Again with the carb cycling - right or wrong?

(betsy.rome) #1

Dr. Mercola keeps pushing carb cycling, claiming it’s unhealthy and counter-productive to remain in ketosis. From http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2017/05/21/metabolic-mitochondrial-therapy-introduction.aspx?utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1&utm_campaign=20170521Z1_UCM&et_cid=DM146839&et_rid=2014533772

"Continuously remaining in nutritional ketosis can actually cause counterproductive side effects, and is likely not optimally healthy in the long term. The ketogenic cycling is implemented once you’re out of the initial stage and your body has regained the ability to burn fat. At that point, you begin cycling in and out of nutritional ketosis by upping your carb and protein intake once or twice a week.

After a day or two of “feasting,” you then cycle back into nutritional ketosis (the “fasting” stage) for the remainder of the week. By periodically pulsing higher carb intakes, consuming, say, 100 or 150 grams of carbs opposed to 20 to 50 grams per day, your ketone levels will dramatically increase and your blood sugar will drop.

Why is this pulsing so important? It goes back to the workings of insulin. The primary function of insulin is not merely to drive sugar into the cell but rather to suppress the production of glucose by your liver (hepatic gluconeogenesis). When you suppress insulin for too long, however, your liver starts making more glucose to make up for the deficit.
The result? Your blood sugar starts rising even if you’re not eating any sugar at all. In this situation, eating a high-sugar meal will actually LOWER your blood sugar (because you activated insulin, which then suppresses glucose production in your liver). In the long term, this is not a healthy metabolic state, and cycling in and out of nutritional ketosis will prevent this from occurring." /end quote.

How to break a plateau
(8 year Ketogenic Veteran) #2

Pfffffft.

FUCK THAT

…for the insulin resistant carb cycling is LUDICROUS

(KetoCowboy) #3

I also saw him go back to pushing breakfast. It’s as if he’s forgotten about the importance of minimizing insulin.

(Sascha Heid) #4

So he basically claims that our bodies BS regulation is flawed by design and requires Intervention by “carb-cycling” once a week. I don’t think evolution works that way.

(Laura Kasperski) #5

It sounded like this was only meant for people who are no longer insulin resistant or sensitive. Maybe try it after your body had healed?

(James storie) #6

But what’s the point? Like @Brenda says, for the insulin resistant, this is disastrous! Now I’m not saying don’t eat your vegetables, but we don’t have to over eat carbs to survive. Unless you plan on going through a famine! :smile:

(Dustin Cade) #7

There are those who are using keto for hormonal balancing and they use carb cycling… It’s N=1 for sure, if you’re insulin sensitive and this works for you great as my understanding as end of season carb loading with fruits and veggies was a normal part of life to gain fat for the winter… We no longer really need this, so those who are insulin resistant this shouldn’t be a worrie or needed…

#8

Hey, I tried carb cycling a couple years back. At first it was great, I lost a few pounds, etc. After a while those built in cheat days derailed me. I’d rather not have carbs and keep building my addiction to carbs and sugar. The idea of carb cycling might work for someone who isn’t insulin resistant or sensitive.

(Becky) #9

For the first time in 9 months, I ate a serving of white carbage, at two separate meals. My blood sugar spiked 100 points, the pain and inflammation in my knees came back within an hour! I spent the entire next day, fighting the cravings and obsessing over more carbs. I admit that the ‘carb cycling’ nonsense was in the back of my mind as a possibility to break my stall. I’m grateful to this community and real time friends that helped me keep ketoing and now two days later, my blood sugar has stabilized and the pain, cravings and obsessing have left me! Carb cycling would kill this insulin resistant carb addict within a matter of months!

#10

There’s a terrific blog post on this at Mark’s Daily Apple. Worth a read if you’re interested in this question.

Short version is basically: targeted use of carbs (high quality, not carbage, and relatively small amounts) around exercise can be helpful for those who are insulin sensitive and fat-adapted, or who have hit a block with full-time keto; cheat days and large amounts of carbs at regular intervals is not effective and folks sometimes actually not only gain fat but they also lose muscle. (But better to read the post itself! he goes into much more detail on some recent studies.)

#11

And here’s the conclusion:

But as the previous study shows, carb refeeds won’t improve your body composition (they’ll actually worsen it) unless you’re already fat-adapted. I’d go one further and say carb refeeds won’t help you lose fat unless you’re fairly lean. They’re better for the person battling those last few stubborn pounds than they are for the obese person just beginning their weight loss journey.

If you still want to carb cycle, heed these suggestions:

Make sure you need the carbs. You should be doing serious glycolytic work that depletes muscle glycogen on a regular and frequent basis. Think CrossFit. Think jiu-jitsu. Think hill sprints for 30 minutes. Lifting and doing sprints might not be enough to require extra carbs.
Do targeted refeeds, rather than free-for-all benders. Consider 20-30 grams of carbs with your workout, not 2 days of bear claws and pizzas. Besides, you can always add more if the initial dose wasn’t enough.
Get adapted first. Don’t get ahead of yourself and shortchange your results. The most scientifically-validated complex carb refeeding scheme won’t do anything if you’ve only been keto for three days. Wait six weeks (at least) to adapt, and then try.
Don’t refeed because you miss French fries. Refeed because you have actual reasons.
Don’t refeed because you’re going through the keto flu and want to alleviate the discomfort. Read my post on the keto flu and push through.
If you’re refeeding to lose body fat, make sure you’re truly on a plateau. “Being on a plateau” assumes you’ve lost significant amounts of weight and are now stuck. It doesn’t refer to those just getting started.

(Bob M) #12

Another carb cycling post at Mark’s Daily Apple:

Interesting.

(Bunny) #13

He stated here:

”…It should go without saying that when I say “carbs,” I mean nutrient-dense, whole-food sources of carbohydrate. I’m talking about sweet potatoes and other root vegetables, in-season fruit, nuts, high-fat dairy, perhaps wild rice and occasional legumes if they work for you. There’s obviously no situation in which I’d tell you to throw back a couple donuts with a soda chaser and call it a refeed. …”

And here:

“…Why Should You Carb Cycle or Refeed?

The main reason to periodically increase your carbs is to boost your leptin levels. Leptin is an important metabolic hormone that is secreted by adipose cells. Leptin also rises after eating, especially carbohydrates but also protein and maybe fat to a lesser degree.

Leptin’s main job is to signal how much energy is available. When leptin levels fall, the brain understands that we are low on energy. This leads to hunger and energy conservation. Chronically low leptin can interfere with fertility, thyroid and adrenal function, skeletal integrity, and cardiovascular health. …”

What I’m personally extracting from this is we need the non-digestible complex carbohydrates not really the digestible ones?

Resistant Starch + PineTree Bark + Milk Thistle + Organic Sulphur + OMAD Turns Leptin Resistance Into Leptin Sensitivity = Never Hungry! You could drop weight like it’s nothing!

Why do we become Leptin Resistant? It comes from fat soluble toxins in plastic (e.g. PCB’s ‘toxic metabolic endotoxemia’) and treated plants (obesogens; fungicides, pesticides, herbicides; glyphosate), no plastic or treated plants in your environment, no Leptin Resistance?

If we had no degree of Leptin Resistance we would barely have any visceral or subcutaneous adipose fat.

Footnotes:

[1] ”…Resistant starch lowers postprandial glucose and leptin in overweight adults consuming a moderate-to-high-fat diet: a randomized-controlled trial. …” Nutr J.Feb 21, 2017

[2] Conclusion and Significance: Dietary RS significantly impacts on adipose tissue patterning, adipocyte morphology and metabolism, glucose and insulin metabolism, as well as affecting appetite regulation, supported by changes in neuronal activity in hypothalamic appetite regulation centres which are suggestive of satiation. …” - Impact of Resistant Starch on Body Fat Patterning and Central Appetite Regulation

[3] “…Rice with 8.61% RS increased fecal short-chain fatty acid levels, modulated HF-diet-induced adipose triacylglycerol metabolism and inflammation-related gene expression, and increased fecal triglyceride excretion. Hence, including rice with RS level at ≥1.07% may attenuate risks associated with the consumption of a moderately HF diet. …” - Effects of Rice with Different Amounts of Resistant Starch on Mice Fed a High-Fat Diet: Attenuation of Adipose Weight Gain

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #14

We all know carbohydrates are addictive to a lot of people, so it’s never a surprise that people try to recommend eating carbohydrate. It’s a lot like some of the newly-sober alcoholics I’ve known, who tried to find some way to “alcohol-cycle.” It never ended well.

Some friends of mine knew a doctor in New York, who tried to prove that alcoholics could learn to drink “moderately.” She ended up in prison for vehicular manslaughter while driving drunk. I suppose the equivalent for a carb addict would be regaining all the lost fat and becoming Type II diabetic all over again? Fortunately, I love my fingers and toes enough that I can generally keep my carb cravings in check, and the few times I’ve slipped up, I’ve felt so awful that it clearly isn’t worth it.

P.S.–What exactly is a “high-quality carbohydrate” anyway?

(Bob M) #15

If there was such as thing as improving leptin “resistance”, maybe there would be a benefit?

I totally agree with @PaulL that if
one is an addictive personality and carbs are the addiction of choice, then cycling carbs might not be a good idea. I am, luckily, not one of those people. So, I can drink one drink per week or eat one carb-laden meal, and I won’t wake up after passing out drunk and with an empty bag of chips and several containers of ice cream near me. :wink:

@atomicspacebunny I have tried resistant starch and milk thistle (not at the same time, though). I could find no benefit to RS. As for milk thistle, this was part of a whole “liver protocol”, which I tried for a while. My liver markers actually got worse (went up). I’m not sure how to interpret that, though, because after I quit the protocol and got them tested sometime later, they were very low.

I tested some carbs after my workouts. The first meal after my workouts, I ate high saturated fat and carbs, like a bit of pasta, sweet potato, or bread made from Einkorn wheat.

It did seem to help recovery a bit, and also muscle mass (even my wife remarked on how much bigger my arms looked), and I gained quite a bit of strength (got up to 30 pushups in a row).

The bad was that I had some bad gastrointestinal effects (I have a hard time with wheat and sweet potato), and oddly I gained girth. Some of my shorts no longer fit. Fit me last year, not this year.

I THINK I gained muscle mass while losing no or little fat mass, but it’s impossible to say without a DEXA scan. I backed off doing that, though, and now I can fit again into my shorts.

I have been slightly more carb-heavy during the pandemic, in the sense that I’ve had a few more carb-heavy meals than I normally would have. However, I also would have gone on vacation by now, and would have those meals there. Since no vacation this year, I’ve been having a few more meals at home.

I do not know whether this has helped my leptin or not. I know you can get that tested. So, one day, maybe I’ll test.

(Ken) #16

Soooo, once again the point should be that in the absence of Mental Illness, like addictions (only relevant to a very limited few) and people not adapted, occasional carbs consumed for metabolic purposes are a valid n=1 experiment.

(Bunny) #17

You did not do it correctly or you did not do it long enough, it does in-fact work or you could not be human or your just too biased to do it right? Or what your already doing is masking the effect ( …I see no difference?)

Hundreds of thousands of peeps besides myself have been doing it since ancient times, most of problem is eating those nasty industrialized highly processed refined foods at three meals a day?..

”…Studies​​ show that resistant starch can reduce the glycemic (blood sugar) response to foods when it substitutes for flour or other high glycemic carbs in food; that it can reduce the glycemic response to a subsequent meal; increase insulin sensitivity; and enhance first-phase insulin secretion from the pancreas, said Witwer…”

”…Studies​ also show that resistant starch has prebiotic effects in that it promotes the growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut​, and reduces the prevalence and growth of potentially harmful bacteria. It also reduces intestinal pH (a key biomarker for colon health), reduces inflammation, and increases the production of beneficial short chain fatty acids such as butyrate. A growing body of research also suggests it helps maintain the integrity of the intestinal mucosal barrier, triggers beneficial changes in gene expression, and tackles diarrhea, she said.

Finally on the weight management front, research​ shows that resistant starch can increase insulin sensitivity (the more insulin you need to produce to keep blood sugar under control, the harder it can be to control your weight). Studies also show it can increase fat burning, reduce hunger (by increasing satiety), reduce the caloric density of foods when used to replace regular flour, and reduce body fat. …” Jun 11, 2019 - Resistant starch… unsung hero?

(bulkbiker) #18

Ah the vegan argument…

(bulkbiker) #19

Can not will…

(Bunny) #20

Just to remind you and assist with your short term and long term memory or momentary lapse of reasoning; as stated before I”m not a “vegan“ or “vegetarian” I’m making objective observations on scientifically valid points about how Resistant Starch is Ketogenic.

You do not be on a ketogenic diet to have a ketogenic metabolism. All metabolically fit people are naturally ketogenic not artificially induced through diet ketogenic.