Carb backloading is a relatively new diet trend that is gaining traction. Unlike many diets forbidding junk food, carb backloading allows adherents to eat typically forbidden things like cake, doughnuts, and cheeseburgers while still losing weight and building muscle.
The developer, John Kiefer, believes that this dieting method uses carbohydrates better by delaying carb consumption until supper, when you may eat whatever you want.
How Do Carbs Work?
Before you can grasp how carb backloading works, you should understand how carbs are digested in your body.
Carbohydrates are turned down into glucose in your blood every time you eat them. This boosts your blood sugar levels, causing your pancreas to secrete insulin to regain balance.
Insulin does this by depositing carbs into either muscle or fat cells.
These carbohydrates will move into your muscles if you have an active lifestyle, a reduced body weight, and an overall healthy physique. In this circumstance, you are said to have high insulin sensitivity.
Conversely, suppose you live a more sedentary lifestyle, which may result in a larger body fat percentage. In that case, the odds of carbs being stored as fat rather than muscle are significantly higher. This is referred to as insulin resistance.
Carb backloading takes advantage of this cycle by handling all your carbs after rigorous workouts, such as weight lifting or resistance training when your body is most sensitive to insulin.
What Is Carb Backloading?
This diet demands you to eat little to no carbohydrates for breakfast and lunch, with fats and protein providing most of your calories. Afterward, you increase your carb consumption for your post-workout meal (ideally in the evening).
The developer of carb backloading, John Kiefer, thinks that this manner of eating works in tandem with your body’s insulin sensitivity [1].
According to research, insulin sensitivity peaks in the morning, signaling your body to store glucose in fat and muscle. Carbohydrate backloading considers this and advises against consuming carbs when your body is most prone to storing them as fat (i.e., throughout the Day)[2].
Instead, you would consume the majority of your carbohydrates when your body is more prone to converting glucose into muscle. Fat growth or the formation of new fat cells through carbohydrates is reduced by avoiding carbs as much as possible during the Day.
Essentially, you’re taking carbohydrates when your body is most likely to store them as glycogen in the muscles rather than fat.
How Carb Backloading Works
This diet has a strong emphasis on optimum hormonal function timing. When you sleep, your body turns fat-burning and releases growth hormones [3].
When you wake up, the objective of this diet is to stay in this fat-burning condition (also known as ketosis). Consuming solely fats and proteins throughout the Day has been found to help manage hunger and increase fat oxidative metabolism [4].
Choose a low-carb, high-fat breakfast, such as a bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast casserole, or skip breakfast altogether.
Skipping breakfast, an integral aspect of intermittent fasting offers various long-term advantages beyond this diet. It can help your body become more insulin sensitive and utilize carbohydrates more efficiently by assisting in the depletion of glycogen reserves over the Day [5].
Eating essentially fats and protein for lunch is best, with most of your calories coming from healthy fats. Keep carbs to a minimum by eating keto-friendly dishes like fish with pesto cauliflower rice.
The majority of your carbohydrate calories will come after your workout. The “post-workout” concept is critical since this is when your body is more likely to store glycogen in the muscles rather than fat cells.
Eating Carbs at Night
You may have heard that eating carb-heavy meals at night will increase fat levels in your body composition.
Many nutritionists and dietitians advise eating most of your carbs throughout the Day, when your insulin sensitivity is most excellent, and then reducing your overall calorie intake in the afternoon and at night.
The carb backloading technique, on the other hand, advocates the polar opposite.
Cortisol, the stress hormone in your body, naturally rises at night and peaks at about 7 a.m. Carbohydrate consumption in the morning may offset insulin action and indicate weight gain[6].
Backloading your carbohydrates — eating them after a workout at night — can help counteract this fat-gaining impact.
Benefits to Carb Backloading
Carb backloading, like other diets, has some possible health advantages.
- Helps reduce cravings: This diet enables you to be less restricted (at night), so it’s OK to eat junk food now and then as long as you’ve stayed low-carb for most of the Day. According to recent research, giving in to your desires will help you reach your weight reduction objectives faster [7].
- Promotes less stored fat: This diet’s fundamental point is to use your hormonal function. Maintaining nutritional ketosis throughout the Day encourages your body to burn extra fat.
- Can promote better sleep: Carbohydrate eating at night aids in the production of tryptophan. This crucial amino acid stimulates the conversion of serotonin to melatonin, which aids in sleep quality.
The Science Behind Carb Backloading
You can keep your blood sugar levels low by eliminating carbohydrates for most of the Day. This implies that there will be no significant insulin releases, and your body will burn fat through ketosis for the remainder of the Day.
One research investigated the impact of women’s eating 70% of their daily calories in the morning rather than the evening on fat reduction. The results revealed that women who ate most of their calories in the evening lost half a pound more fat and less muscle than those who ate in the morning [8].
Another 2011 research put 70 Israeli police officers on a six-month diet plan, with one group eating carbohydrates uniformly throughout the Day and the other consuming most of their carbs at night.
Researchers discovered that the second group had less hunger, dropped 4.4 pounds more, and had a higher body mass index (BMI) than the group that ate carbohydrates throughout the Day. Subjects who ate most carbohydrates at night also had lower inflammation, better glucose management, and better blood lipids [9].
Traditional Carb Backloading
The carb backloading diet is readily described in three simple stages.
#1. Limit Your Carb Intake to 30 Grams Per Day for 10 Days
During the first phase, you must limit your carbohydrate consumption as much as possible.
It is suggested to ingest 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight every Day, as well as enough fat. Eggs, salmon, avocados, and bacon are all suggestions.
Saturated fats should not be avoided. According to the Annals of Internal Medicine, low-carb diets with moderate to high quantities of saturated fat might lower risk factors for heart disease and increase cardiovascular health [10].
Like the keto flu, this diet will make you feel sluggish for several days.
#2. Eat Large Amounts of Carbs on the 10th Day
Kiefer suggests consuming a lot of carbohydrates and protein right after your evening workout on the tenth Day. According to the carb backloading procedure, on the 10th Day, your body is so exhausted of carbohydrates that carbs cannot be stored as fat.
#3. Repeat
On training days, you can repeat the procedure of consuming a lot of carbohydrates following your afternoon or evening workout.
Reduce your carb consumption on non-training days like you did during the first 10 days of the program.
Carb Backloading and the Keto Diet
One of the most common concerns about a low-carb or ketogenic diet is the difficulty in building muscle mass. Weight lifters and bodybuilders, for example, require carbs to sustain strength throughout training.
However, if your carbohydrate consumption becomes too high, you may be forced out of ketosis.
Your body is incredibly glycogen sparing while you are in ketosis. This indicates that your body does not consume all the carbs normally.
Your muscles and liver store around 450-500 grams of carbs. On a typical diet, you would generally have to burn through 450 grams of carbohydrates to empty them. When you’re in ketosis, your body uses ketones, which conserve glycogen.
So, although a conventional workout may burn 250 grams of carbs, a keto workout may only burn 50-60 carbs, implying that you may get away with less carbohydrates in your keto backloading plan than if you were carb backloading normally.
A carb backloading strategy combined with ketosis is beneficial if you do not exceed your daily carbohydrate allotment of 50 grams. This is because you still want the benefits of reduced insulin to last throughout the Day.
If you train in the evening and limit your carb consumption until after your workout, you will be in a fat-burning condition all Day. When you ingest carbohydrates post-workout at night, you will experience the benefits of ketosis throughout the Day while maintaining muscle mass.
Keto Carb Backloading Meal Example
Here’s an example of a carb backloading meal plan in which you eat low-carb until after your 5 p.m. workout:
- Breakfast – Turkey sausage frittata
- Lunch – Lemon balsamic chicken
- Dinner – 12 oz grass-fed steak with one cup of white rice
- Dessert – Protein shake
Backloading on Carbs Can Work for You
The carb backloading concepts are similar to the low-carb, high-fat ketogenic diet.
If you’ve been having trouble building muscle on the keto diet, following these tips may help you increase your muscle mass and strength.
Carb backloading can help you boost athletic performance or muscle mass by following a tailored or cyclical ketogenic diet.
Otherwise, a regular keto diet would be ineffective with carb backloading since eating too many carbohydrates would quickly knock you out of ketosis.
The longer you stick to the diet, the easier it will be, and the greater your results will be.
While backloading claims to enhance muscle mass and decrease body fat while still allowing you to eat junk food, you must remember to stick to strict low-carb standards throughout the Day, followed by a carb-laden meal after your evening workout to see significant effects.
![How Low Carb and Ketogenic Diets Boost Brain Health [Benefits & Effects]](https://eathealthyisgood.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/pexels-ella-olsson-1640773-1-1080x675.jpg)
0 Comments