Here's what I'm learning about healthy eating from someone who's studied weight-loss issues from a number of perspectives for many years, worked closely with scientists as a staff member of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity (blicky) and analyzes things pretty thoroughly:

1) Carbs are carbs are carbs in terms of how they ultimately end up in the body. The speed at which they do this varies greatly, however. Slower is healthier.

2) Overall, eating as "close to the source" as possible is best. This means grains with minimal processing, fruits and veggies fresh and uncooked (or cooked as little as possible). Eating an orange is a whole different process from drinking (even freshly-squeezed) orange juice.

3) Some types of fats are better than others - Arthur S. Agatston of South Beach Diet fame (a cardiologist) recommends olive oil and canola oil as best bets.

4) The glycemic index is only truly useful as a tool for those with Type I Diabetes. Unless you have a serious insulin problem, it's not all that useful a tool. There's an article here that I think gets most of the idea.

5) The fact of the matter is that in order to lose weight, the number of calories consumed has to be smaller than the number expended. You can achieve this by a) reducing the number of calories consumed, b) increasing the number of calories expended (some people call this, "exercise") or c) both a and b.

6) I believe that is 6.5 hours of sleep required before the body actually begins to process glucose. Here's more on that.

7) Losing weight has sooooo many complicated pieces to it that food and exercise only explain the littlest bit about it. The now famous "Dr. Phil" addresses the whole notion from the inside out. His approach has people looking at their motivations and self-talk before he even mentions food. I haven't read "The Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom" but it sounds interesting. This area of his website has lots of interesting tidbits.

Hope there's some good stuff contained in the above information. I'll keep passing along information as I learn more.

I think I'm down by about 5 pounds but the real boon so far is that I've got the sugar monster under control. I was fortunate to find some very yummy snackable snow peas, asparagus, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, tiny, sweet peppers that fill the "crunchie-munchie" desire pretty well. Low-fat string cheese also helps get me through.

Peace,

JudyO