Guide to Low Glycemic Diet The glycemic index is a tool thats used to indicate how a particular food affects blood sugar (or glucose) levels.

No matter what your reason is for wanting to eat a better diet overall - whether it's for heart health, fat loss, more stabilized moods or reduced cravings, for example - a low glycemic index diet is likely to be beneficial in a number of ways, some you might not even expect.Perhaps most importantly, reducing your intake of high glycemic foods (think sugary cereals, rolls, desserts or sweetened drinks) can definitely open up more room in your diet for the types of foods you really need in order to get all of the essential nutrients you require.Choosing unprocessed foods that have a low glycemic load - including plenty of veggies, healthy fats and lean proteins - also helps you feel more energized throughout the day and makes it much less likely you'll overeat due to cravings for more carbs, moodiness and blood sugar swings. Those are just some of the reasons to follow a low glycemic diet.The glycemic index is a tool that's used to indicate how a particular food affects blood sugar (or glucose) levels. The definition of the glycemic index (GI) is "a measure of the blood glucose-raising potential of the carbohydrate content of a food compared to a reference food (generally pure glucose, or sugar)."Foods are assigned a glycemic index/glycemic load number that can be compared to pure glucose, which serves as the benchmark for all other foods. Pure glucose has a glycemic index number of 100, indicating that it's very rapidly broken down into glucose once eaten and then either sent to cells to be used for energy, saved in the muscles as glycogen for later use or stored inside fat cells when there's a surplus.