You’ve probably heard of the benefits of following a low GI diet for weight loss, but you may not know that it’s also great for your skin and can help keep it youthful as you age.
If you’re new to this diet, a low GI diet means you eat foods that are on the lower end of the glycemic index, an index that measures how quickly the body breaks down food and turns it into sugar. Foods that fill you up and take the longest to convert are on the lower end of the GI index. Those that are less filling and break down faster are on the higher end.
Ideally, you should aim to eat at the low end of the GI scale, with a few foods in the mid-range and only a few at the high end.
It may not seem obvious at first, but eating this way can be beneficial for your skin and not just your body. Here’s how: When you eat foods with a high GI, your blood sugar level rises, causing your insulin levels to rise. Insulin is the hormone that promotes fat gain.
Keeping insulin levels elevated results in the conversion of type 3 collagen to type 1, which is the more fragile collagen. Your skin, then, also ends up looking brittle and aged. By following the principles of the low GI diet, you feed your body and skin with low GI foods and keep your skin healthy, supple, and youthful looking.
Following the low GI diet is not too difficult. It may take a bit of planning if you’re eating out, but it’s not a complex diet to follow.
Let’s say you’re having breakfast and you normally choose a boxed cereal. Most processed cereals have a high GI, so this isn’t a good option, but instead you can opt to eat oatmeal (without sugar) and add some toasted nuts for crunch. You can top it with skim milk and even a dollop of yogurt. And if you want, have a boiled egg too.
It is important to make a distinction: this is not a high-protein diet. You can eat oatmeal and whole grain breads. In fact, it is recommended that those following a low GI diet eat grains, but they should be of the low GI whole grain variety.
For lunch, you can make a few easy changes. Stay away from the burgers, which are often interspersed with empty white buns (huge spike in blood sugar), but go for a healthy salad with vinaigrette. Or you can choose a veggie burger on a whole wheat bun. There are no fries made from regular potatoes, but if there are new potatoes on the menu, enjoy them.
Dinner is probably the easiest meal of the day for low GI dieters. It’s easy to throw some meat on the grill, add some veggies and a salad and you’re good to go. If you normally enjoy rice with your meal, swap white rice for basmati rice, which ranks low on the GI index. Skip the garlic bread. Add a salad.
As a snack, simple! Instead of cookies and cakes, eat yogurt, either vanilla or fruit. Yogurt has good levels of protein that slow down the absorption of carbohydrates, which helps reduce the GI value of any food.
So there you have it.
If you’re eating right on the GI scale, you’ll feel it. Not only will your skin look better, but you’ll have more energy. That, in turn, will give you the energy to exercise and continue your new way of eating. Then you are likely to lose weight, which helps your skin in other ways. All in all, it’s a win-win eating plan.