Metabolic Effects of a Low Glycemic Index Diet
One of the most crucial steps you can take to ensure the long-term success of your dieting efforts is to ensure that your metabolic rate remains high, even while operating in a caloric deficit. Some diets are better or worse at this task, so choosing the right type of diet is important for sustainable weight loss. While a low-glycemic index diet might slightly compromise glucose metabolism when compared to a diet comprised of high-GI foods, there are nevertheless other metabolically effective elements of the diet that make a low-GI approach viable as a healthy solution for weight control issues.
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Metabolism
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Contrary to what you might believe, your metabolism is not fixed at a set rate. Your metabolism changes pace constantly depending on a number of factors including frequency of exercise, exercise intensity, caloric intake, macronutrient ratios, and a host of other factors. Your main goal when dieting should be to maximize the factors that increase metabolism while minimizing the factors that would impair metabolic processes.
Glycemic Index
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The glycemic index is a table which ranks carbohydrates depending on how quickly they are digested by the body (and the corresponding rise in blood sugar and insulin associated with that digestion). As a general rule, faster digested carbs (such as refined flours and processed foods) provide a slight metabolic boost, while slower digested carbs (such as fruits and vegetables) keep metabolism relatively steady. While after considering this you might believe it is beneficial to stock your diet with these higher-GI carbs for their effect on metabolism, that slight benefit is outweighed when compared to the resultant fat storage that occurs upon constantly spiking your blood sugar with high-GI carbs.
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Metabolism and a Low-GI Diet
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Looking at the situation strictly as a high-GI versus low-GI issue, consuming low-GI carbs will not have much of an impact on boosting metabolism. However, when you consider that many low-GI carbs are also innately thermogenic (they cause the body to burn additional calories during the process of digestion, thus stimulating metabolism indirectly), on balance, many low-GI foods will result in a net boost to metabolism.
Meal Frequency and Metabolic Effects
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Aside from the thermogenic properties of many low-GI foods, there is an additional element present in most low-GI diets that can contribute to a net increase in metabolism---meal frequency. Meal frequency is usually fairly high on a low-GI diet, as you are often instructed to consume five or six small meals throughout the day. These meals help to boost metabolism by convincing the body that it will always have a ready supply of food, preventing down-regulation of metabolism as you progress further into your diet. When compounded with the fact that you are consuming thermogenic low-GI carbs at these meals, the aggregate effect is constant stimulation of the metabolism.
Caloric Inake on a Low-GI Diet
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Overall caloric intake is usually higher on a low-GI diet than comparable plans. This is because consuming only low-GI foods like fruits and vegetables naturally regulates body weight, as it is difficult to overeat these categories of food, thus removing the need to strictly count or limit daily calories. This higher caloric intake also lends support to increased metabolic rate, as metabolism tends to "chase" your food intake---when you eat more food your metabolism speeds up to match, and vice versa.
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