| The GI Diet: The Easy, Healthy Way to Permanent Weight Loss | 
 enlarge | Author: Rick Gallop
Publisher: Virgin Books
Category: Book
List Price: £10.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 895
Media: Paperback
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.7
ISBN: 0753509180
Dewey Decimal Number: 613
EAN: 9780753509180
ASIN: 0753509180
Publication Date: January 6, 2005
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
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A good explanation of GI and extending that to good eating habits October 20, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book explained the theory behind the GI diet as well as the principles of healthy eating in general. It then combines a pure GI approach alongside other good preactice such as low calorie and low fat to flag foods as red/yellow or green. You can eat pretty well what you like from green, a little of yellow and avoid red. Simple but effective.
Does it work? Yes. I lost a stone(14lbs) in the first month and the rate has now steadied at the predicted 1 pound/week. I haven't felt hungry, in fact on occasion I've felt like it was too much! The hardest bit is applying it while away from home on business trips and although Gallop gives a few tips its still tricky finding suitable foods. Be aware that this is a more "strict" diet than some other "GI diets" (eg the GI Bikini diet) and makes some low GI foods red-light items that the others consider OK. My only criticism is that there are too few recipe ideas. Anthony Warral -Thompson's GI book is much better for that.
The book itself is well written, quite light hearted, avoids being technical and short enough not to become boring.
 It's not a diet as such - it's an understanding of food April 24, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Yes, I have tried every diet under the sun, I've always struggled to lose weight, and I have a very healthy diet, even diet pills couldn't help. I was sick of people assuming I must be stuffing my face with food and then lying about it.
Then my brother suggested I try this book, it worked for him and he lost a lot of weight... sceptically I thought, yes, another diet fad, it'll never work.
I started to read through, and I was amazed, it's the first diet I have ever had where someone explains why I should eat something, none of this oh it's a red day so I can eat this, and no calorie counting, just a simple explanation of the difference between foods. Just having that explained really helped motivate me. I have found I hardly have to refer to the book now, I know what I should and shouldn't eat, it's not hard once you take the time time read through. I still eat a very healthy diet, but with just a few small adjustments to my diet I have found the weight is shifting, and I won't struggle to keep it off because I can easily stick with it.
I wasn't expecting anything and so far I have lost just under a stone (still got a few more to go though!) and I am not struggling or feeling in the slightest bit hungry. I am so pleased and wish I had discovered this years ago.
Just give it a go, you will be surprised - I was!
It works, it's safe, it makes sense January 18, 2007
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
In about 6 months, I've lost 17Kg on this diet, and it's been very easy and effective, largely because you don't starve, in fact quite the opposite, you make sure that you don't feel hungry by eating the right kind of things regularly.
There's nothing faddish about the diet itself. Indeed, it's not really a diet, it's an approach to nutrition that makes sense even if you're not overweight, and is based on sound nutritional principles. Best of all, once you've read the book (which doesn't take long), you're equipped with some very simple principles on which to base the way you eat - prefer whole foods over processed ones, for example, and don't fill up on bread and potatoes.
Having said that, it's the science and enthusiasm for a healthy life that is Rick Gallop's strong point, not his cooking, and some of the recipes in this book are just too dull and unappealing for words. Read this book for the principles, and look for tasty ways of eating GI-friendly food elsewhere.
Admittedly, despite my joy at losing weight so effectively, after a couple of months or so, I had days when I got desperately bored with eating low-fat/no-fat foods like chicken breast. Furthermore, although the author, as many nutritionists, says that you shouldn't reduce your calorie intake by more than 500 calories a day (or lose more than 1-2lbs a week), if you follow the book to the letter, you could easily do this, and at one point I consciously broke a few rules to make sure I didn't pile it all back on later.
As Mark Corben says in his review, this book won't help you to negotiate the difficult things like birthdays, Christmas and the unexpected, and it's probably not suitable if you're going to do hard stints of exercise. The food does get a bit repetitive and dull at times, and it's quite labour intensive to get right - no quickly thrown-together sandwiches to fill a gap, for example.
But then changing your eating habits takes a while, and has its inevitable frustrations. I found what the author said to be true - that after a while, you find the occasional inevitable intake of hi-GI foods make you feel bloated, uncomfortable and unsatisfied. This was the right book at the right time for me, and the nutritional advice is excellent, whether you're dieting or not.
 The GI Diet July 19, 2006
34 out of 41 found this review helpful
GI diets have been around for a long time, long before they became a fad for losing weight.
Sports people would use foods that either slowly released glucose into the blood stream ( low GI ) or fast released foods into the blood stream ( high GI ).
For example a rider on a stage in the Tour De France would consume a whopping 9000 calories, mainly high in glucose to maintain their stamina, this would do them no harm as the body would burn the glucose rapidly, so not creating a sugar rush.
This goes to prove that you can eat foods high on the index, but in the right circumstances.
When your body receives food that has a high GI content, it gets to work by producing insulin from the pancreas, this takes the glucose and burns some of it as energy, but the vast majority of it, it stores as fat ! Insulin is known as the fat producing enzyme, taking glucose and turning it into fat.
Your body treats many foods as sugar even though they don't taste sweet, for example a jacket potato is very high in sugar content and will spike your blood sugar levels. and the higher these foods are in sugar content the more insulin you will produce and the more weight you will put on.
So the GI diet works on the principle of avoiding foods that have a high GI content and adapting a low GI lifestyle, it uses a system of traffic lights Red, Amber & Green.
The downside is that Rick Gallops book if being used to lose weight is very limiting, and whilst , yes there are a great number of benefits to be had by choosing a low GI lifestyle, trying to lose weight on it will be very hard.
The diet is very restrictive, probably inflexible is a better word, especially if you have a lot of weight to loose, it does not take into account normal events in life.
For example being invited to a BBQ or a wedding reception , birthday bash ect.
whilst on the green stage of the diet all these things are basically out of bounds.
I can't help but feel also that Rick Gallop wrote this book around his own personal choices ?
A low GI diet is not good for people who exercise regularly either, you will find that you don't have any legs as they say, this is because once you crank your heart rate up your body will automatically seek glucose to burn, and you wont have any, resulting in very quick fatigue.
I lost 16 pounds on the GI diet over a course of 6 weeks, and then it just stuck, my body adapted to my new eating style and I couldn't drop weight for love or money, only by restricting myself further.
I found that I soon became miserable on this diet, with the restrictions taking their toll on my will to carry on.
I am now on the weight watchers point programme, I am steadily losing weight, , but if it's a hot day and I want a nice cold beer, I can ! I just count it as two points.
I can also exercise ( which is important ) without feeling worn out.
In a nut shell, Rick Gallops GI diet is a low fat, low Gi course, maintained by eating plenty of fresh Fruit and Veg ( nothing new there) and low fat lean white meats and fish ( nothing new there either) the diet is promoted by having three meals a day and three snacks a day ( he recommends things like a handful of nuts)
Overall for losing weight a very restrictive and very inflexible diet plan.
Easy, common sense eating style January 12, 2006
49 out of 50 found this review helpful
I bought this book a few weeks ago, and I really think this diet will stick with people for a while. For most of us who've read a bit about nutrition and try to lead a healthy lifestyle, this book won't bring a whole lot of revolutionary ideas -- most of it has already been said. We usually know that whole grains are better than white flower, sugar and junk food is bad and fat should be eaten only in moderation. What I really like and find different is his alternation of the traditional (USDA) food pyramid, which states that most of our daily servings should come from fruit and vegetables instead of grains and other carbs. He shows this more practically in his "plate" division (half of your plate for salad or veggies, a quarter for protein, and another quarter for carbs. It's the perfect, balanced food group ratio and it's easy to measure -- just look at your plate! No more "pasta only" dinners for me! One thing I find somewhat worrisome is that Mr. Gallop is a bit too "sweetener-happy". He includes sugar substitutes in many of his recipes and assures us that sweeteners are absolutely safe, and that it's those evil sugar companies that have tried to give them a bad rep. Well, I'm not convinced. Not enough studies have been done on sucralose to be objective about its impact on our health, and the Internet swarms with warning and downright scary articles about the use of aspartame (not even speaking about saccharin). So, just to stay safe, I will keep reaching for plain yoghurt instead of Muller Lights and sweeten his chocolate cookies with beans with a bit of honey or brown sugar. In a book where everything else aims for the most natural foods, artificial sweeteners feel like a sore thumb to me. Also, I'm not thrilled about the idea of downing tons of skimmed milk, as he advocates. Otherwise this is an excellent eating plan that you can share with your family as well without worrying about depriving them in any way.
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