through loads of restaurant menus to help you eat out in GL-style (the hard life of a For Dummies author); and we hit the kitchen to develop a range of recipes so that you can eat low GL all the way.

Low-GL food guides

You’ll find lots of information about choosing food for your low-GL eating plan in Chapters 11, 12, and 16. Here are some at-a-glance guidelines:

Meat, fish, and poultry: Choose a good mixture of protein foods including lean meats, skinless poultry, and a mix of white and oily fish.

Fruit and vegetables: Pretty much all fruit and veg are great on a low-GL diet (take a look at the Cheat Sheet). Aim to eat a rainbow of different colours to get the best mix of vitamins and minerals.

Fats: Replace saturated fat (such as butter and lard) with polyunsaturated (such as corn oil) and monounsaturated fats (such as olive oil).

Nuts and seeds: All nuts and seeds are good...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part l : Getting Started
• Chapter 1: Introducing GL: Healthy Eating in the Real World
• Chapter 2: Checking Out the Science behind GL
• Chapter 3: Starting Your Low-GL Plan
• Part lI : Shopping and Eating Out
• Chapter 4: Cruising with Confidence: Low-GL Shopping and Eating on the Run
• Chapter 5: Table for Two? Eating Out GL-Style
• Part lll : Morning to Night Recipes
• Chapter 6: Starting Your Day with a Low-GL Breakfast
• Chapter 7: Doing Lunch: Low-GL Lunches at Home and on the Go
• Chapter 8: Delectable Dinners: Low-GL Suppers and Ideas for Entertaining
• Chapter 9: Just Desserts: Virtuous Low-GL Puddings
• Chapter 10: Smart Snacks: Low-GL Quick Bites and Healthy Nibbles
• Part lV : Optimising GL
• Chapter 11: Replacing Common Ingredients with GL-friendly Alternatives
• Chapter 12: Placing GL in the Healthy Living Jigsaw
• Chapter 13: Medical Benefits of the GL Diet
• Part V : The Part of Tens
• Chapter 14: Ten Reasons for Eating the Low-GL Way
• Chapter 15: Ten Best GL Web Sites
• Chapter 16: Ten GL-Savvy Food Swaps
• Appendix: A–Z List of Low-GL Foods
• : Further Reading