We need to know not all carbohydrates foods are created equally, and they behave differently in our body.  That is why glycemic index is introduced as it is a scale that measures how fast carbohydrate foods we take are broken down into glucose or sugar.  You need to understand this weight loss concept if you want to success in any healthy weight loss program.

Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load
Glycemic index is a numerical way of describing how carbohydrates in foods affect blood sugar levels.  The index measures how quickly a 50 gm serving of a particular food converts to glucose or sugar.  Normally, foods with a high glycemic index cause a dramatic rise in blood sugar, and subsequently on insulin levels.  That is why all low carbohydrates diets suggest that you eat low-glycemic carbohydrates as these carbohydrates like vegetables have a much lower impact on your blood sugar and insulin, thus help for healthy weight loss purpose.
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You will come into contact with sugar alcohol when you start to search for some sugar-free, diet-friendly or low-carbohydrate products.  When you look at the label of these products such as soft drinks, gums, cookies and sugar-free candy, you are likely to see words such as maltitol, manitol, sorbitol and xylitol.    All of them are sugar alcohols.

What is sugar alcohol

Sugar alcohol, also named as polyol, is sugar-free sweeteners that are carbohydrates but not sugar.  Sugar alcohol has fewer calories per gram than sugar:  sugar has 3 calories per gram, while sorbitol has 2.6, xylitol has 2.4, and mannitol has 1.6.  Scientists call it sugar alcohol because part of the structure chemically resembles sugar and part chemically resembles alcohol.

Sugar alcohol occurs naturally in plants. Some of them are extracted from plants.  For example, sorbitol is extracted from corn syrup and mannitol is from seaweed.  However, they are mostly manufactured from sugars and starches.
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One of the risks of being overweight is type 2 diabetes, which accounts for 90% to 95% of all diabetes cases.  In type 2 diabetes, our body cells gradually become resistant to insulin over time, as a result of lack of exercise, poor diet habit and overweight.  Luckily, we can reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes through healthy weight loss based on below reasons:

1) Never skip breakfast
One of the healthy diet tips recommended in a weight loss program is never skip breakfast.  According to a 8-year study from Harvard, it reveals that people who eat breakfast are half as likely to develop insulin resistance, and subsequently reduce the risk for type 2 diabetes.

2) Increase of lean muscle mass and decrease in body fat
Exercise is always recommended for healthy weight loss purpose.  Studies show that weight training alone will help in increasing glucose uptake by the muscles and help the body to store glucose too.  If you still remember in my weight loss article, it mentions that muscles require replenishment of glucose after exercise in order to rebuild the muscle tissues.  So, exercise can help pulling the glucose out of the bloodstream and thus help in reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes.  Apart from that, when you boost up your metabolism through resistant and strength training, the efficiency of insulin function can be improved.

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You decide to join a program for weight loss now.  You start to perform exercise and adjust your diet habit.  However, please aware of below 5 important things when you are in any program for weight loss:

1) Never lose weight for An Event, lose weight for Life
If your purpose of joining a program for weight loss is getting off extra pounds for an upcoming special event such as a wedding, reunion or birthday function, then normally you will gain back the weight after that particular event.  Yes, it is true.  You might take 5 months to lose 10kg, and only 5 weeks to gain it all back.  Why? It is because you do not have the correct attitude towards weight loss at the first place.  Weight loss and health are lifetime issues, same as your car maintenance.  You do not send your car for servicing just for initial 6 months and do nothing about it after that period of time, right?  Secondly, you do not know how to continue your success and modify the weight loss plan, which I will share about it afterwards.

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