Eat slow-burning carbos
Slow-burning carbohydrates keep blood sugar in a healthy range because they are absorbed slowly enough from the intestine into the bloodstream so that there is no fast rise in blood sugar. They maintain steady, healthy blood sugar that will give you a constant level of menial and physical energy. Slow carbos are whole foods that contain a powerful package of carbohydrate, vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber. They showed comprise the majority of the calories that you eat. Slow carbos are a control part of any weight-reduction strategy because they keep you from becoming hungry between meals and prevent the spike in blood sugar that can cause fat around the belly. You’ll find that on slow carbos. You really don’t have the hunger you would otherwise have.
Here’s an example: Have a large serving of oatmeal with whole wheat toast and low-fat milk for breakfast. Your intestine will slowly and steadily feed sugar into your bloodstream. By the time you’re out the door in the morning, your blood sugar will be headed for a nice healthy range where it will remain for as many as four hours. You’ll be more even tempered, less hungry and have all the energy you need for a good morning of work or play. Even at lunch, your blood sugar will remain thirty to forty points over fasting, just where you want it. This allows you to make healthy choices at lunch, uninfluenced by mental craving so searing pit-of-the-stomach hunger.
The opposite will occur if you have a cola with a bagel. You’d get a big blood sugar spike, crash within an hour, and then find that mental and physical fatigue set in over the course of the next several hours. Many men will that they suffer from the ravages of aging or a chronic fatigue syndrome when in fact they just eat poorly.
Here are the very best slow-burning carbohydrates. They should comprise at least 70 percent of what you eat.
Cereals: grits, oatmeal, oat bran cereal, wheat germ and whole-grain cooked cereals
Legumes; dried beans, baked beans, black-eyed peas, kidney, pinto and navy beans, lentils and split peas
Whole grains: barley, wheat bulgur, quinoa, amaranth and millet
Vegetables: lima beans, peas, artichokes, asparagus, beans, beets, broccoli and tomatoes
Avoid fast sugars
Fast sugars are carbohydrates that are quickly absorbed from the intestine into the bloodstream, causing a sharp rise in blood sugar. Fast sugars are the hallmark of the reactive eater. When blood sugar sinks after a sharp rise, hunger appears, as does fatigue. Reactive eaters instinctively reach for more fast-burning sugars and are doomed to repeat a cycle throughout the day of blood sugar levels that surge and crash. The use of fast carbos is usually the result of poor planning, with slow-burning carbos, it’s unlikely you’ll need fast carbos. Fast carbos have little fiber, vitamins, minerals or protein. Here are the fast sugars to avoid: white-flour products such as white bread, pancakes, bagels and cereals; soft drinks; desserts; muffins and doughnuts; and candy bars made of fast sugars.
Do fast sugars have a place? Specially constructed fast sugars can be used during and immediately after prolonged exercise precisely because they do work so quickly. Taking fast-acting carbos as fuel during and immediately after exercise is their best legitimate use.
Sugar is the great nutritional enticer and can be used for good as well as evil purposes. Sprinkled on a fatty cinnamon bun, it tricks the body into eating massive amounts of terrible food without ever producing satiety. However, using sugar on a whole-grain cereal or oatmeal as a way of enticing you to eat really healthy foods is just fine. A teaspoon of sugar is a meager 15 calories. Fifteen calories of cane sugar on a 300-calorie bowl of oatmeal won’t really affect your blood sugar and is a perfectly reasonable practice.
Eat fiber with every meal
The more fruits you eat from whole grains, vegetables and fruits, the slower sugar is absorbed into the blood from the intestine. Fiber also slows the absorption of carbohydrates from the intestine into the blood stream. That reduces blood sugar levels after meals and reduces insulin concentrations. By taking more fiber, even with foods high on the Glycemic Index scale, you slow the blood sugar rise they would otherwise create. The best fibers to keep blood sugar levels down are soluble fibers and include high quality breakfast cereals, whole grains and beans. These are best included in every meal and snack.
Get fit
If you’re out of shape and overweight, your body responds sluggishly to insulin. In response to high blood sugar, your body will make even more insulin, which can make you even fatter and more unhealthy. However, a regular program of aerobic exercise will increase your body’s ability to respond to insulin so that your body need not to make as much of it. Fit men make less insulin when they eat fast sugars than unfit men. Experts refers to this phenomenon as metabolic fitness, since fit men are less likely to have big swings in their blood sugar level and can more easily tolerate heavy leads of sugar. The best way to get an extra buzz from food is with regular exercise.
Eat breakfast
A normal man’s blood sugar on rising is about 70. That’s too low on which to do much serious thinking or exercise. It will naturally tend to come up on its own, but only slowly over the course of several hours after you get out of bed in the morning. Breakfast brings your blood sugar up quickly, setting the pattern for the rest of your day. Coffee and toast are like throwing a newspaper and lighter fluid into the fire. You’ll get a quick pop and then suffer the consequences of falling blood sugar. Have an oatmeal with skim milk or a high-fiber cereal with milk or an egg-white-only omelette with low-fat cheese and whole wheat toast. Each of these three breakfast selections gets you to lunch with lots of energy and little hunger. Performance on standard tests of proficiency, reaction time and recall all suffer in men who don’t eat breakfast.
If you follow these guidelines you’ll find beating sugar addiction is much easier to do.