Substitutes.
The thing about Substitutes is that they allow you to keep your Glycemic Load number under 100 for the day and still give you enough CALORIES.
You can eat the normal foods and still keep the Glycemic Load under 100 for the day, but chances are you won’t be able to get enough Calories to keep you healthy.
So the basics are these.
Fiber slows down the speed at which sugar absorbs into the blood (Blood Sugar).
Refined Flour & refined Sugar, absorb very quickly.
What we need to focus on are foods that slow down the speed of sugar absorption into the blood.
Products made with white flour like Bread, Pizza dough, Baked goods and so on, convert very rapidly into glucose in the blood.
When they make white flour, they only use a small part of the grain to make the flour. It is the rest of the grain that has been discarded that slows down the absorption of the sugar into the blood.
So one of the first substitutes is to switch from any foods made with white flour to foods that are made with whole grain flour that still has the fiber from whatever grain is being milled to make the flour, not just one part of the grain.
What that boils down to is switching to Whole Grain products like Whole grain bread & Whole grain Pasta.
Be very careful of bran products. Many bran products have added sugar in them. That kinda defeats the purpose. If you can find bran foods without added sugar that works.
Speaking of added sugar, it is probably best to avoid added sugar altogether.
Foods with added sugar are high on the Glycemic Load list. It is very difficult to keep your daily numbers below the target number of 100, when you eat anything with added sugar.
As a substitute for sugar (sweet), I use BETTER STEVIA ORGANIC EXTRACT POWDER. It is a pure stevia extract without added ingredients. Some Stevia products have added ingredients that may not be good for your particular health condition and you should consult your doctor before using them. I like this one because it is pure, organic and to me it tastes better than the synthetic sweeteners. Any of the synthetic substitute sweeteners will also work. They are said to not affect the conversion rate.
Some foods I avoid altogether. The foods that are mostly all starch like Potatoes and Rice are very high on the Glycemic load scale. I have not found any good substitutes for these yet. They can be used in meals, but the problem is that because they are so high in glycemic load it doesn’t leave room for anything else in the meal that will keep your calorie count up. And you should at least be around 2000 calories for the day.
That brings us to Fat.
We have to be very careful about not substituting to much fat to get the calories when trying to keep our glycemic numbers low.
It is easy to think that because meat and most dairy products don’t affect the conversion rate that we can get our calories from these products.
The issue here is that if we eat to much saturated fat then we run the risk of HEART DISEASE.
So this whole process of lowering our A1C, becomes a balancing act.
The only substitute for animal fat is to eat the leanest meats that you can find.
I personally eat 96/4 ground beef & pork tenderloin for my meat. Once a week I will eat about 5 ounces of hot Italian sausage. I checked all of the Italian sausage available in my area and found one that has no added sugar. That’s the one that I use. No added sugar.
Meat is a good source of calories. Also nuts. I will use these two foods to bring up my calories when needed. Be careful of peanut butter as most of them have added sugar. If you can find one without added sugar, peanut butter makes a good calorie booster.
The best substitute for Butter that I found is Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
The best substitute for animal Milk is an Unsweetened Plant based Milk.
There are several different kinds of plant based milk and in my opinion they all take getting used to. My suggestion is to try them all and find one that taste best to you. I have settled on Unsweetened Almond Milk. I also like Unsweetened Almond Milk with Vanilla.
Remember the goal here is to lower the sugar and saturated fat intake in a sensible way.
When your numbers are back to normal, you want your BODY & BRAIN to be used to the way that you are eating, so that you can maintain your new eating lifestyle.
May God Bless and Heal you in every way.