Healthy Diet - A Look At What You Should Be Eating

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Foods that contain Hi-GI carbohydrates are basically staple foods that have been very refined. Think of them as foods that are made from refined flour and that have higher than normal concentrations of sugar. These include foods like white rice, potatoes, watermelons, white bread, refined cereals, and the worst being sugary drinks. These are the types of foods that will cause severe spikes in blood sugars and will in effect make your body chase its own tail everyday causing an untold number of health problems.

Low-GI carbohydrates are however good for you in moderation. Studies that have been conducted on mice to determine the different in how they react to the both high and low GI carbohydrates indicate that mice put on Low-GI carbohydrates experienced health gains while those on Hi-GI diets started to develop diseases the same way and in the same time-scale as humans who have a high GI diet. Foods that contain Low-GI carbohydrates are most fruits and vegetables excluding those in the Hi-GI category mentioned earlier. Breads made with unrefined flour with grain and even legumes and beans are also considered low-GI carbohydrate foods.

For a more detailed explanation on carbohydrates please go to our Low Carbohydrate Diet page.

Low-Fat
Another aspect of a healthy slimming diet is to regulate the intake of fat in your diet.  This is generally where people get it wrong. Some people say that you should remove all the fat from your diet which is also wrong. The thing is that fat is a name that comprises of anything that is oil based. Fat can vary greatly from one type to the other. Some fats are good for you while some fats are bad for you. To say you have to limit the intake of all fats is a bit simplistic and at best quite an inaccurate statement.

The one type of fat that you should limit and even completely eliminate from your diet is trans-fats or hydrogenated fats. These types of fats are actually not available naturally. They are made by extending one hydrogen atom to unsaturated fats thus changing their chemical make-up. The affect of adding the extra hydrogen makes the fat much more saturated and increases their melting point. They are used as preservatives by food manufacturers to increase the shelf life of products. There are no health benefits to consuming trans-fats. A number of high level studies of trans-fats have shows a direct link between it and cardiovascular disease. Let me emphasize here, “direct link” isn’t a word that is normally used in medical publications as they want to maintain some sort of deniability should another study prove their research wrong. Medical publications saying that trans-fats are directly linked to cardiovascular disease means that they are almost 100% certain that it will happen if you take too much of it. Therefore since we already have the data to confirm it, we must heed their advice and stay away from products that contain trans-fats.

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