Move it and Lose it!

Glenn answers those FAQs about exercise
When should I exercise? I have read that you will burn more fat if you exercise before breakfast.
The biggest factor for burning body fat is whether you do the activity in the first place. It may be interesting to speculate whether you burn more fat in certain circumstances, but the best I can give you is a general guide.


Glen Cardwell

1. To burn fat you have to be active in the first place.
2. The fitter you are the better your body is at burning fat. To get to a reasonable level of fitness, you need to move your body 3–5 times a week.
3. It doesn’t matter if you walk or jog. You will burn more fat jogging for 30 minutes than walking for 30 minutes. On the other hand, you will burn more fat by walking for 60 minutes than jogging for 30 minutes.
4. The amount of incidental activity during the day will potentially burn more fat than a jog. Getting up from your chair, having a stretch, taking a quick walk around the office, using the stairs etc will probably burn more body fat during the day. So don’t do 30 minutes of exercise then tick the exercise box and plonk your bum on a chair for the rest of the day.
5. Weight bearing exercise like walking, aerobics and jogging are better at burning up fat stores than weight supported exercise like swimming or cycling. However it’s better to do something you enjoy than analyse its fat burning potential. Refer back to point 1.
   

For more information see Gold Medal Nutrition.

Exercise goals for June
Fitness expert Dr Joanna McMillan Price says aim to walk at a steady comfortable pace for 20 minutes on four days. Plus complete three resistance exercises – squats (see April GI News); single leg extensions (see May) and assisted push-ups on three days.


Joanna McMillan-Price

Assisted push-ups strengthen and tone chest, shoulders and arms
The push-up is undeniably one of the best upper body exercises you can do. The push-up involves the muscles of the chest, shoulders and arms and is therefore an efficient means of toning the upper body all at once. Why do most people hate push-ups? The answer is easy—because they are hard! In fact, they are even harder if you are carrying too much body weight since you are effectively lifting your own body weight against gravity. Here is a modified version of the traditional push-up, which enables you to gain the benefits of the exercise but makes it easier for you to perform it correctly. You will need a low coffee table – alternatively, use the second or third bottom step of your stairs.

How to do it:

1. Start in a kneeling position with your hands wider than your shoulders on the edge of the table or stair. Move your knees back until your body is a straight diagonal line from head to knee.
2. Slowly lower your chest towards the edge of the table/stair while keeping your back flat and without letting your bottom stick up.
3. At the bottom of the move, your elbows should be directly above your hands – adjust your hand position as appropriate before returning slowly to the starting position.

How many: 2 sets of 10 repetitions with a short rest in between

– Source: The Low GI Diet and The Low GI Diet Revolution.

Your Success Stories

‘The low GI lifestyle works. My weight dropped 35 kilos over 18 months.’ – Lisa
‘I turned 42 last week and have been living with diabetes since my first pregnancy when I was 23. I was also diagnosed with gestational diabetes at the onset of my second pregnancy 7 months later (yes I know, nice and close). I largely ignored all the advice from the health sector for the first 7 years after diagnosis, swallowing the prescribed pills and conducting blood testing when I remembered. I made the odd trip to the specialist who was always at pains to tell me how non-compliant I was along with all the dire warnings about heart disease, blindness, amputation etc. By the time I was 30, I was extremely overweight with out of control BGLs and generally disgusted with myself. Around this time I discovered a new GP who really put himself out to try to get me on the straight and narrow. He gave me a copy of The New Glucose Revolution and I have been religiously following the concept ever since. My weight dropped 35 kg over 18 months and has stayed off to this day, my BGLs average around 5 mmol and I still have my eyes, feet and very luckily for me, no obvious complications from my years of self neglect. The low GI lifestyle works and it was so easy to make the changes to my every day foods with such amazing results.’



‘We are finding more energy to do more activities as a family. I believe this is due to a conscious decision to eat better carbohydrates with a lower GI.’ – Michael
‘In the 1990s I was extremely fit, competing in triathlons of all distances including Ironman. However, since 2000, a back injury and work commitments led to a fairly sedentary lifestyle where I put on 15 kg. The back would not heal and finally a chiro advised me to start back exercising. By exercising at least once daily I was able to cure my back injury by strengthening my abdominals. Recently I discovered low GI foods and their assistance with weight loss and in sustaining energy allowing longer sessions without flat – last weekend I completed a 3-hour run without any after effects, my longest run in 7 years.

I used to eat only white bread and jasmine rice etc. I have now changed to wholegrain bread, Doongara and basmati rice. I am now learning that these foods actually taste better when creatively used. Some of the recipes found on http://ginews.blogspot.com have really helped bring back the flavour to foods and also assist with a steady flow of energy rather than the quick hit and drop off of the type of carbohydrates I was used to consuming.

My whole family is benefiting from this. We all eat the same meals and no one complains about my cooking or my wife’s. My wife who has always been fairly sedentary is now running and doing triathlons as are 2 of my daughters, aged 7 and 11 (at 20 months the youngest is still a bit young). My wife has also lost approx 8 kg and working towards her pre-children weight. We are finding more energy to do more activities as a family. I believe this is due to a conscious decision to eat better carbohydrates with a lower GI. I still am amazed about the differences in GI content in not only the individual raw ingredients but also amongst different brands etc.

Recently I completed a 25 km 2 day hike with my 2 daughters (7 and 11 years old). Without the use of low GI foods I don’t believe it would have been as easy. We are finding every week that we are benefiting from making a conscious choice of low GI foods.

Websites such as www.glycemicindex.com have proved invaluable as a resource to assist us in our quest for a better form of carbohydrate as we know that they are not the evil foods portrayed in the late 90\'s but rather an essential part of an active lifestyle.’

‘I lost 10 pounds within 3 months and feel great!’ – Jamie
‘At the age of 31 I had my first child. After a 3 month maternity leave I returned to work thinner than before pregnancy. My weight gain began after I weened my daughter 6 months later. I was used to eating more food. When my daughter turned one, I knew I needed to make some changes. I weighed 17 pounds more than before pregnancy! I learned of the Glycemic Index eating plan. Our family now consumes very little processed carbohydrate. I lost 10 pounds within 3 months and feel great! Now I plan to add in more exercise and lose those last 7 pounds.’

Inspire others. Share your GI story.


We'll send you a free copy of The Low GI Diet Cookbook or The Low GI Vegetarian Cookbook if your story is published.

Feedback—Your FAQs Answered

My 10-year-old daughter has recently been diagnosed with insulin resistance. We are already eating a low GI diet but I need some help with portion sizing and interesting meals that are kid-friendly. I am having great difficulty finding this information – can you give me some advice?
‘That’s a tough one,’ says dietitian Kaye Foster-Powell who helped us answer this. ‘Insulin resistance at age 10. It may be a good idea to consult a registered dietitian with special expertise in children’s needs as well as an understanding of the GI, in the meantime, here are some ideas.’

A typical day

• Breakfast: ½ cup of cooked porridge made from traditional oats (not instant) with a teaspoon of sugar or honey served with ½ cup low fat milk
• Lunch: Low GI bread sandwich including 2 slices of bread, 2 teaspoons of canola margarine, 60 g (2 oz) of chicken, lean roast beef or pork, egg or canned fish with a couple of vegetable serves either as salad on the sandwich or served separately as carrot, celery, red capsicum, cucumber bits, grape tomatoes, baby beets, etc.
• Dinner: Around 80–100 g (2½–3 ½ oz) lean meat or chicken or 150 g (5½ oz) fish + 2 starchy serves and plenty of veggies.

Plus the following incorporated as part of these meals or as snacks:

• 1 cup of low fat fruit yoghurt
• An apple
• 2 mandarins
• A cup of low fat milk

Some typical main meals

• 1 cup of pasta with 1 cup of vegetable-rich bolognaise sauce
• 1 cup of cooked rice with about ½ cup of stir-fried meat strips and at least 1½ cups of vegetables
• 1 cup of noodles, 1 or 2 eggs and a combination of Asian stir-fried vegetables
• 1 roast chicken drumstick without skin served with 1 medium baked potato or similar sized sweet potato chunk plus at least 1 cup of other vegetables such as roast pumpkin, peas, beans, broccoli, and cauliflower
• A bowl of home-made vegetable soup followed by ½ cup of baked beans, an egg plus 2 slices of toast
• 4 regular sized taco shells filled with chilli beans, lettuce, tomato slices, grated reduced fat cheese and about ¼ avocado

Kaye Foster-Powell

Why aren’t the GI values of all those vegetables we are urged to eat 5 serves a day of on the GI database?
The GI is a measure of carbohydrate quality and only applies to carb-rich foods. Most vegetables from artichokes to zucchini along with all your favourite greens and salad veggies contain so little carbohydrate they won’t have much effect on blood glucose levels at all, and their GI can’t be measured following the international standardised procedure. Root vegetables such as carrots and parsnips and squash such as butternut pumpkin/winter squash contain a little carbohydrate and have low GI values, so pop them on the plate when serving dinner.

What we say is, brighten your plate (at least half of it) with a variety of colourful vegetables. They are full of fibre and essential nutrients that fill you up without adding extra kilojoules/calories. Try leafy green and salad vegetables; green peas and beans; broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower; zucchini and baby squash; onions and leeks; fennel and asparagus; carrots, parsnips and pumpkin; and don’t forget mushrooms (yes we know that they are really fungi). Opt for flavour and enjoy vegetables fresh in season or frozen year round. If choosing canned convenience, make sure you buy brands with no added salt.


Photo: Ian Hofstetter, from Zest by Catherine Saxelby and Jennene Plummer

Starchy vegetables such as potatoes, sweet potato, sweet corn, yams, taro and legumes, belong in the carb-rich foods (not the vegetables) part of the plate. You need to keep portions moderate (a quarter of the plate as the diagram shows) and choose the low GI types. These carb-rich foods are all in the GI database and listed in The New Glucose Revolution Shopper’s Guide to GI Values.

If you are unsure about how to use the GI database, just scroll down to the bottom of GI News and see the step-by-step guide.

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A Step-by-Step Guide to the GI Database on www.glycemicindex.com
Use the database to find the GI value of your favourite carbohydrate foods that have been tested over the past 25 years from all around the world. You can also check the glycemic load (GL) and grams of carbohydrate per serve. If you want to dig a little deeper, you can see where and when the food was tested and whether the test subjects were healthy or had diabetes. Although our database is the most comprehensive GI database resource on the web, we don’t have the GI values of every carbohydrate food tested. Sometimes food companies prefer not to publish the GI of their products, and sometimes they don’t want their foods tested at all.

Step 1
Go to www.glycemicindex.com and click on the GI Database link in the left-hand menu.



Step 2
To search for ‘beans’ for example, insert ‘beans’ in the ‘Name of the Food’ box and click search.



Step 3
To refine your search, use the less than (<) and greater than (>) symbols, to tell the database to show you only foods containing beans with a GI less than 55 and a GL greater than 20. Use the drop-down menu on the far right, to tell the database to sort the results by the GI and in ascending order.





Step 4
Now click on the actual food name (the text will change colour) and the following page appears.



The GI of the kidney beans was calculated using glucose as the standard. The serve (in grams) refers to the nominal serving size. This value is then used to calculate the GL value for each product. For example:

Red Kidney Beans
Serve (g): 150 g
CHO/serve (g): 60.3
GI: 51
GL = 31

In this case the test period was the standard 2 hours where a total of 9 finger-prick blood samples were taken in 10 subjects over that period (this includes 3 fasting samples). The subjects were ‘normal’ which means they were healthy volunteers. In some tests, ‘Type 2’ refers to testing in people with type 2 diabetes. Finally, the reference shows where the food was tested and in which journal the results were published if applicable.

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GI News endeavours to check the veracity of news stories cited in this free e-newsletter by referring to the primary source, but cannot be held responsible for inaccuracies in the articles so published. GI News provides links to other World Wide Web sites as a convenience to users, but cannot be held responsible for the content or availability of these sites. This document may be copied and distributed provided the source is cited as GI News and the information so distributed is not used for profit.

© ® & ™ The University of Sydney, Australia

GI Values Update

The latest GI values

Chestnuts
Crushed uncooked chestnut kernels: GI 54, tested by the International Diabetes Institute, Melbourne Australia.

Beech-Nut Good Morning Products
As we get lots of questions about healthy foods for kids, we were interested when a press release arrived on our desk (well computer screen) from Beech-Nut Nutrition Corporation. This company develops baby foods that are free of preservatives, artificial colours and flavours, trans fats, soy and added refined sugar. Their Good Morning products based around oats have a low GI says the press release. We followed up to see where the products were tested and what the GI actually was so we could share this with GI News readers.



In fact the Good Morning range hasn't been clinically tested. It was ‘calculated from GI values of its ingredients by the method of Wolever and Jenkins [AJCN 43:197-172, 1986], using total carbohydrate and total fibre data from the USDA Nutrient Database and the clinically measured GI of each ingredient (Foster-Powell et al., Univ. Sydney)’ Beech-Nut told GI News.

We agree with Beech-Nut's nutritional scientists that the products couldn’t possibly be tested in babies! But we feel that it would be great if they followed up all the good work invested so far in developing these healthy products for babies and toddlers with some clinical testing in adults – just to make sure that the GI really is low. If it is, they really have come up with a first. Testing is important to reliably know the GI value, because in addition to ingredients, other factors such as food processing techniques can have a significant impact on the GI. Milling, cooking, baking, extrusion, granularity – these can all have an effect. For more information: www.beechnut.com

GI Symbol News
The Organic Beverage Company (TOBC) Syzmo™ has joined the GI Symbol Program. Syzmo™ organic energy drink (GI 30) meets the GI Symbol Program’s nutritional criteria for carbonated beverages – it’s a reduced kilojoule/calorie beverage with 24 grams of carbohydrate per 1 cup (240 ml) serving (be aware that the 12 fl oz can you buy contains 1½ cups, so you may like to share it with a friend). The sweetness is from blue agave – no high fructose corn syrup here! The energy-enhancing ingredients include guarana, yerba mate extract and caffeine. It also contains a host of added vitamins and minerals including B12. It’s certified organic by USDA. And it’s not recommended for children, pregnant women, or people sensitive to caffeine. You may or may not be in favour of energy drinks (or any carbonated drinks for that matter), but they are a fact of life, and if people are going to drink and enjoy them (in moderation we hope), then opting for the healthier product is a very smart decision. For more information, check out: www.syzmo.com



Where can I get more information on GI testing?

North America
Dr Alexandra Jenkins
Glycemic Index Laboratories
36 Lombard Street, Suite 100
Toronto, Ontario M5C 2X3 Canada
Phone +1 416 861 0506
Email info@gilabs.com
Web www.gilabs.com

Australia
Fiona Atkinson
Research Manager, Sydney University Glycemic Index Research Service (SUGiRS)
Human Nutrition Unit, School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences
Sydney University
NSW 2006 Australia
Phone + 61 2 9351 6018
Fax: + 61 2 9351 6022
Email sugirs@mmb.usyd.edu.au
Web www.glycemicindex.com

New Zealand
Dr Tracy Perry
The Glycemic Research Group, Dept of Human Nutrition
University of Otago
PO Box 56 Dunedin New Zealand
Phone +64 3 479 7508
Email tracy.perry@stonebow.otago.ac.nz
Web glycemicindex.otago.ac.nz

Where can I get more information on the GI symbol program?



Alan Barclay
Acting CEO, Glycemic Index Ltd
Phone: +61 2 9785 1037
Fax: +61 2 9785 1037
Email: awbarclay@optusnet.com.au
Web www.gisymbol.com.au

Charlie, Mick, Keith and Ronnie

A New Rolling Stones group painting is ready. Above you can see a quick sketch of 'the boys'. The original painting is in the scan shop so stay tuned.

GI News—May 2007

Real food is our focus for May starting off with Michael Pollan’s 9 rule-of-thumb principles of healthy eating, followed by David Ludwig’s recipe for the whole family to make a ‘Clean Sweep’. We know Clean Sweeps aren’t that easy (or that inexpensive), but David makes it seem very achievable, so give it a try. Take it a step at a time and like the rest of us you’ll get there. After this, we tempt your tastebuds with some real food recipes including Tangy Roasted Beet and Walnut Salad, Creamy Fish Pie, and Turkey and Bean Chili with Avocado Salsa. Something for everyone we hope. We don’t have a big budget, so we really are very grateful to the people and organisations who share their healthy recipes with us along with delicious food photography that makes you want to cook it right now.

Eat well and enjoy the taste of a wide variety of real food.



GI News Editor: Philippa Sandall
Web Design and Management: Scott Dickinson