The glycemic index (GI) ranks carbohydrates on a scale of 1-100 based on how quickly they convert to glucose. The higher the GI score, the faster the conversion. Here’s how the scoring works:

• Low GI = 55 or less
• Medium GI = 56-69
• High GI = 70 or more

To determine the GI score of a food, such as carrots, a subject consumes a standard serving size on an empty stomach. The subject’s blood is then tested at various time intervals to measure the changes in blood glucose.

Real-World Factors Affecting The GI Score

Just like a car’s gas mileage rating which is measured under very controlled conditions and varies greatly in the real world, the GI score of a food can change dramatically given certain real-world conditions. Factors affecting a food’s GI score include:

• Ripeness or age of food. A 1992 study by Hermansen et al. reported that the GI for under-ripe bananas was 43 and that for over-ripe bananas was 74. In under-ripe bananas the starch constitutes 80-90 percent of the carbohydrate content, which as the banana ripens changes to free sugars.
• Particle size. According to a 1988 study by Heaton et al. The researchers found that the GI of wheat, maize, and oats increased from whole grains (lowest GI), cracked grains, coarse flour, to fine flour (highest GI). This explains why eating foods as close to their natural state helps control rapid spikes in blood sugar.
• Method of preparation. A plain white potato (150g), baked in its skin has a GI score of about 60. Take that same potato and microwave it and the GI score skyrockets to 82. Remember the score is out of 100 (the score for pure glucose).
• Geographic location. It was found that North Amercian grown carrots scored higher on the GI than carrots grown in Easter Europe. This may be due to soil make up, pesticide use, water quality or any one of a thousand contributing factors.
• Food combinations. Remember a GI score is given after eating a food on an empty stomach. You can alter a GI score simply by eating it with other foods.

  For example, if you were to place a pat of butter on high GI carrots, serve them with some chicken and steamed broccoli, the combination of the fat, the protein and the low GI broccoli would lower the GI score of the carrots.

So you don’t have to totally eliminate vegetables with higher GI scores. Just be aware that on their own they can negatively affect your weight loss efforts. But as a part of a varied and balanced (protein, fat and carbohydrates) diet, you can enjoy just about anything.

With that said however, if you make the majority of your choices from low GI foods, you will find…

• Weight loss comes more easily.
• Your moods remain level.
• You will feel more satisfied from your meals.
• You experience fewer cravings for sugar.
• You can eat fewer calories without feeling hungry all the time.

The Glycemic Load

For years, the GI was the only tool available to help make our carbohydrate choices. And it really did make people aware of their food choices. However, it only provided half of the picture. You see two factors affect how carbohydrate will affect your blood sugar and insulin levels:

1. The quality of the carbohydrate.
2. The quantity of the carbohydrate.

Using only the glycemic index to make food decisions led to extremes. People all over the world began swearing off high glycemic foods such as carrots, corn, peas, watermelon and such.

But what’s worse, eating half a cup of carrots or eating three baked potatoes? The potatoes have a moderate GI score. Does it matter if you eat three of them? You bet it does. It just makes sense. So a tool was introduced that accounted for not just the quality of the carb, but the quantity as well. That tool is called…

The Glycemic Load.

To determine the glycemic load of any carbohydrate source, take the glycemic index score, divide it by 100 and multiply it by the net grams of carbs (total grams of carbohydrates minus the fiber) in a serving.

For example, an apple with a GI score of 34 and 14.5g of carbs per serving would have a GL of 4.93. [(34/100) x 14.5]

Making the right carbohydrate choices can have a dramatic impact on your life. For me, it meant being able to control my chronic depression without pills, as well as being able to maintain my weight with relative ease.

It does take some time and practice, but I believe you’ll find the effort worthwhile.

How To Track Your Carbohydrate Intake

One of the most important steps you can take is to track how much carbohydrate you eat at each meal and snack. This process used to be slow and tedious as you flipped through an enormous book to find foods and then had to write it all down.

Today, the process is made much easier with the invention of calorie calculators you can access online or on your computer’s desktop.

A good free tool is Fitday.com. It allows you to easily enter foods and determine how much of each nutrient (protein, fat and carbs) you’ve eaten. It has a great search tool, a comprehensive database and allows you to enter your own foods into it.

The only downfall that I see of this program is it doesn’t allow you to enter food on a meal-to-meal basis. It only gives you a running total for the day. The downside to this is one meal may be low in carbs and high the next, but the totals will average out and look fine. I prefer to be able to see on a meal-by-meal, what the calories were and how many grams of protein, carbs and fat I ate. Even their PC version doesn’t allow you to enter food meal-by-meal.

Personally, I recommend Crosstrainer 6. It sits on your computer desktop so you can access it anytime - no internet connection required. I downloaded their free 10-day demo (something Fitday doesn’t have) and took some time to play around with it. Very nice. It’s easy to add your own custom foods. Finding food in the database is easy as well. You can build a recipe database and print out shopping lists. And that’s just the nutrition section. You’ll also find a very slick exercise log.

Regardless of how you do it, begin paying attention to the amount and the type of carbohydrates you consume. You may be very pleasantly surprised at how it can help your weight loss efforts.