"Carb Ups" -- What's the thinking behind them and what's your experience?

(Marsha) #1

I’m not totally new to keto (6 months), and I’ve done a fair amount of reading and study on this WOE. But recently, I heard one of the better known keto bloggers talk about a “carb up practice.” As I understand it, this involves eating carbs on a pretty regular basis (at least several times a week)-- and it involves definitely more carbs than I eat on a daily basis. The carbs are “high quality” – in other words, we aren’t talking Krispy Kremes here – but carbs nonetheless.

I’ve read about bodybuilders or athletes practicing carb cycling. But I don’t quite get the science/rationale behind someone like me (average non-athlete, non-bodybuilder) doing it. It seems to me it would just knock me out of ketosis… and for what purpose, I’m not sure.

Anyone? Bueller?

(eat more) #2

leanne vogel recommends them to “shock your body” and has a couple of different paths to do them with varying grams of carb for each instance…(once a week, 2-3x a week, nightly).
she has said that her carb tolerance is like 100g/day which is more than anyone here is practicing (that i know of)
she also recommends having these carb ups at the last meal of the day (also low fat)…then back into ketosis the next day.

i have considered doing a carb up…I just don’t have any high carb foods in the house and must not want to do it bad enough to buy any :joy:

(Mike W.) #3

What is the advantage, or what are you trying to gain by it?

(G. Andrew Duthie) #4

If your goal is ketosis, then eating carbs several times a week, high-quality or not, will defeat that goal.

If your goal is lowering insulin and addressing insulin resistance and/or type 2 diabetes, then eating carbs several times a week will defeat that goal.

If your goal is weight loss, which requires that your insulin be sufficiently low to access your own body fat…well, you get the idea.

NO. You don’t need to “carb up”.

But what about…?

NO.

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(G. Andrew Duthie) #5

On a more serious note, if you’re just getting started, stick to the basics:

  1. No more than 20 grams of carbohydrate.
  2. Protein sufficient to maintain lean body mass. Recommendations vary on this, but somewhere between 0.3 on the low end to 1.0g per kg of lean body mass is a reasonable starting point.
  3. Fat to sateity. Don’t leave the table hungry.

Given that you’re six months in, if you want to mix things up and force your body to adapt, you’d probably be better served looking into intermittent or extended fasting, and fast/feast cycling. The @dudes show on “Switching it Up” with Megan Ramos covers this topic:

(Marsha) #6

Not really interested in trying a carb up-- just trying to understand the why behind it. I’m doing well on “standard” keto, so not looking to change.

But I’m also a bit of an outsider here as I have no interest in fasting, either…::smiley:

N=1 and all of that, after all…

(G. Andrew Duthie) #7

Fair enough. Keep in mind that you may not find a lot of people on a forum who’s purpose is fixing problems caused by carbs who understand why someone would deliberately load themselves up with…carbs. :smiley:

Fasting isn’t a requirement of keto, by any means. Just another tool in the toolbox. If you can meet your goals with keto alone, that’s cool. I mentioned fasting more in reference to @mikki’s mention of “shock[ing] the body” as a reason for carbing up.

(Crow T. Robot) #8

0.3g/kg LBM is really low. I’ve never heard that recommended before. Source?

(John) #9

The idea is that it will help with performance, especially in high level athletes. This seems to be true from the few things i’ve seen with Phinney and very high level athletes. Those recommend consuming during exercise though, I have never seen any studies that shows “carb loading” is a thing for keto people.

Most of us are here because we have metabolism problems, insulin to be precise, so we control it and improve our sensitivity to it through a ketogenic diet. Fasting can help with this, especially hunger signalling it seems, that is why you see a lot of people talk about it.

If you are a sprinter, or are trying to set a squat record, a ketogenic diet is probably not for you. If you have a metabolism problem or do really anything other than the highest level sports then you will do fine. I have tried a couple tests and it didn’t go to well, still looking for the balance. I couldn’t go around the block on my bike last year, today I went 50 miles fasted and had no problem until the end. It didn’t feel like caloric deprivation or lack of carbs, it felt like a lack of salt. Horrible humidity and 3.5 hours of constant pedaling, I drank 4 liters of water during that time and hadn’t had any electrolytes, lesson learned.

When you get to the end of whatever goals you have, play around and see what works for you, before then is probably a waste. It reminds me of a bodybuilder friend decades ago when asked about steroids, once you have met your genetic potential and done all you can, steroids can be a boost, you shouldn’t be doing steroids when you first start.

(G. Andrew Duthie) #10

I don’t think 0.3 is going to be adequate for everyone, and certainly not for most. But the chart @richard posted clearly identifies 0.3g/kg as the low end of the healthy range.

(Doug) #11

“Carbing up” does seem quite counter-productive in the realm of a keto diet, fasting, and weight loss. While there may be some value in “shocking” the body, I really have to wonder if it would be a net benefit, given the context that applies for most of us reading this blog.

“Carbo-loading” was a thing for long distance runners and other athletes whose events were of long duration. I remember it in the 1970s, not sure if it began earlier. The theory was that in the few days before an event, you trained hard and cut your intake of carbohydrates, to use up a good bit of the body’s store or glycogen. Then, for a day or two before the event, you eased up on training and ate a lot of carbohydrates, the thinking being that the depleted body would overcompensate and store extra glycogen in the liver and muscles, which would fuel good performance in competition.

It morphed somewhat, as time went on - many people didn’t do much more than just eat a lot of carbohydrates for a day or two before competing.

(Richard Morris) #12

I don’t think anyone should recommend 0.3, it’s the lowest outlier in the data from Rand et al 2003 “Meta-analysis of nitrogen balance studies for estimating protein requirements in healthy adults.”

It’s a bit hard to read the data in terms of mg of Nitrogen intake so I added the equivalent protein intake at the top of the chart.

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Outliers at both ends range from 0.3 to 1.0 g/kg LBM of protein required for people to be nitrogen balanced (data points along the 0 line are people eating enough protein to not lose lean mass, or excrete nitrogen in urea). It’s amazing how variable we humans are, when you think about it that is 70% of the total range from zero.

So 0.3 - 1.0 is what we apparently need at a minimum. And above 1.5 g/kg LBM produces no additional benefit to muscle protein synthesis [Source: Stephen Phinney].

Anyway this is why we recommend 1.0 - 1.5 g/kg LBM.

(Mike W.) #13

My “shock” to my system is eating like 200g of fat for a day or eating a ton of protein. It’s only for a day and keeps my body guessing.

(3c6f21097d06511a9e23) #14

Lean body weight.
Without acces to expensive measuring solutions, how does one estimate ones own LBW?
\v/

(Mike W.) #15

Do you know your body fat %?

(Rob) #16

http://www.calculator.net/lean-body-mass-calculator.html - not foolproof but will give you an estimate. Obviously a full body scan DEXA or the like will be more accurate.

If you have a body composition scale, it may not be very accurate but you could deduct body fat weight from total weight to give you an indication.

Some people are denser than others (physiologically :wink: ) so these estimates are only that. Only the scan or similar methods will tell you for sure.

(3c6f21097d06511a9e23) #17

I see, thanks.
Tricky trying to calculate protein maximum without really knowing. I imagine perhaps not so critical, well I’m hoping as I’m estimating.
Will start a new post so as to not hog this one.
\v/

(Bunny) #18

Those older post\threads dates get me every time!