Calorie Counting vs. the Glycemic Index

Many diets involve some sort of calorie-counting for weight loss. I’ve honestly never been a fan of this practice. While watching portions is indeed important (if you eat more than your body needs, you’ll likely gain weight), the traditional calories in vs calories out paradigm is only half the story.

Our body reacts differently to different kinds of food, regardless of calorie count. Highly processed food containing chemicals and dyes (even the ones with zero calories) can disrupt your hormones. Inflammatory, refined foods can stop-up your digestion, thereby slowing your metabolism. Both directly, or indirectly, affect weight gain, making the amount of calories consumed partially irrelevant.

 

But the biggest problem with calorie counting, is the lack of consideration for the sugar content. I’m not talking about how many grams of sugar a product or food contains, I’m talking about how high does the food spike your blood sugar levels, or what is its glycemic index?

 

The Glycemic Index was created by a Canadian doctor in the 1980’s, initially to help treat diabetes. To determine a food’s glycemic index, they give 50 grams of the food being tested to a group of volunteers. They then take the average of how high the volunteers’ blood sugar levels get spiked by said food, on a scale of 1 to 100. That means if you eat the same caloric amount of white rice (high glycemic) and brown rice (low-medium glycemic), one will potentially cause weight gain and the other won’t. Here’s why: white rice is just brown rice with the germ and the bran removed, leaving only the starchy center, which is sugar (glucose), which is what your body uses for energy. The glucose in white rice (or any refined grain or sugar) will get absorbed rapidly into your blood stream (since there is no longer much fiber to slow it down), and will spike your blood sugar all the way up to the 70’s on the glycemic index (the same as white sugar). Since your body can only use so much energy at once, the extra sugar gets stored as fat for later use, which is why high glycemic foods can lead to weight gain.

 

Whereas, if you eat the brown rice, your body has to break through the bran and the germ to get to the starchy center, which means the sugar gets absorbed slowly over a longer period of time, and you burn the energy as it’s being released, instead of storing it as fat. Big difference in reaction to the same amount of calories, right? This has long been a major flaw in any diet that relies heavily or solely on the number of calories, not the type of calories.

 

Another indirect effect of the glycemic index on weight has to do with cravings. Let’s compare what happens if you eat a half an avocado (approximately 113 calories) vs. 2 Snackwells cookies (100 calories). The avocado in this scenario, which doesn’t even register on the glycemic index it’s so low, will satisfy your body’s nutritional needs in a number of ways, and leave you feeling more satiated. Since the cookies, however, are made up mostly of refined flour and sugar, and are devoid of nutrients, they’ll spike your blood sugar high, followed soon-after by a blood sugar crash, leaving you hungry and craving more. It’s difficult to restrict your calories when you’re fighting strong physical cravings!

 

In my opinion, in a match between what’s more effective for sustainable weight loss, calorie counting or eating a lower glycemic diet, the glycemic index wins. The easiest way to eat a lower glycemic diet, is just to eat real, whole food in reasonable portions. It’s mostly the refined stuff that registers high glycemic. But if you’re curious for specifics on how your food choices shake down, you can look up the glycemic index on a number of websites. The following website offers one of the easier charts to read (recommended by Dr. Weil): http://www.mendosa.com/gilists.htm

 

A side note to consider when using the GI, is that it doesn’t take into account how much you would realistically eat of different foods. For example, it’s tough to get 50 grams of carbohydrates from carrots. In fact, you would need about ten carrots, which you would never eat at one time, so the resulting GI of carrots is higher than in practice. Likewise, we wouldn’t eat 50 grams of carbohydrates of watermelon, which is made up largely of water, so the high glycemic index of watermelon can be a bit deceiving. In those cases, you can check the glycemic load instead, which takes into account realistic portion size. Watermelon has a high glycemic index, but a low glycemic load.

 

Now, before we throw away the importance of calorie counting completely, I do want to mention that eating too much avocado, or any fat, will raise your caloric and fat intake to higher levels than your body needs, so eat all foods in reasonable portions, even the low glycemic healthy ones.

 

But overall, I suggest you pay more attention to the type of calories you consume vs. the amount. Quality over quantity, as the saying goes!