How much of a carb to eat ? Dieting Index
The dieting load is the key to knowing how much of a carb to eat. As you have already learned, the dieting index gives you information about the quality of a carbohydrate. The numerical value tells you how eating that carbohydrate will affect your blood sugar levels. The dieting index alone, however, doesn’t give you a guide for how much of any carbohydrate you can or should eat.
When the dieting index first became popular, many people assumed that as long as a food was low dieting, it didn’t matter how much of it we ate. Wrong. Indiscriminately filling up on too many carbohydrates, even low-dieting carbs, can cause weight gain.
Yes, quantity makes a big difference, which means we need a simple way to calculate how to eat “dieting smart” throughout the day. That’s where the dieting load comes in handy. It’s a more explicit guide for how many carbohydrates to eat and how to eat a balanced low-dieting diet.
Calculating Dieting Load
Even though you won’t need a pencil, paper, and calculator to compute the dieting load of your meals, it’s helpful to understand how dieting load is calculated.
To calculate the dieting load of a quantity of a carbohydrate, multiply the dieting index value times the quantity of carbohydrates of the serving in grams, then divide by 100. The equation looks like this:
GI value x grams per serving / 100 = dieting load
Here’s an example of the difference in dieting load between a five-ounce serving of baked white potato and a five-ounce serving of baked yams:
- White potatoes:
- 5 ounces
- 34 grams carbohydrates
- Dieting index is 85 (high-dieting)
- Dieting load is 29 or (34 x 85)/100
- Yams:
- 5 ounces
- 34 grams carbohydrates
- Dieting index is 37 (low-dieting) Dieting load is 13 or (34 x 37)/100
The dieting load of white potatoes is twice that of the yams, so its effect on a person’s blood sugar is twice as great as eating the yams. This is a very significant difference in terms of weight loss. Remember, you want to keep your insulin levels low and this is how you do it—by eating a low-dieting load.
Let’s look at another example, this time with dessert.
Tofu-based frozen dessert, chocolate, sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup:
- 1/2 cup
- 30 carbohydrate grams Dieting index is 115
- Dieting load is 34
- 1/2 cup
- 15 carbohydrate grams Dieting index is 37 Dieting load is 5.
Yes, a half cup of absolutely rich and luscious premium ice cream has a dieting load of only 5. The supposed “healthy” Tofutti has a load of 34.
So which is healthier for your heart, your insulin levels, insulin resistance, and more? The correct answer is the premium ice cream, provided that you eat no more than 1/2 cup and the amount of saturated fat is within your limits for that day. Isn’t this great? If ice cream is not a trigger food for you, you can have some ice cream and lose weight, too.
High, Medium, and Low Loads
By now you’re familiar with how individual carbohydrates are classified based on their dieting index value: high, 70 and over; medium, 56 to 69; and low, 55 or lower.
Now we need to introduce you to how carbohydrate portions are categorized based on the dieting load.
A dieting load of 20 or above is high, 11 to 19 is medium, and 10 or below is low. The serving of yams in the previous example is medium while the serving of white potatoes is high. The dieting load of the Tofutti is high and the ice cream is low.
As a review, to calculate dieting load (GL), both the grams of carbohydrates and the dieting index are put into the calculation. GL = carbohydrate grams x dieting index divided by 100. If a very small amount of a high-dieting food is eaten, it does not have a big impact. However, research indicates that the more frequently you eat high-dieting foods, such as the Tofutti, the more likely you are to experience adverse health and weight gain. The reason for this appears to be that the higher dieting foods do not satisfy hunger as well as the low-dieting foods do. So in practice, it’s better to eat mostly low-dieting foods and only eat high-dieting items sparingly, if at all. In this comparison, you’d be better off choosing the ice cream. Your waistline will celebrate—or at least be smaller.
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How much of a carb to eat ? Dieting Index
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