How blood sugar levels affect weight loss (episode#2)

[mudassar anwar]

What to Watch For
• Simple Carbohydrates: Because of their small molecular size, simple carbohydrates can be metabolized quickly and are therefore most likely to cause an insulin surge.
Simple carbohydrates include the various forms of sugar, such as sucrose (table sugar), fructose (fruit sugar), lactose (dairy sugar), and glucose (blood sugar). Watch for the "-ose" ending.
• Hidden Sugar in Processed Foods: Watch for "hidden" sugar in processed foods like bread, ketchup, salad dressing, canned fruit, applesauce, peanut butter, and soups.
• Sugar in Beverages: Be aware of the amount of sugar in beverages, especially coffee and soda pop. It can add up quickly, and most such drinks aren't filling.
• Fat-Free Products: Sugar is often used to replace the flavor that is lost when the fat is removed. And as if that's not bad enough, without any fat to slow it down the sugar is absorbed into your blood faster.
• Cereal Box Claims of Less Sugar: Many newer cereals do contain less sugar, but the calories, carbohydrates, fat, fiber and other nutrients are almost identical to the full-sugar cereals. The manufacturers have simply replaced sugar with other refined, simple carbohydrates.
• No Sugar Added: It doesn't mean that the product doesn't naturally contain a lot of sugar. 100% fruit products often contain concentrated fruit juice, still another form of fructose or sugar.
Table sugar (sucrose) is often said to provide "empty calories" because it has no nutritional value other than providing fuel for energy. Honey and other more natural sugars, on the other hand, are often considered to be healthier because of the trace vitamins and minerals they provide. Still, for weight loss purposes, all of these sweeteners can simply be treated as sugar.
What You Can Do

It is also important to understand what happens when you skip a meal or go on a crash diet. When you skip a meal your metabolism slows to conserve your energy. And when you lose weight too quickly for a few days, your body thinks it is threatened with starvation and goes into survival mode. It fights to conserve your fat stores, and any weight loss comes mostly from water and muscle.

Regulating your blood sugar level is the most effective way to maintain your fat-burning capacity. Never skip a meal, especially breakfast, and eat healthy snacks between meals. Eating frequently prevents hunger pangs and the binges that follow, provides consistent energy, and may be the single most effective way to maintain metabolism efficiency.
When you will be away from home or work, plan your snacks and take them along so that you will be able to eat regularly and won't be tempted by junk food. This may be good advice for people who stay at home, too.
But remember that it was probably snacking between meals that caused you to become overweight in the first place. It will be very important that any snacks are healthy; that they are pre-portioned so you won't be tempted to overeat; and that meal sizes are reduced to compensate for the additional calories the snacks provide.

High fiber snacks and meals also help to regulate your blood sugar level. The fiber slows down glucose absorption and your rate of digestion, keeping your blood sugar level more consistent and warding off feelings of hunger. This makes eating apples and oranges a better choice than drinking (pulp free) apple and orange juice.

A Note about Diabetes
Some people either produce too little insulin or their body doesn't respond to it properly. This creates too high a level of blood sugar in their blood which leads to diabetes. For further information please visit the American Diabetes Association website.

[Keith]

Categorising by simple/complex (ie. chemical structure) has proven an inaccurately model of the actual blood sugar effect of foods.

You might have heard of the Glycaemic Index (GI). The GI was developed by feeding people foods and actually measuring how rapidly it impacts their blood sugar response. There are numerous sites on the web that will tell you whether a given food is high or low GI. (Obviously there are a lot of foods and some haven't been tested yet but all the basic foods have, plus a lot of others).

There are some surprises. One is that all sugars are not created equal. Fructose is very low GI, and we use it in lieu of sucrose for that reason (Note: Fructose has other negative effects on diabetics, however). Sucrose is in the middle of the high range, but actually has less blood sugar impact than a baked potato! Glutinous white rice is absorbed almost as rapidly as pure glucose!

Sugar is still empty calories, and excess is bad for you in a number of ways. But if impact on your blood sugar (and hence energy levels) is your concern, there are worse things to watch out for.

See The Glycemic Index for more information.

[EDIT] BTW, there are two different scales for measuring GI so if you're researching on the web, make sure you're comparing apples and apples. The current scale assigns Glucose a GI value of 100.