Hey ya'll. Sorry I've been scarce lately.
I've been doing a lot of research to find out exactly what kinds of foods I should be eating. Turns out that "eating low on the glycemic index" seems to be working for me. You've probably all heard of this already, but I just started looking into "diet" books and found out about it. It's not so much a diet--it doesn't really have a snappy name or anything. It's more like a source of information about what foods make me more likely to eat a lot.
The glycemic index scores foods according to how quickly they digest and put glucose into your system. I've been eating a lot of foods that do that too quickly. Then my body overreacts by making a whole bunch of insulin to handle the glucose, and I end up with too much insulin and not enough glucose, or low blood sugar. THEN I freak out and get shaky and binge on a ton of food.
On the glycemic index, foods that rank over 70 are really not so great for you. They include potatoes, breads made from finely processed flour, very sweet but not fibrous fruits like cataloupe. It's not that you can't eat those things. It's just that eating an English muffin made from white flour and a piece of cantaloupe for breakfast is only going to make you feel like shit in a couple of hours. It's much better to eat a dense, whole-grain something or other, and something with protein, and a fibrous fruit like an apple or grapes. This will digest much more slowly and keep you going longer.
So the glycemic index proponents do not recommend a high-protein, high-fat Atkins-type diet. They do recommend having about 50-60% of your diet be carbs, but the good carbs--with lots of fiber.
I got a great book this weekend: The Good Carb Cookbook: Secrets of Eating Low on the Glycemic Index. It explains all this stuff much better than I have, and it includes recipes and lists of common foods and what you can replace them with--such as replacing white flour tortillas with whole wheat tortillas, and so on.
Anyway, I've been using the book to plan my meals for a couple of days, and I know I'm eating less. I already have more energy. Today I went almost 10 hours between breakfast and lunch--unintentionally, because of work--and I was hungry, but I wasn't low-blood-sugar-shaky hungry. I was reasonable and fine. It was wonderful! I have a feeling this is really going to work for me.
You can find more info about it here.
I'm feeling so good about this that I'm considering doing a couple of duathlons in the next few months. Anyone in Austin want to join me?
