Low And Slow May Be The Way To Go When It Comes To Dieting

Reposted from NPR’s food blog article. I’m curious what readers’ favorite low-glycemic foods are. Let me know!

Eating low-glycemic foods, or foods that take longer to digest, may help you feel fuller for a longer period of time.

If you’re dieting, you know you’ve got to count calories, carbs and fats. But if you really want to take off the weight and keep it off, you might want to pay more attention to the glycemic index, which is essentially a measure of how quickly foods are digested.

That’s because high glycemic foods cause a surge in blood sugar, followed by a crash. That biological reaction releases hormones that stimulate hunger and, according to David Ludwig of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children’s Hospital, actually lower metabolism, adding up to a dismal recipe for people who want to lose weight and keep it off.

“One of the unfortunate aspects of weight loss maintenance is that it takes fewer and fewer calories to just stay the same,” Ludwig says. “As the body loses weight, it becomes more efficient and requires fewer calories,” making it harder and harder to continue losing and making it difficult to maintain weight loss without continually dieting. By some estimates, only 1 in 6 Americans who lose weight are able to keep it off after one year.

But Ludwig and colleagues recently published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that offers some tools you might use to fight back. Researchers compared the low-carb, low-fat and low-glycemic diets to see which one burned the most calories per day. The low-carb diet was the clear winner. The low-fat diet was the loser. But it was the diet in the middle, the low-glycemic index diet, that Ludwig suggests is more promising. It burned more calories per day than the low-fat diet and proved easier to stick to over the long term than the low-carb diet.

Mike Rogers, 43, was a participant who managed to keep off the 40 pounds he lost. He says the difference in the three diets was “enormous,” adding that “the low-glycemic diet reminded me of the way my mom and grandmom cooked while I was growing up; I felt far better on the low-glycemic diet than on either of the other two.”

Still trim, Rogers now eats far more fruits and vegetables than he did in the past, and, when it comes to carbohydrates, he opts for those with a lower glycemic index. That means brown rice versus white, whole grain pasta and steel cut oats instead of “quick-cooking” oats. He pretty much stays away from all processed foods.

Highly processed and refined foods, like packaged items, white bread, white rice, prepared breakfast cereals and crackers have a high glycemic index. “The body can digest these foods into sugar literally within moments after eating,” says Ludwig.

Low-glycemic foods tend to be natural foods like most vegetables and fruits, nuts, beans and whole grains. They actually wend their way slowly through the body’s digestion system, using up more energy and burning more calories in the process. And, best of all, says Ludwig, they actually “increase the metabolic rate and decrease hunger, giving us a biological advantage” in losing and maintaining weight.

Ludwig is quick to caution that his study was short and not conclusive. He’s working now to design a long-term study that looks at diet and weight loss maintenance over a number of years.

Registered dietitian Joy Dubost, a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, says the low-glycemic diet is hard to follow. In large part, that’s because there are many factors that affect how the body digests food, including the combination of food we eat, food preparation, whether vegetables and fruits are ripe, and our individual differences in how we digest food.

And eating too many low-glycemic foods that are also high in calories, sugar or saturated fats can be problematic.

Dubost urges moderation of carbs and fats. But equally important, she says, is a “part of the equation often ignored”: exercise. She points to research that shows people who were successful in maintaining their weight a year after losing it added a significant ingredient to their daily regimen: at least 60 to 90 minutes of moderate exercise every single day.

Do you have a lot to lose?

It’s that time of year again. I’m noticing a rash of weight-loss commercials on the TV this morning. On the Today Show they had a segment about willpower where they interviewed an expert on the subject, Kelly Mcgonigal, PhD, a health psychologist and yoga teacher at Stanford university, who happens to have a book out: “The Willpower Instinct”.

Perusing a little on her website, I am seeing themes reminiscent of some of the insights I learned from Dr. Daniel Amen’s work. The brain is crucial. If there’s something off in the brain, achieving lifestyle-change goals will be more difficult. But information IS power and, although I struggle with some issues like ADD, addressing the brain chemistry issues has enabled me to turn the corner on my heath and lifestyle goals.

Dr. Mcgonigal’s work adds the psychological dimension including the importance of self-compassion and strategies for using and building self-control. I will write more about her work as I research it. Meanwhile, here is a great article from her website: http://kellymcgonigal.com/2011/10/21/how-mindfulness-supports-weight-loss/

For your convenience, here is one section from the article that I found fascinating, but you really ought to read the whole thing when you get a chance.

From Mindless to Mindful Eating

According to Susan Albers, PsyD, author of Eat, Drink and Be Mindful (New Harbinger 2009), mindless eating is a major factor in weight gain and a saboteur of weight loss. “In many cases, it’s not the meals we eat that cause weight gain. It’s the snacking, the mindless eating while watching television, when we’re on autopilot and not really aware of what we’re eating.” And it’s not just the environment or distractions that trigger automatic eating. Emotions play a big role. “The majority of food decisions people make have nothing to do with hunger. They have to do with stress, anxiety, sadness or frustration.”

This is where mindfulness comes in. Mindfulness is the process of paying attention, both to inner cues (thoughts, emotions and sensations) and to your environment. When applied to eating, this can mean the difference between one more failed diet and lasting change you can live with. “When clients address their mindless eating, they often naturally lose weight,” Albers says.

Albers breaks mindful eating into three components:

• Mindful Eating in the Moment. This means getting rid of distractions like reading, watching television or eating on the go. It also means being aware of the sensations of eating—really tasting, smelling and enjoying the food as you eat it. Finally, it means knowing what it feels like to be hungry or full, and learning to honor those signals. “Mindless eaters have so lost touch with the feeling of fullness. But with practice you start to realize, if I eat any more, I’m not going to feel good. ”
• Nonjudgmental Awareness of Eating Habits and Beliefs. Albers encourages her clients to keep a food journal to get a clear sense of their eating habits, and to pay attention to habits like where they keep food in the house or office and how they go about food shopping. It’s also important to notice how you talk to yourself about food. “Be mindful of the voices in your head, the messages Mom might have given you about food.” Common self-defeating beliefs include not wanting to waste food, putting foods into black-and-white “good” and “bad” categories or trying to show people you love them by sharing rich comfort foods.
• Nonjudgmental Awareness of Environmental and Emotional Triggers for Eating. A bakery case full of French pastries may trigger a craving that was not there a moment ago. That craving has nothing to do with the body’s true needs and everything to do with the eating environment. A mindful approach can help you become aware of the difference between hunger and craving. And when you are aware of your personal triggers, it is easier to avoid them or to pause and make a conscious choice. Stress is another common trigger for overeating, but it’s not just negative feelings that trigger mindless eating. “Positive feelings can prompt automatic eating, too,” Albers says. “You want the happy feeling to continue, so you celebrate with food to hold on to the joy.” Mindfulness can help you recognize when you are eating for emotional reasons and can allow you to develop other strategies for self-soothing or celebrating.