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Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Hello everyone, good morning to you. Hope you're on a walk or at least standing up listening to this, if you're laying down, get up, get your steps in and we're gonna talk a bit about GI today. So some of you may come across as high GI foods, low GI foods. GI stands for glycemic index, so it's basically a way to rank foods on how much they spike your blood glucose. So What people thought was it would be useful to know, say, Ots is really high and then it goes this other version of Ots which is medium and then you've got something else which is low GI.
Speaker 1:So if you eat low GI foods, that means it'll help you with weight loss. If people eat high GI foods, means they're gonna likely get overweight or obese. This kind of makes sense when you think well if we go to something that spikes the blood glucose, blood sugar fast and it comes back down fast, you might feel like your energy's gone, you might feel hungry and stuff like that. Basically there was a study done in 1999 and this was peak anti carb movement, which might be coming back around now. Robert Atkins in 1982 came out with the book The Diet Revolution, which the Atkins diet comes from, right?
Speaker 1:And a lot of information and a lot of diet culture stuff is still stemmed from here, is still stuck in this era. So they thought, well, let's have a look to see which foods can raise blood glucose levels within two hours, And if we eat less of those, it means we have the weight loss. Okay? So there was a study in the 1999 that did do on on 12 obese teenagers. And, yeah, they did give the obese teenagers.
Speaker 1:One of them the one meal was like instant oats, which is high GI, the other meal was a steel cut oats, is medium GI, and the other meal was then an omelette, so low GI, high protein, stuff like that. And yeah, it did show that in this study from the 12 teenagers who were obese, the teenagers that did eat high GI foods, they did eat significantly more calories after that meal than medium and low GI. So you think, it works then. If you think if you eat to your GI, then if I eat low GI foods, I'll eat less calories, right? But the problem with the study is, and it's been proven now with, like, systematic reviews and stuff, which is a collection of review a collection of studies that have been reviewed.
Speaker 1:They basically looked at, okay, well, if low GI is the factor, what happens when we actually match these meals, in calorie content, in protein content and in fibre content. So if we say I'm comparing instant oats to omelet, well you're not really comparing low GI to high GI, you're comparing high carb, low protein with something that's high protein, potentially medium fat, so they're very, very different macronutrient compositions. So in recent reviews and in more modern research maybe we can call it on this stuff, which was new back then but it's not new now, is that the low GI diets performed worse sorry, the high GI diets performed worse because they weren't matched for protein, they didn't match for calories and fiber. So once this happens, and the recent review show this, that matching calories, matching protein, matching fiber, then mix up low GI carbs and high GI carbs, there's no difference. Okay?
Speaker 1:So the GI scale is quite useless in that sense when you actually do compare a full nutritional, diet. Right? So obviously, you're not gonna just eat in isolation. You're not gonna like, if you just eat low GI carbs or low GI foods and then someone else eat high GI foods and you're just using that as your rating, then you're not tracking your calorie intake, you're not tracking your protein intake. So no matter what you're doing on those two diets, you have no idea what your energy intake is.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, you could lose weight, could gain weight. So but when you do track your calories and you do track your protein, right, and those two numbers are equated at the end of the day, It doesn't matter if you prefer your instant oats or you prefer your steel cut oats. It doesn't matter if you, like, had a mix of, like, a higher GI GI diet, low GI diet. Does that make sense to you? So on the surface, if you go back in time, it makes sense.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, last study showed high GI equals more calories consumed, but only only when it was that metric that was tracked. When you actually track what matters, calories and protein as well, there is no difference. So it seems elegant and valid concept but it's not. So anyone that talks to you about this and tries to scare you with, well that's a high GI food, you'll say, well in the context of my diet or my nutrition I'm making sure I'm eating enough calories and I'm making sure my protein target is hit, so it doesn't matter whether I have a high or low ratio of carbs, a high GI, low GI carbs, because I'm making sure my calories and protein are hit, which are the two big boulders.
Speaker 1:Those are the two big boulders. Fiber is an important one as well, but you have the two big boulders, you have calories and protein. You get those right, things fall into place. If you get your low GI right, let's say for example you follow someone on TikTok and they say eat a low GI diet and everything will fall into place, it doesn't quite work that way because nothing falls into place. You might lose weight because you will eat less calories than death, so if you don't know, you for sure probably won't eat enough protein because you're not tracking it, you're just doing low GI, so that's the only metric you're looking at.
Speaker 1:You won't really be flexible in your intake because you will only be limited to low GI foods, so it'll be causing you stress at mealtime. And if you do start gaining weight you'll think well what's going on here? Well what's going on is even though you're eating low GI foods you're still in a calorie surplus, so it doesn't matter. So there's a lot of these things in the fitness industry or weight loss industry that in the big picture they don't matter, but if you only were to focus on them you could dissect and take things away from it. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:And there was another interesting study as well on weight loss and obesity and stuff, and it looked at in obese people, and I'm really cutting this down short guys, so I'll link the study if anyone wants to. They looked at people who are obese and looked at their gut health. And they looked at there were some gut microbes in people with obesity that didn't show with people who weren't obese. So there's two paths you can go down now. The path is, well maybe those gut microbes were there first which caused them to eat more which meant they were obese, or they were obese and then the obese state caused this environment that these microbes were able to develop.
Speaker 1:So the industry at the moment is more moving towards it's the gut first then causing obesity or making it more probable obesity. That's where most people are going now with gut health and all that stuff, they're looking at that. But the truth is that the study showed that actually, and it's like a chicken and egg study, it's actually obesity comes first from over consumption of calories creating the environment that these gut microbes then develop and then they get picked up in these tests. So it's not so much that those gut microbes are there first, it's that the obese state is causing this environment. So what do we do and what is really the solution to any of this?
Speaker 1:It's like if you as an individual can get down to a base where your body weight is in the healthy range, what do I mean by that? Well the healthy range, it is individual to an extent, it is based on a lot of The BMI is very simplistic, just height and weight and stuff, but when you think of muscle density as well, you've got to think of your activity, you've got to think of what your training is as well, you've got to think of what your job and stuff is. There's more things that come into play but most of you will have this range where you are optimally performing. Your body is holding on to body fat of course which is needed for survival but it's not holding on to too much body fat causing inflammation signals, causing adverse effects essentially, so you kind of get into this golden zone perhaps it's called, and that golden zone is not what you see on Instagram with the shredded abs, right, like that's also a myth, you don't need abs to be in this golden zone. And I think this golden zone for most people is, for men it could be 15% body fat perhaps, up to 20%, and for women it could be around 20 to 30%, it could go 20 to 32%.
Speaker 1:Like, you look in those ranges and your first goal is to realise, okay, well if my body fat percentage is too high, put I a lot of strain on my joints and my muscles, my body is working all the time to kind of just move about and to sustain itself, the fat cells are giving off signals and this is not great and all this stuff that happens, right? And you say to yourself, okay, well, if I just get into a body fat percentage zone that isn't super lean, it's just lower and more manageable, then I'll go back and check my overall health and see what happens. And in most of these studies you see this happen where someone goes from overweight or obese to the normal range I'll call it. And I don't want say normal range because it does range massively. It's not to say you're not normal if it's in range.
Speaker 1:I'm just using the term scientific from the scientific literature. So you get into that range and what happens in these studies? Well, after time after time, most health markers improve. No matter what diet you've done to achieve that, no matter how you've lost that body fat, you become healthier overall in your markers. And then you might say, well, why don't we just rapidly get there then?
Speaker 1:Why don't I go on 500 calories restrictive and get there? Well, you know you never get there doing that because once you touch the goal you bounce back, so you never really achieve and you never get into your destination. It's kind of like there's an elastic band around your waist and you sprint in to try and get to some destination across the street and as you reach your hand you get pulled back because it just doesn't work the way you think it does. So again, from the research what does work is a slow, steady walk towards this goal. It's a path that you'll go off sometimes in a little detour, you'll come back on it, but you're moving forward slowly, you're enjoying the process, you're discovering things about yourself and your mind, you're reading the book of yourself, you become more aware of emotionally, all that stuff has to happen.
Speaker 1:Then once you finally reach this goal, it's not like, Oh my God, I can't wait to stop doing what I'm doing, it's simply the byproduct of what you've been doing that you can maintain. So then you get to the goal and you're like, Yeah, my body fat percentage is down now, I'm down five or 6% body fat percentage, I'm sustaining this, I'm still having a social life, I'm still eating the foods I like, I'm still having a chocolate bite here and there, I'm not catastrophising, I'm not making a big deal if my weekend goes a bit too much in calorie intake and I just get back to it on Monday. I've learned a lot about emotional eating, I've lowered that, all this type of stuff. I've got a much healthier relationship with food and the scales. The scales don't bother me, I see it like a scientist, I see it as collecting data.
Speaker 1:And now I'm achieving my goal, I say, brilliant, I can keep going this way and slowly chip away more, or I can maybe increase my calories now, go to maintenance and see what that's about, and maybe add in some strength workouts to put that extra energy to use. That's kind of where you get to, you get to it in a kind of chill way and in that way you're not bouncing back, right? So if we can do that to get to that zone and then you realise once you're in that zone a lot of things are moving in a positive direction no matter what food you've been eating really. But once you get to that zone and your health's improved and everything, you'll want to improve your diet quality anyway. You'll start thinking, well, know what, I do like having my takeaways, I do like having my McDonald's, I do like having my ready meals and all this stuff.
Speaker 1:But what if I were to substitute my lunch ready meal with something I've home cooked and maybe it's a bit higher in protein, it's a bit better in terms of nutrients? What if I did not have my chocolate bars anymore and I had fruit instead? What if I did add more veg and stuff? I want to do this, I want to increase my micronutrient quality. Brilliant.
Speaker 1:When it comes from a place of you want to do it, it becomes easy. When it comes from a place you think you have to do it to lose weight, it's not going to work. So that's a bit of a primer on the history of this glycemic index, high GI blood glucose spiking, you can see how it's come from a place where it makes sense, but really when we look at the big picture which is our lives and our intake, it doesn't actually matter. So when it comes to focusing on what does matter, I'm telling you now, and this is from the research, it is calories and protein and ideally steps. Fiber comes in after that.
Speaker 1:If we're talking about sports performance, we love to be talking about carbohydrates as well. That's another topic. And we talk about what's happening with fat. Well, fat, want it to be you wanna hit at least a minimum amount of fat, right, because fat's important for our normal processes and stuff. But most of us are eating over fat intake fine.
Speaker 1:We don't have to overly concern ourselves with am I eating too much fat and stuff like that. It's like eat eat enough fat and you know what foods with good fats in your diet, and just focus on calories and protein. And then job done. It really is that simple, but it's quite contrarian to what the industry is going, what the industry is saying and going down that path if that makes sense. So keep going guys, keep going, keep focusing, keep trimming off things you don't need to focus on.
Speaker 1:I love the Bruce Lee quote, He he does he does addition via subtraction. He cuts away at the nonessential. Okay? So he see he saw his life, he saw his martial arts, he saw his fighting, he saw his acting, everything. He saw that for him to if he subtracted, it was an addition process.
Speaker 1:So it meant he could focus more on the things that matter. A lot of the times we think when we take things away, it actually reduces things, makes things worse, but actually for most of us, the more we remove, the more it adds to our life. And this is exactly what I'm saying here with this calories and protein and steps approach. It is a massive subtraction because most of the apps are tracking loads of other stuff, and if you go to WHOOP and everything as well, you are tracking way more stuff. And I'm saying, hey, subtract it all and you really start focusing on what matters and that's the additional part of your life.
Speaker 1:It's an additional part of the process and it makes things a lot easier as well. So follow the philosophy, give it a right go and things will work out. And if not, if you don't think it's the right approach, then obviously there's other approaches out there that are more complicated with more data to track and all this stuff. Of course there's things that do work and stuff, but in my personal philosophy this is like it simple, let's do the basics and let's give our energy to other matters in our lives, not so much always thinking what's the best diet and all this stuff, let's just crack on and enjoy stuff. So have a good day, live one day at a time, and I'll see you all tomorrow.