I'd appreciate it if anyone had a link or could point me to other resources regarding David Ludwig's low-glycemic diet. I've only been able to find vague descriptions of it like: "eat only foods with a low-glycemic load." Not too specific. I'd be interested in a more detailed outline of how his diet works.

Failing that, I'm reading more and more about diets that are based primarily on the glycemic load of foods in general rather than on counting carbohydrate grams. Any information on how a low glycemic diet works in the real world would be greatly appreciated.

I've looked at "The G-Index Diet" by Richard N. Podell and he seems to claim you can lose weight on a 2,000 calorie diet of low-glycemic foods. His specific take does limit fat to 25 percent of calories.

So far I've been pretty successful on Atkins, but before that I started losing weight just by emliminating sugar and refined grains. Eventually, though I'd like to add some whole grain and fruit (fiber is an issue too) and I wonder if glycemic load is a way to find an optimal level for total carbohydrates--without it getting to complicated.

Thanks.

I've never heard of it.. But have you tried www.ivillage.com or www.oxygen.com ? They have alot of info on low carb diets and stuff. www.about.com is another good one.

Here is a fantastic article by Dana Carpenter on the glycemic load. You can sign up to her ezine by going to
http://www.holdthetoast.com.

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http://www.holdthetoast.com/archive/020116.html

Beyond the Glycemic Index

By now, many, if not most of you are familiar with the idea of the
glycemic index - the rating of how quickly and far any given
carbohydrate will push up your blood sugar. For those of you who are new to low carbing (congratulations on that New Year's Resolution!), here's a quick rundown of the concept:

The glycemic index, often abbreviated "G" or "GI" (as in, "low-G
carb" - I usually just call them "low impact" carbs) was first
explored as a way to control diabetes. For quite a while, scientists believed that simple carbohydrates, aka sugars, were absorbed quickly, and complex carbs, aka starches, were absorbed more slowly, and therefore were safer for diabetics, and would act as a far steadier supply of energy. Actual tests of the blood sugar impact of various carbohydrates showed this theory to be wildly simplistic, aka dead wrong.

Tests of the glycemic index were done thusly: A group of test
subjects was assembled, some of them diabetics, and some of them not. Their fasting blood sugar was tested. Then they were each given a carefully measured portion of the food to be tested. It is important to understand that these portions were measured to contain a specific amount of carbohydrate - 50 grams -- not a specific amount of the given food. In other words, the test subjects would eat about one and a half medium sized potatoes, or, or about 12 teaspoons of sugar, or a little over two cups of cherries - what ever amount of the food was needed to provide 50 grams of carbohydrate.

Once the subjects had eaten the test food, their blood was drawn at regular intervals for several hours, and their blood sugar tested, so that the researchers could observe how quickly it went up - and came down. These results were then averaged out between the test subjects, and that average was compared to the blood sugar impact of a "reference food". Originally the reference food was glucose, the most basic sugar, but some scientists eventually changed over to using standard, soft, puffy, grocery store white bread as the reference food, feeling that it had more real world significance. Whichever reference food they chose, it was given the rating of 100; the other foods were given a number which stood for how quickly or slowly that food raised blood sugar when compared to the reference food.

(Good to know: When glucose is used as the reference food, white bread is about a 70, and glucose ends up being something like 130 or 140. If you're consulting a chart of glycemic indices, it's important to know which reference food they're using, or you won't fully understand the numbers.)

These tests of the glycemic index made it clear that the old idea of sugar = fast, starch = slow was erroneous. There were lots of
surprises - for instance, the fact that baked potatoes will jack
blood sugar around faster and harder than an equivalent amount of table sugar (although, of course, the potato will also contain more vitamins.) It was found that whole wheat loaf bread is nearly as hard on blood sugar as white bread, but for some odd reason whole wheat pita bread has a far more modest impact. We also learned - thank heaven! - that rice cakes, the dieter's penance, nasty, styrofoam-like things that they are, have a sky-high glycemic index, and can't be considered health food by any stretch of the imagination.

(Do you know what food has perhaps the highest glycemic index of any tested, with a heavier-duty blood sugar impact than pure glucose? Tofutti, the tofu "ice cream" sold in health food stores. On the glucose scale, it's a 115, while really-truly ice cream is only a 61.)

Several things appear to influence the blood sugar impact of
carbohydrate foods. Fiber is one - the higher the fiber content, in
general, the lower the glycemic index, apparently because fiber holds the digestible carbs you eat like a sponge, time releasing them into your blood stream. This may well account for quite a lot of the research showing that eating a high fiber diet is healthy; by eating a lot of fiber one may moderate some of the bad health effects that come with the blood sugar roller coaster.

Degree of processing also makes a difference; eating whole boiled wheat kernels is easier on your blood sugar than eating coarse-ground wheat bread, which in turn is easier on your blood sugar than eating puffed wheat.

Perhaps most controversial, we learned that some fruits and
vegetables had a higher glycemic index than anyone had previously suspected. In particular, carrots were found to have a high glycemic index, and for that reason, many low carb dieters avoid them like poison, to the point of picking little bitty shreds of carrot out of their salads.

Remember the point I made several paragraphs back, that it was
important to understand that the glycemic index tests involved eating whatever sized portion of the test food was needed to make up 50 grams of carbohydrate? This is the weakness of the whole concept.

Because of this particular point, some foods were made to appear taboo for the carbohydrate intolerant, when in reality, they could be tolerated in the sort of quantity that people generally eat them.

Carrots, it turns out, are a case in point. It is apparently true
that eating enough carrots to consume 50 grams of carbohydrate will jack your blood sugar around pretty good, but do you know how many carrots that is? More than fifty of those little baby carrots, that's how many. I don't know about you, but I don't like carrots that well!

In other words, while a half a cup of carrots contains more, and
higher-G, carbohydrate than, say, a half a cup of cucumber, they're not something we have to shun altogether. For instance, I made a pot of soup yesterday, and I included, among other vegetables, one sliced carrot. Assuming that we call the whole potful 6 servings, that carrot added a bit less than a gram of usable carbohydrate to each serving, and it surely improved the flavor, and the vitamin content.

Enter the concept of the glycemic load.

"Glycemic load" is a new way of using those glycemic index tables to make them apply more realistically to food as people actually eat it. To calculate the glycemic load of a given food, you simply multiply the glycemic index of the food (using the white bread scale) by the number of grams of carbohydrate that are actually found in an average serving of that food. For instance: the glycemic index of soft drinks is about 97. There are about 42 grams of carbohydrate in a twelve ounce can of soda. 97x42 = 4,074, or something you really don't want to touch. Pumpernickel bread has a glycemic index of 71, and about 16 grams of carbohydrate per slice. 71x16 = 1,136; still pretty heavy
duty. But while cooked carrots have a glycemic index of 56, a half-
cup serving has only about 8.2 grams of carbohydrate - 56x8.2 =
459.2, or nowhere near as scary as either of our other examples.

(I should point out here that, for some reason that no one has
explained to me, these values are actually expressed with the decimal point in a different place: the glycemic load of soda would be expressed as 40.74, pumpernickel as 11.36, and carrots as 4.59.)

You can see the usefulness of this concept - it gives us a real-world idea of what various foods are likely to do to our blood sugar, and our bodies. It is interesting to note that the Harvard Nurses Study has looked at the glycemic load of the diets of the participants, and has found that the risk of heart disease goes up with an increasing glycemic load. This, of course, will come as no great surprise to those of you who have seen a rapid and marked improvement in your bloodwork since going low carb.

Please keep in mind that none of this can tell you how much
carbohydrate is appropriate for your own personal body. I know that I gain weight if I eat too much carbohydrate, regardless of the source.

If you need to stay below, say, 60 grams a day, you need to stay
below 60 grams a day, and the fact that those carbs have a more
modest blood sugar impact won't keep you from gaining weight.
Conversely, by sharply cutting your carb intake you are dramatically reducing your glycemic load, even if you were to get all of your very few grams of carb from sources with a high impact.

However, there is little question that you will do yourself a favor
by choosing what few carbs you do eat, by and large, from those with a modest glycemic index. And the day may not be too far off when officialdom scraps the dangerous food pyramid, and instead hands out daily glycemic load guidelines, and a big improvement it would be, too.

Indeed, the most encouraging thing to me about all this research on the importance of glycemic load is that the whole concept of limiting carbohydrate intake for health is becoming more and more accepted in the medical community.

For the most extensive list of glycemic indices I've been able to
find, look here: http://www.mendosa.com/gilists.htm This gives the rating both on the glucose scale and the white bread scale. To calculate glycemic load from these ratings, multiply the white bread scale number of the food in question by the number of grams of carb in a serving.

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Hey

I'm just wondering, what's an insulin resistance diet?

Slim

The insulin resistance diet is a diet plan that is much higher carb than most plans here but still carb controled. The gist of it is that one can only have 30g carbs balnced with at least 14g protein for each meal or snack. Also, no more than 32g carbs can be consumed within a 2 hour time period. It is much more adaptable to the real world and for vegetarians because I can have all carbs often (aside from evil sugar of course!) and because she considers all dairy and legumes to be proteins. I have a disease called PCOS and many womenwith the illness have success with this so I am trying it.


Unfortunetly, there is no forum here for it though..............

My method relies heavily on the Glycemic Index. They haven't yet introduced the concept of Glycemic Load, but it will come sooner or later. In the meantime I can take it into consideration myself.

The principle is pretty simple. First you eliminate all refined foods, sugar, white flour, potatoes, corn etc. For each of your meals you choose one of the following combos. Protein/Fat/non starchy veggies OR Low Glycemic carbs/veggies/low-fat. That's pretty much it in a nutshell.

Example: Breakfast : Eggs or ham/bacon OR Whole-wheat Bread with no sugar jam.

Lunch : Whole wheat spaghetti with low fat tomato sauce, side salad. OR Atkins type lunch

I think the idea is that foods with a low glycemic load suppress the appetite relative to high glycemic foods because they don't produce quick spikes in blood sugar and insulin production.

Ludwig's research indicated that calories being equal those given low glycemic meals ate less at the next meal and requested fewer snacks than a group on a high glycemic diet.

Other researchers are wondering if you could add more carbs as long as they are slowly digested, i.e., high fiber.

One reason I'm interested in a glycemic load diet is because it's hard to get enough fiber on the Atkin's diet, for example. I think 30 grams of fiber per day is a reasonable sweet spot given what I've read about digestive tract health, particularly the colon. In his latest revision, Atkins himself pays much more attention to fiber than ever before. And carbs are the primary source of fiber. That's the dilemma that the glycemic load concept might unravel.

That's basically what my method is : eliminating all refined food and replacing them with their high fiber (i.e. whole-grain) equivalent and favoring naturally whole foods like legumes.

There was an interesting study done on the method by a Cardiologist. 12 overweight men were put on 3 different diets in succession. Each lasted 6 days with a 2 week break between each. Every meal was eaten at the study center. The first diet was your typical AHA-recommended low fat diet with no calorie restrictions, the second Montignac (no restrictions), the 3rd a calorie restricted low fat AHA diet.

They found that the men on the lowfat diet consumed ~2798 calories, the men on Montignac ~2109 calories and on the lowcal/lowfat ~2 102 calories. What was interesting was that the first 2 diets set no limits with regards to quantities, yet people spontaneously consumed less with the Montignac method without feeling the least bit deprived, as was not the case for the last diet. Let's not even mention the first diet, as people actually gained weight on it.

Hi all,

I can't help you with Ludwig, but if you read Sugar Busters, it is pretty much a low glycaemic index plan.

They recommend whole grains, low GI fruit and veg, as well as relatively low fat meats.

They also eschew counting calories or carb grams; they say as long as you stick to low GI carbs, you can't go wrong.

Rosebud

Dear Ludwig,

Try to find a book "Eat yourself slim" (the latest title) as well as some others by Montignac. You can also go to the site http://www.montignac-intl.com. You can try to register with them and they will design menu for you what they call sliming plan. Till some point it is a helpful site. In combination with the book you can get some idea on what you are looking for. . See if it works for you. Hope it was a helpful.

Actually, I found a Yahoo Group, "Low Glycemic Eating," which contains a file with an extensive outline of a low glycemic eating aproach.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LowGlycemicEating/

Wow-- thanks for that link, latichever! This is something that I've been looking for!

Your welcome, but I still haven't found a link or any other info on Ludwig's diet. Anyone have a clue?

Hi Latichever, if fiber is an issue and you can handle the carbs, try flax products instead of wheat. Flax meal contains mega fiber and tastes great too. Nancy

Hello Latichever, thanks for the info. BTW i contacted authors of that guide since had a question: received a warmest reply you could think of.