The glycemic index was packaged and presented to the public through some very extensive advertising on the heels of the end of the low/no carb fad.

As so many people who tried the Atkins and South Beach diet, there were bound to be numerous disappointments. It was not that the diets didn’t work, it was that they were so difficult to stick with and many, after having lost decent amounts of weight, were more than disappointed when they gained it all back shortly after returning to “more reasonable” lifestyle diet choices.

The industry’s answer to this predictable wave was the Glycemic index. “Our plan is different,” they bragged, “we use the glycemic index.”

But what actually is this glycemic index and how, if at all, can it help you lose weight? Few people explained, so the question mostly went unanswered.

In his book, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, Tom Venuto explains that the glycemic index is really nothing more than a scale that was developed to help people with diabetes make good food choices.

It basically measures the speed at which a carbohydrate food is broken down in glucose.

The advertising made it seem as though this information was all you needed to melt the fat away. The point is that this doesn’t tell you much of anything that is useful in your weight loss efforts.

Does it hurt? Well, it may. If you have been tricked into believing that this is actually the most important factor in your weight loss efforts, you may be looking left when you should be looking right.

This plan breaks foods down individually but rarely stops to calculate the full effects of a meal. If the plan you are using does not tell you that there is a huge difference between mashed potatoes by itself, which have a very high GI rate and mashed potatoes coupled with chicken breast and broccoli which have low gylcemic rates then you have made a bad decision which came from bad information.

There are many factors to consider in deciding upon a good healthy meal that will contribute to your weight loss efforts.

One-sided and invalid information will slow down your rate of success causing you to feel frustration and give up.

Get meaningful well balanced information from someone who isn’t trying to sell you an entire plan behind your first introduction.

Click Here to learn about a useful resource for weight loss information.