What is the Golo diet?

Controlling our weight is often a headache. In the practice of sports, where the combination of a demanding physical exercise with a very controlled and always healthy diet, it is recurrent the implantation of diets, of alimentary tendencies that assure to work and to give results. The latest is the Golo diet, but does it work?

What is the Golo diet?

Lose weight. This is one of the great dilemmas for sportsmen and women and therefore also for cyclists. Reducing weight means being lighter and therefore going faster. But how do you lose weight in cycling? One of the options is to go on a diet, an eating control that, without putting your health at risk, will help you lose weight more quickly.

And in that list of surnames that we normally attribute to diets (and which recurrently have vegetable names) there is one that attracts attention: the Golo diet.

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For a few years now, in the results on online search trends, diets such as the Golo diet have been at the top of the list. The Golo diet, in fact, stands out because it contains a major difference from all other diets: the Golo diet does not so much control the intake and characteristics of the food, but rather the hormones.

That's right, the theory behind the Golo diet is simple: get control of your insulin level so you can lose weight. Basically, it's about optimising your body's use of insulin, so that it doesn't build up fat, but eliminates it.

It starts from a scientific basis, and the fact is that at low sugar levels it is easier to lose weight. This is because a low glycemic index causes more fat to be consumed. Let's say, being simple, that the organism, in its search for energy links to break down to obtain that energy, does not locate the rapidly absorbed ones, which are the sugars, and so it activates plan B, which is to start feeding off the accumulated fats in our body.

In this way, more food could be eaten without causing weight gain, and more fat could be removed at the same time.

In summary, the Golo diet is about getting to know your own body first, to see how food works on your insulin production, and then to set up a food chart that takes these levels into account and is optimal for keeping your insulin levels low, so you lose fat. But does this theory work?

But does the Golo diet work?

Well, the debate is ongoing. Above all because the Golo diet is based on a valid premise accepted by the scientific community: controlling insulin resistance, which is true. But researchers are doubtful about the methods to optimise and regulate this insulin in the blood.

It can be done, in fact diabetics improve their quality of life by controlling it, so they don't mean that, but rather that controlling it in one way or another and constantly helping them to really lose weight.

On a basic level, it is not too dangerous either. Diets such as intermittent fasting, which is also very popular, do pose more risks for more demanding cycling. However, it is their effectiveness that is in question. In fact, scientists are also doubtful because the Golo diet belongs to or was designed by a private company of the same name which claims that, to supplement these insulin control parameters, it is necessary to take pills made from natural products which they themselves sell. This homeopathic halo makes us suspect of its veracity.

In fact, all dieticians and nutritionists are always sceptical of any miraculous method. Their bets are always a healthy life: regular physical activity, and healthy, varied food.

For the moment, and until scientific studies support the Golo diet, it remains just smoke. It can be tried, but it requires an outlay on the supplements sold by the company and results that are not clear. In other words, just with the food they propose and regular physical activity, you would already lose weight, so the power of the supplements remains unclear.

Real or fictitious, the truth is that the Golo diet has come to swell the long list of diets with the aim of losing weight.