Nigel Denby - The 7-Day GL Diet. Glycaemic Loading for Easy Weight Loss

In my role as both a clinical dietician working on the front line with patients, and as a dietician working in the media, the question Im asked most frequently has to be: What is the ultimate diet?

Its a claim thats been made about so many of the diets that we now know to be at best useless and at worst dangerous. Before we can even begin to answer the question, I think we have to decide what the ultimate diet would need to include.

The ultimate diet it works, its easy to follow, its based on sound scientific evidence, and it suits both men and women. There is no need to count points or calories or to weigh food. There is no humiliation or guilt! It is a diet for life not just post-Christmas, and its safe. There is such a diet and its called the 7-day GL diet.

We know that every fad diet and every celebrity diet has maybe one or two of these attributes but for me thats not good enough. For any diet to bear my name, and more importantly for me to use with patients in clinics, I have to be completely satisfied that my criteria have been met.

I firmly believe that if we dont have these high standards we will keep people in the diet trap, an unhealthy cycle leading to both physiological and psychological damage.

For me, the 7-day GL diet ticks all of the boxes. This isnt a diet we thought up sitting in our office its taken years of trials, research and adaptation to develop into a plan we are proud of and in which we have complete confidence.

From working with both men and women with weight issues I have learnt that while people like to have clear and simple guidelines, they are also more likely to succeed if given the responsibility of choice. This book will enable you to understand fully why the plan can work for you, and will help you to control your weight forever. What we want is for you to get to the point where you have learned enough to put the book away and get on with your life, without having to keep checking if you are doing things right.

The 7-day GL diet gives you the simple, flexible, straightforward foundations you need to start a new healthy way of eating. It will put you firmly in the weight-control driving seat and keep you there!

Although it might seem like it, none of us goes upstairs one night thin and comes down the next morning with a weight problem it takes years of repeated behaviour, and that behaviour becomes more ingrained with every failed dieting attempt. Writing the book has been both a professional and personal learning curve for all of us. Much of the advice, support and coaching we give to change these behaviours comes from our experience of working with real people, as well as from our personal stories of breaking free from our own diet traps.

With a combined 90 years of dieting experience between us, we created Diet Freedom to help other people just like us, people with busy, pressured lives who were frustrated with the continual cycle of either preparing for the next diet, or recovering from the most recent dieting failure. Along with our individual professional strengths tireless researcher, amazingly experimental cook and diligent dietician this experience puts us in a unique position to support you in your own quest for diet freedom.

You may notice throughout the book references to both our website www.dietfreedom.co.uk and Diet Freedom Fighters. The name Diet Freedom Fighters was coined by GL dieters on our website forums, who have taken up the GL challenge and are getting great results. We set up the website as an added support network and are delighted that it is so popular, not to mention huge fun. We love it and wanted to make sure you are aware that there is a lot more support available to you after reading the book in fact, theres a whole community out there waiting to welcome you!

We really hope this book will give you the answers you have been looking for. Wed like to be the first to congratulate you on taking your first step towards success and achieving your goals!

Nigel Denby

Registered Dietician

RD BSc Hons

This section gives you all the background information about the diet and how it works. Most importantly, it tells you how to get started. It also explains why we feel the Glycaemic Load (GL) makes more sense than the Glycaemic Index (GI) alone, and gives you the simple science behind balancing blood sugars and permanent weight control.

Youll find:

• A simple explanation of how the diet works

• A clear guide to getting started

• Tips on deciding what you want to achieve

After I had my son Id gained about 10lb, and in the first few months I was so busy getting used to being a mum I didnt really have time to think about dieting. As the day to go back to work loomed closer and closer I began to panic. Id got into a snacking habit that I just couldnt seem to break. Id worked with Nigel on nutrition stories before, and after he talked me through the diet I quickly got back in control of my eating, and lost the weight Id gained in time for my first day back at work. I felt so reassured that I hadnt needed to rely on a quick-fix diet. The concept of GL makes complete sense to me and has just become a way of life.

Mishal Husain, BBC news anchor

The first thing you probably want to know about this diet is: Does it work?

Well, from my experience as a dietician working with patients in my own clinics, I can tell you yes, it most certainly does. Every day I see more and more people who previously thought they were stuck in a diet trap telling me that the GL diet is finally getting them back in the driving seat where their weight is concerned. They are looking at life with renewed optimism and excitement as a world of possibilities and freedom opens up to them with every positive step they take towards their weight-loss goals.

Before we start looking at GI and GL and the differences in more detail, we need to go back a little further so you can see how our understanding of carbohydrate management has evolved.

A few years ago I was actively and publicly criticizing the high-protein, low-carb diet phenomenon that was sweeping the world. We knew people were losing weight, but as a responsible dietician I could never sit comfortably with the idea of cutting out a whole food group from our diet.

What we can say about high-protein, low-carb diets today is this: in controlled weight-loss studies, they perform no better than any other weight-loss programme in the long term, and worryingly we remain unsure about how safe these diets are in terms of heart health and long-term kidney function.

So, lets get one thing straight: this is not a no-carb diet. The principle behind the GL diet is SLOW CARBS, and theres a big difference in terms of success and long-term health.

Although research into the Glycaemic Index (GI) has been carried out progressively over the last 20 or so years in Australia (University of Sydney) and Canada (University of Toronto), and more recently in the United States by Harvard Medical School, the GI only really began to hit the headlines a couple of years ago as a possible, healthier successor to low-carb diets.

Foods that contain carbohydrates have an effect on our blood glucose (or blood sugars). This effect is measured as the glycaemic response. A food that will make our blood glucose level rise quickly is classed as high glycaemic, whereas a food that has little or no impact on our blood glucose is low glycaemic.