Preparing myself for my next diet experiment I have been spending some time familiarizing myself with the GI Diet, and most specifically the book “The GI Diet” by Rick Gallop.

The first impression when you flick through the pages of the book is that it is a very “friendly”, welcoming book. It is well laid out on nice glossy paper with lots of charts and color and straight away you want to read more. This is in stark contrat to the Atkins Diet book I read which is very dull inside to look at.

The book itself does a good job of explaining the GI Diet and what it is about in general. It discusses the reasons why the diet works in a logical manner and provides tables of food.

These tables are arguably the most useful - and interesting - part of the book as they give loads of different foods graded into red, yellow or green. Red foods are to be avoided altogether, yellow can be eaten ocassionally and green can be eaten whenever you like. This makes it quick and easy to know what you can eat and Gallop should be applauded for this.

One chapter I particularly liked was on motivating yourself where the author suggests working out your ideal weight from charts he provides then subtracting it from your current weight to work out how much fat you need to lose. Then, you fill a rucksack with books are similar that equal this weight and carry it around on your back for a few hours.

It’s likely this extra weight will soon start to annoy you, limit what you can do and make you extra tired.

When you’ve had enough, take it off and enjoy the feeling of freedom when you do so.

Remember - that is how much weight you are going to lose and how great you will feel when it happens.

Nice idea.

The book contains a good number of recipes which look quite reasonable and additional GI Diet recipe books are available too.

Just three slight complaints about the book.

Firstly I don’t feel the author is very clear about portion sizes - how much you can eat at each meal. I read the book from cover to cover and found that was the only question I had. I had to reread quite a bit I felt in order to find the answer I was looking for and even then I felt I was reading between the lines a little.

Secondly, there is arguably rather a lot of padding in the book. The charts seem to go ovee the same things several times so it seems the author was given a word count to stick to and had to do some padding.

Lastly, I am a little concerned that the author suggests exercise isn’t important for weight loss. He argues that to lose a pound of fat in a week you need to put yourself in a calorie deficit of around 3,500 calories, which is true. But he claims half an hour of cardio will only burn 50-200 calories depending on which exercise you do at what intensity, while you can easily cut 500 kcals a day from your diet.

Consequently reducing calorie intake is more effective than increased exercise levels.

I would argue that exercise leads to a healthy lifestyle in general and is important for reasons other than weight loss and that exercising will help maintain lean muscle mass while dieting so you burn more fat and less muscle. Lastly, the author seems to have forgotten that regular exercise can raise the metabolism meaning you will burn more fat at rest anyway. So suddenly it’s not just 50 calories while you’re exercising, but a whole lot more once you stop.

In general, I think the book is worth a read and it’ll be interesting to see the results the diet generates.

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The GI Diet is going to be my next diet experiment here on this blog and I have some high hopes for it. It is, to be fair, quite similar actually to the Body For Life diet which we know works and so it seems reasonable to assume this diet will bring similar results.

The diet consists of eating 3 meals a day, and 3 snacks as well. This is in contrast to the Body For Life diet where you eat 6 meals each day and so should be even easier to stick to.

Foods are graded as red, yellow or green depending on the Glycaemic Index (or GI). The GI is basically a measure of how quickly a food is broken down by your body. The theory goes if you eat foods that take your body a long time to break down (and so have energy to burn) you will feel fuller for longer and won’t need to eat as much. Also, your body will use up energy digesting the food so increasing the calories burned.

Lastly, with this “slow release” food there shouldn’t be spikes of blood sugar leading to the body putting down fatty deposits.

The food choices are pretty close to Body For Life - lean meats such as chicken and seafood, a variety of vegetables and fruits.

There are some surprises. Rice and pasta will be pretty much banished, as will potatoes and all cereals except oatmeal.

So this is going to be a classic “low fat, high protein diet” with slow-release carbs. I am swapping some fo the fat from the Atkins Diet for some of the carbs in fruit etc so it will be interesting to compare and contrast the results.

In the initial phase you only eat the green foods and when you have reached your goal weight you are allowed to start including some yellow. As I will only be doing this for a few weeks, I will only be eating the green foods throughout.

The other difference between the GI Diet and Body For Life is that you won’t get a “free day” on this diet which I think may make it harder to stick to, but only time will tell.

We have already been grocery shopping and stacked up on oatmeal, fat-free yogurts, fruit and veg plus a variety of meats to let the fun begin!

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