In a moment I ' m going to show you how to choose foods that supply the maximum nutritional bang, while they cost you only the very smallest metabolic price. When you combine your own personal preferences with the information in this chapter, you will be ideally situated not only to start doing Atkins( as you will learn in detail in Part Two) but also to continue doing Atkins for life.
But first, two points:
1. A controlled carbohydrate way of eating provides you with a powerhouse of nutrients to support your newly stabilized blood-sugar levels and your freshly unburdened body( yup, the one that soon won ' t be carrying so much weight around!). For many years, misinformed individuals have been claiming that you just couldn ' t get enough nutrients doing Atkins. After they ' ve read this chapter, I ' m going to let them puzzle out how they could possibly have said that.
2. As it relates to foods containing carbohydrates, you will need to make certain tradeoffs as you do Atkins. Once you ' ve read this chapter, you ' ll have a much better understanding, both logically and intuitively, of how I came up with the lists of acceptable and unacceptable foods that you will find in Chapter 11 and the food decisions I ' ll be asking you to make. You ' ll know, for example, why a green salad is a good choice during the Induction phase and a carrot isn ' t.
So, let ' s take a quick look at the science of food.
The Glycemic Index-A Beautiful Tool
It is, too. The glycemic index is a numerical scale that tells you how fast glucose enters your bloodstream after a specific food is eaten. Most versions of the index, including the one I ' ll use( see pages 80-82), assign pure glucose the number of 100 and measure the effects of other foods in descending order from there. It ' s a highly effective system. Note, however, that the glycemic index doesn ' t tell you how much carbohydrate is in a serving of a particular food-that is why the glycemic index works hand-in-hand with a carb gram counter. Since there is no single standard glycemic index yet, the numbers may vary in different versions, but the relative order of foods on the various indexes is pretty consistent.
For someone controlling his or her intake of carbohydrates, the implication of such an index is obvious. By using it, you get to know-in advance of eating it-how a given food will affect both your blood-sugar levels and your insulin response. By choosing low-glycemic foods you can insure yourself a stable, smoothly running metabolic engine. That translates into plenty of energy and lays the foundation for both long-term health and disease prevention. The controlled carbohydrate foods you ' ll eat during the weight loss phases of Atkins have a good deal of overlap with the lowglycemic foods you ' ll see listed on the glycemic index table on the following pages.
As you can see, this is a tool for measuring only carbohydrate foods. That ' s because fat causes virtually no bloodsugar elevation and protein very little elevation.
It ' s interesting to browse through the list. Notice that a baked potato ranks exceptionally high. Starch converts to glucose in the bloodstream with great rapidity. That explains the high-glycemic index of another vegetable, the carrot. White rice, white bread and many cereals are well up there. Bananas and pasta are in the high-mid range.
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