Hi,
Thanks for your comments on the SW and M.E. thread. I thought that I would reply here instead to ask for more info about the G.I. diet as the whole blood sugar thing rings true for me!
Hi again.
Since going on the low GI diet I have found the following benefits over when I was on SW:
I no longer eat junk food and kid myself that it's 'ok' because it's within my syns. Junk food makes me feel terrible, so this is a good thing.
I eat many more vegetables and less fruit, and when I do eat fruit it's usually a low GI fruit (apple, pear, berries, apricots). My plate is usually 1/2 what SW would call 'superfree' and this has really helped my digestion and overall feeling of (relative) well-being.
I eat smaller portions of carbs, and try to stick to 'good' carbs which, coincidentally, tend to have more nutrients. One of the issues with my ME has been that I wasn't digesting or absorbing nutrients from my food very well, so more nutrients are a good thing!
Because of all of the above, my blood sugar is much more stable, even when I was healthy before I was sensitive to swings, but when I got sick it became much much worse. I still do get mild swings sometimes, usually because I've eaten something I shouldn't or missed a meal/snack. Stable blood sugar makes me feel better, I don't get so crashingly tired so often, and it's also beneficial to fat loss because too many insulin peaks/troughs can actually contribute to fat and belly fat. I learned that belly fat actually produces inflammatory hormones and, again, inflammation is an enemy with ME/CFS. Since I've been doing low GI my belly fat is lessening, I still have some but it's getting there.
I am able to eat things that I know are good for me without trying to fit them into my 'syns'. I eat almond butter, flax seeds, avocado, omega 3 oils, juices etc and as long as these fit into my daily allowance I'm happy. I wouldn't have been able to fit all of these foods into my daily syns. I don't personally believe that the very low fat approach in SW did me any good.
I am never starving hungry. Unless things go against my plans, I eat something every 3-4 hours. When I am able to exercise or have done more walking than normal, I eat a bit more. When I'm at home on the sofa or in bed I eat a bit less.
I almost forgot to mention, since going low GI my female hormones seem more stable too, and my TOTM is not as evil as it used to be. I used to have awful pains and be completely shattered, both of those problems are gone now and TOTM is a couple of days shorter than it used to be too. Which when you have ME/CFS can be a huge benefit!
So, that's been the 'pros' for me! I've been eating this way for about a year now and (apart from this week's evil office germ) haven't felt better than I do now since becoming ill.
I saw in another post you mentioned you had calorie counted for a day and found it quite a chore (I think it was you anyway, sorry if not). I do count calories personally, but only because I found that for me to have effective weight loss without jeopardising my health I had to walk a very fine line. If I have too few calories I feel awful. If I have too many calories then I just don't lose. So for me I've learned to live with it, I have a set of breakfasts in the week that I can 'quick add' in my fitness pal, so make it easier, and I usually try to cook from recipes that have a known calorie count so I don't have to work out the calories for each meal myself. In MFP once your 'favourite' and 'recent' lists build up it gets quicker to log as well. If I'm organised enough I will log two or three days worth in advance, this serves as meal planning and means I don't have to worry about it for a few days.
All that said, you don't have to calorie count to do low GI or GL. There are a number of plans that just give daily guidelines. Rick Gallop's Express GI Diet - a traffic light system that also has many recipes that are very quick to prepare, a boon if you haven't much kitchen stamina, and South Beach Diet Supercharged - guidelines for numbers of portions per day and portion sizes for carbs and fats, are the easiest two that come to mind. Many people also do well just following the low GI principles on their own. A good rule of thumb is 1/2 plate non-starchy veg, 1/4 plate good carbs, 1/4 protein, make sure you eat something every 3-4 hours, and make sure you have some protein with every meal and snack. Good carbs are things like sweet potatoes, new potatoes, brown rice or basmati rice, wholemeal and/or spelt or kamut pasta, soba noodles, wholegrain high fibre bread etc. I would really recommend choosing a book to go from as different authors have some different ideas, but the basics are as outlined above. There's even a Collins Little Gem GI book that again shows traffic light values of many different foods (so green light foods you should eat liberally, yellow light foods only on occasion, red light foods you should avoid).
Happy to answer any other questions, good luck with your decision. If you decide to go low GI I hope you'll stick around the forum.
plum x
