My husband and I had been ketogenic for 3 and a half weeks, I dropped 12 pounds and he 14, mostly in the first 2 weeks and then it started to slow down a lot and we weren’t losing day to day and only half a pound the last week and a half. We had a wedding we were both attending, so we planned to do a gradual carb add for a week, ate like crap for two days, and went directly back on it the next Monday. The entire time I didn’t eat like I used to, and couldn’t wait to get back to the diet. I gained a pound and a half, but then after 3 days back on keto dropped 3.5 pounds. The weight loss seems to be picking up again, how it was when we first began. My question is: can cyclical ketoing help more than straight ketogenic alone? Does it “shock” my body and maximize fat burning? I had been resistance training hard and was in desperate need of a glycogen restore as well. Is it sustainable to have a cheat weekend every month to two months? Or will this ruin my metabolism/ pancreas?
Keto cycling?
John Kiefer (carb night and carb back loading) has made a career out of what is essentially this. Ie carb cycling. He tells a very similar anecdote to this which started him on his carb night program development. He targets his carb cycling program mainly at people who do heavy resistance/athletic training.
He does go pretty heavily into the science behind carb cycling snd if you do some searching you should easily be able to find some of his writings which explain what could be happening. Sorry I can’t supply a link at the moment.
As for running your metabolism- humans are meant to be able to switch between fat and glucose metabolism. That is why we have both. I can’t see how, after you have become fat adapted, the occasional carb intake could damage anyrhing permanently. Basically if it works for you, go for it.
Definitely during normal diets a week or two off is recommended to keep everything ticking along…I don’t know if during keto your body thinks it’s in “diet mode”, as it were…or “returning to normal”.
In terms of lifting I heard recently on the keto athlete podcast (I think) that those who practised a weekend carb up actually ended up performing worse - because it took them so long to get back in to keto that they spent most of the week not really reaping the benefits of either. On the other hand, there are definitely folk who make cyclical keto work.
This is true for me… On LLVLC this week, Jimmy Moore interviewed Dr. Mercola and the doc was going on about cycling in carbs because he lost weight (= muscle mass) when in ketosis. But he is already a thin man, who works out regularly. For anyone with insulin resistance and pounds of fat still to lose, carb cycling will likely just confuse the body. YMMV!
IMO it depends on a few factors…
- what your health was like before you started and what history you have with IR especially
- what carbs you are planning to eat during your cycling period and at what level
- how active you are and what your current health markers are
- what your mental reaction will be to cycling
If you are physically and mentally fit and always have been.
If you have a fairly high carb tolerance level.
If you are not that much overweight to start with and have never had a big weight problem.
A day or weekend once a month probably won’t do massive damage. I simply cannot see it doing much good either though, especially if it is a real blow out with a load of processed junk. If your system is working optimally though, your are designed to deal with gluts of sugar from time to time. You might well go into a carb coma while your body processes the rubbish but you will live! There is no way on earth I am going to recommend it as a good option because I really don’t think it is - for anyone. For most of the people on this forum it is a BAD idea.
If you do regular heavy workouts, you might well want to experiment with slight increases in more nutrient dense carbs on workout days - things like sweet potato. All you can do is experiment with say a few weeks doing one way, a few doing another, and so on. Track what you eat and how your body responds and go from there. Remember what is going on inside too though. If your system is working at full power then all well and good but I would be tracking my blood sugar especially. BS levels are a great health marker - not only fasting but how quickly they return to fasting level and how high they go after you eat.
As always, n=1.