Living the GI Diet: Delicious Recipes and Real-Life Strategies to Lose Weight and Keep It Off

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Now that nearly everyone is familiar with counting calories, grams of
fat, and carbohydrates, here’s another nutritional yardstick: the
gylcemic index. The G.I. is a rating of foods by how quickly they are
digested and absorbed by the body. The more a food is processed, the
higher its G.I. For example, white flour, which is highly processed, has
a higher G.I. than the “rougher” stone-ground whole wheat flour.
Other foods, though not processed, are quickly absorbed. For example, it
takes longer to digest an apple (low G.I.) than watermelon (high G.I.).
The G.I. has been used for several years by diabetics and athletics, two
groups who use food absorption rates to design diets that serve their
special needs. Now the G.I. is finding a wider audience as a weight-loss
tool.

Although marketed as a companion to Gallop’s first book on the G.I.
diet, this volume is sufficiently comprehensive to be used on its own.
It proposes a sound but very strict diet that blends consideration of
the G.I. with acknowledgement of the roles played by calories, fats,
carbohydrates, and portion control in weight loss. The approach is that
of a traffic light, with foods classified as either red (stop: don’t
eat), yellow (eat with caution/moderation), or green (go for it). Eight
pages of colour-coded charts help the novice G.I. dieter visualize the
distinctions.

The theoretical is made practical with an extensive recipe collection,
a tear-out tipsheet for following the diet when dining out, and a
take-along shopping guide. The writing style is refreshing, and numerous
testimonials providing motivation are featured in sidebars scattered
throughout the book. Gallop’s approach to nutrition lays the base for
a lifetime of healthy eating.