Free What Are You Hungry For? by Deepak Chopra Page B

important, natural carbs are packaged into whole food, so a buffer is created by fats and proteins; taken straight, refined white sugar has no such buffer.
    Unfortunately, the implications are worse if you gain weight. Americans have long risked a condition of insulin overload (hyperinsulinemia) that is due to injecting too much quick fuel through refined white sugar and high-fructose corn syrup. Even though the latter is based on fructose, which isn’t as simple a sugar as sucrose (fructose occurs naturally in fruits and many vegetables), the refining process in making corn syrup removes this advantage.
    What troubles doctors is that there’s a seeming epidemic of hyperinsulinemia, and the condition is a vicious circle: the more insulin your body produces, the less effective your body is at extracting energy. Fat gets deposited, and the fat secretes hormones that heighten insulin levels, making it even less effective. Meanwhile, diabetes lurks on the horizon, along with links to high blood pressure and a host of other disorders. You can’t necessarily judge through symptoms whether you have hyperinsulinemia, but the telltale signs are similar to those of diabetes:
    •  Fatigue
    •  Headaches
    •  Excessive thirst
    •  Muscle weakness
    •  Foggy thinking
    •  Trembling
    Rather than going on a symptom safari, however, it’s better to stand back and realize that the vicious circle between overweight and excess insulin needs to be broken. A little vigilance makes all the difference.
Breaking a Vicious Circle
    Eat the natural carbs contained in whole foods (fruits, vegetables, cereals).
    Don’t drink sugary sodas; cut out refined white sugar; and use honey, maple syrup, and other natural sweeteners. Use all sweeteners moderately.
    Reduce your intake of hidden sugar in processed foods.
    For grains and cereals, prefer whole grains over refined ones.
    Eat complete meals with several kinds of foods rather thansnacks—give yourself a buffer between the sugar you eat and your blood sugar.
    The good news is that losing weight will take care of excessive insulin in most people. Type 2 diabetes, which is now widespread as a result of the obesity epidemic, generally reverses once people get back to their ideal weight. It’s good for everyone, even if your blood sugar is normal, to pay attention to the starches and sugars in common foods. Recently attention has been focused on the glycemic index (GI), which ranks each food according to how complex its carbs are. The numbers indicate how quickly a particular food gets converted to glucose, or blood sugar. Slow is better than fast because it prevents spikes in blood sugar, delivering a more even, consistent flow of energy. (Eating the right foods doesn’t solve the problem entirely, however. If you eat too much to begin with, the overload on your digestive tract won’t be beneficial. In addition, carrying excess weight, particularly belly fat, causes the fat cells to secrete hormones that confuse and impair the signals for hunger and satiation that are bound up with insulin and glucose—in short, the best strategy is to make good choices about how to eat and to return to your ideal weight.)
    Since you are learning a mind-body approach to weight control, I don’t think it’s helpful to fret over glycemic values any more than it is to fret over calories. It’s enough to know that refined and processed foods are on the wrong end of the glycemic index, while whole foods tend to be on the right end. Take a glance online at a published version of the GI, which ranks high-glycemic (bad) and low-glycemic (good) foods. This will be enough to give you the lay of the land.
    Moreover, the GI isn’t infallible. Glycemic values vary from person to person, they can cover a wide range within a single food, and the effect on blood sugar over time isn’t listed. A rough guideline is good enough. There are a few surprises, like potatoes and parsnips, whichare high on the glycemic