Glycemic index: to eat or not to eat?

Low-glycemic diet can lead to a body-fat decrease without the decrease in muscle mass[1,2,3]. However, if you enthusiastically started throwing out toasts from your egg-and-toast breakfast, stop doing it immediately!

✔︎ YES, it can be beneficial to eat low-glycemic food for beginners.

❗️BUT — most of the researches were designed on a group of overweight people, in case you are not in such a group, your results can vary.

❗️AND high-glycemic food DOESN’T cause a rapid increase of the body-fat. To gain fat you need excess calories, not magic fats.

✅Our body composition depends on Protein-fat-carbohydrates intake, not on the carbohydrate type. Recently, researchers [4] compared 3 groups of people: those on a low-glycemic diet, calorie deficit and smaller portions. There was no significant difference after 12 weeks of dieting.

Thus:

✔︎ For beginners, results of a low-glycemic diet can be positive without a calorie deficit. But also, there can be no result at all — nobody knows.

✔︎ You will lose your weight even without lowering the glycemic index!

✔︎ In case you love experiments, but don’t want to throw smash potatoes out, try to change consuming time — breakfast for dinner and vice versa.

✔︎ High-glycemic carbohydrates are better digested. If you are not struggling with hunger, it’s not a problem for you.

👌🏻Interesting: increase of adequate physical activity and daily calories intake leads in changes of food preferences for simple food: high-protein, complex carbohydrates, less sugar — more fibre (fruits and fructose are not included).

Currently, I’m on calorie deficit before new muscle-gain cycle -1900kkal only. Subconsciously, my diet is changing towards complex carbohydrates, fats and proteins. It’s a popular tendency — the more you eat — the fewer doughnuts you want.

What’s your opinion about the glycemic index?