Rick Gallop - The G.I. Diet

Revised and Updated

RICK GALLOP

FOREWORD BY Michael J . Sole, MD

workman publishing new york

While I was writing the original G.I. Diet, I was also running the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario, which had thirty-six offices and forty-five thousand volunteers and raised more than $100 million annually. The book was an enormous drain on my family time, and my wife, Ruth, bore the brunt of my preoccupation. Despite this, she was my cheerleader, culinary adviser, and coach. Without her encouragement and support, I doubt that I would have ever completed this book.

Dr. Michael Sole, cardiologist and researcher, provided invaluable advice and counsel. I am also deeply indebted to the late Dr. Ed Sonnenblick, who was one of the most eminent cardiologists in the United States, for believing in the value of the G.I. Diet and writing the foreword to the first edition of this book.

Among the many sources of information on the glycemic index, the most authoritative voice is Professor Jennie Brand-Miller at the University of Sydney. Her pioneering work in this field has been truly outstanding.

My thanks to my friends at Random House of Canada and Workman Publishing in New York: Anne Collins for encouraging me to write the book and Stacey Cameron, Suzanne Rafer, Beth Doty, and more recently, Erin Klabunde, for keeping me on track with wonderful editing and direction.

Finally, I must thank all my friends and associates who took part in my dietary research. Their feedback provided the focus and essence of the G.I. Diet.

Its hard to ignore, especially as a cardiologist, the fact that obesity has ballooned into a crisis of epidemic proportions in North America. It affects one in three adults and one in four children and teenagers. In my own practice, I see a disproportionate number of patients who are overweight or obese, because obesity is a recognized risk factor for conditions that lay the foundation for heart attack and stroke. Millions of people are on diets, spending billions of dollars on self-help, quick-fix books; weight-loss programs; diet drinks; and foods. Obesity is a chronic condition, and effective weight management requires a long-term behavioral strategy. Many diets offer false promises of quick and easy weight loss, but these programs will not result in long-term success. The marked early weight loss seen in low-carbohydrate diets, for example, is due to water loss with depletion of carbohydrate (glycogen) stores, not fat loss. These diets are high in protein and fat and low in fiber and several important micronutrients; thus, they provide no basis for long-term healthful eating and permanent maintenance of weight loss. These diets also are associated with an increase in constipation and headache, and there is concern in the medical community that they pose an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Why read The G.I. Diet, another on a long shelf of New You promises? If you want weight-loss fiction, this book isnt for you. The G.I. Diet is an innovative, realistic, uncomplicated, long-term approach to successful weight management. To create this diet, Rick Gallop has drawn on his long experience with the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario and its research and public education programs. He discusses the principles of nutrition and illustrates these with anecdotes and humor.

Building on this practical knowledge, Rick then tackles the challenge of weight loss as a long-term issue. He discusses a plan for changing unhealthy behaviors surrounding food, as well as the development of specific, achievable goals. The G.I. Diet presents the reader with a simple guide to food choices, both at home and away, with easy-to-remember images, practical tips, tasty recipes, and strategies for feedback and self-monitoring. Rick has also included an assortment of weight-loss toolsadditions that the reader is certain to find useful. You only live once, and food is one of lifes great pleasures. No one wants to spend time counting calories.

With a heavy travel schedule, lunchtime meetings, and dinners out, I must be continually vigilant about my weight. The principles and ideas described by Rick in this book have certainly been beneficial to me. The G.I. Diet charts a course that, if followed, will deliver on its promise of permanent weight loss.

Michael J. Sole, BSC (Hon), MD, FRCP(C), FACC, FAHA, FCAHS
Fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association
Former Chief of Cardiology, University Health Network
Professor of Medicine and Physiology
Founder of The Heart and Stroke/Richard Lewar Centre of Excellence, University of Toronto

I am so amazed and delighted by the number of people who have picked up The G.I. Diet, followed its advice, and slimmed down to their ideal weight. In a world of fad diets and bad advice, hundreds of thousands of people have chosen the best and healthiest way to permanent weight losshooray! The book has become a national bestseller in the United States, Canada, and Britain, and is now available in more than twenty countries in seventeen languages. And every day, I receive readers letters and e-mails telling me how much weight theyve lost and how its changed their lives. This truly has been my greatest reward and satisfaction, because this is exactly what I set out to do when I first wrote the book: to help people get healthy and feel good about themselves.

I know what its like to be overweight and to try one deprivation diet after another with no success. Several years ago, as a result of a lower-back disc problem, I had to give up my regular morning jog. Well, it didnt take long for me to gain 22 pounds andeven worse for my vanity4 inches on my waist. As president of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario, my job was to raise funds for research into heart disease and stroke and to promote healthy lifestyle choices to reduce peoples risk for those diseases. And there I was, overweight myself! All of a sudden I had to practice what I had been preaching for ten yearsa sobering experience. I tried about a dozen different leading diets, but failed miserably every time. These diets presented three major roadblocks that frustrated my efforts to lose weight.

First, I was always hungry or feeling deprived. Second, these diets required counting calories, points, or carbs, which was far too time-consuming and complex for my busy schedule. Finally, I felt lethargiclacking energy and just not feeling good.

Luckily, when I was just about at the end of my rope, I happened upon a way of eating that changed my life. I finally lost the weight that had been plaguing me for so long, and it was a revelation. You can imagine how excited I was; I wanted to tell everyone about it and end their dieting frustrations forever.

The result was The G.I. Diet, and the question of whether it works has been answered by the tens of thousands of e-mails Ive received. Readers told me that they were losing weight without feeling hungry or deprived. They loved not having to count calories or points and were finding new energy levels that they hadnt experienced since their youth.

Included in this overwhelming reader response were questions and suggestions about how the G.I. Diet could be further refined to meet various lifestyle or health needs. This encouraged me to undertake additional research, which resulted in a series of G.I. Diet books targeted at meeting these needs. For example, I wrote Living the G.I. Diet for those who wanted more green-light recipes and, more recently, The G.I. Diet Clinic, a book based on an actual e-Clinic I conducted for people with significant weight problems.