Maintaining a diet through all those 10,080 minutes of a week, for weeks or months, requires supreme, almost unwavering willpower.
The social side of dieting is tough. It takes dedication to remain unmoved on a diet; are small wins on the carb-centric eating.
For athletes, it can be difficult because we rely so heavily on carbohydrates for fuel. Of course, there’s growing research about how to use bodily fat as a fuel source, but carbohydrates have been the gold standard exercise nutrition for years.
What is Carb Cycling and How Does it Work?
carb cycling is carb manipulation to match the body’s need for glucose depending on activity or activity level.
it gives you flexibility to choose combination of two types of diets helps to become metabolically flexible, also helps to improve performance & recovery.
Carb cycling is planned consumption of different amounts of carbohydrates, usually throughout the week. Everyone can develop their own carb cycle based on need; for example, keto athletes might work in carb days during especially hard training blocks.
While carb cycling isn’t for everyone, it can be a great way to optimize a diet based on your personal needs.
What’s a Carb, Anyway?
The main function of dietary carbs is to be a source of energy. Some even argue they aren’t essential, and can be made from dietary protein and fat. This process is called gluconeogenesis, a metabolic pathway generating glucose from non-carbohydrate substrates.
Carbs (especially refined carbs) raise blood sugar, resulting in the body producing extra insulin to bring that blood sugar down. Insulin is a hormone that triggers fat storage–so more carbs means more insulin which means more conversion of carbs to fat stores.
As a fuel source, carbohydrates replenish glycogen stores in the muscle and liver. They also maintain blood glucose concentrations as fuel for the body, but also for the brain. That’s the spike in energy you experience after an afternoon stack, as blood glucose fluctuates throughout the day when we consume carbs.
Simply put, carbohydrates are the body’s most readily available fuel. But when we don’t use that fuel, carbohydrate manifest as fat.
When following a keto diet, lower carb intake is necessary (like 25g of carbs per day–the amount in a single banana). This encourages the body to burn fat and also to convert fat to ketones. Consuming carbohydrates causes insulin release, which inhibits ketone production in the liver.
The Science Behind Carb Cycling
What is carb cycling, and why is it beneficial? Looking at the science can provide some clarity. Maybe a more accurate definition of carb cycling is carb manipulation.
The goal is to match the body’s need for glucose depending on activity or activity level overall.
High-Carb Days
High-carb days are usually matched with workouts when you might need more glucose–like high-intensity interval sessions or a long day in the weight room.
When you exercise at a high intensity, the body makes most of its energy from carbohydrates, either breaking it down aerobically (with oxygen), or anaerobically (without oxygen), forming lactic acid. This would be the optimal time to introduce a higher amount of carbohydrates into the diet because the body uses more carbohydrate during the workout itself, and then after the workout to make glycogen to refuel and decrease muscle breakdown.3
Strategic high-carb periods may also improve the function of the weight- and appetite-regulating hormones leptin and ghrelin.
When looking for your highest possible power or speed output, carbs are often necessary for the body to produce its best results during intense training sessions.
Low-Carb Days
In traditional carb-cycling, low-carb days are meant for days on which you do not train–the idea is the body doesn’t need carbs because its demand for fuel is far less than on workout days.
But further investigation by scientists have shown some of the advantages of training on these low carb days, which has two main benefits: it helps to speed up general adaptations to aerobic training, and it increases fat burning and thus improves endurance.
This led to the conclusion that low-carb training could accelerate aerobic gains.
Strategic low-carb days focus on switching the body back to using fat as energy and increase aerobic capacity. Research is continuing on this topic, but athletes are looking to boost the ability of the body to tap into fat as a fuel source, since we store more fat than carbohydrates.
Training in a low-carb state has been shown to increase the ability of the body to burn fat over the long haul, improving metabolic flexibility. There have even been studies noting keto-adapted athletes can use fat in preference to carbohydrates for moderate intensity endurance exercises, in which carbohydrates would usually be used as fuel.
By controlling carbs, and the types of carbs consumed, there also may be a benefit in manipulating insulin and insulin responses. This would likely help with improving metabolic health.
Trending Approach of workout for Athletes
It is becoming widely accepted that athletes should adopt carb cycling or periodization of carbs based on training needs. This ensures fuel for the work required (so training intensity isn’t compromised), while also empowering the body to metabolically trap-ease between carbohydrates and fats as fuel sources as available.9
“You need to allow yourself to be completely adapted to life without carbs. Play the long game. Be diligent with hitting macros and eating wholesome foods.”
Robert Sikes
Coclusion:
The proposed mechanism of carb cycling is to maximize the benefits of carbohydrates and teach the body to burn fat as fuel. More direct research is required in this regard.
Benefits of Carb Cycling
The benefits are carb cycling are measured against personal goals. Do you want to improve body composition? How about improve training or recovery?
Ask yourself what you want to achieve with carb cycling to best understand its benefits.
Body Composition
As with most diets, a major goal is usually weight loss. Because we consume such a high amount of calories as carbohydrates in Western diets, limiting those calories and carbs will ultimately lead to fat loss. The process aligns with most other diets: consume less calories than the body burns, enter a calorie deficit and promote weight loss.
Though specific research on carb cycling is limited, generally studies show that limiting carb intake works well for weight loss. One study analyzed on low-carbohydrate diet for overweight women showed better results for weight loss.
Performance and Recovery
Training in a low-carb state can help with weight loss, boost fat burning capacity, and can speed up aerobic adaptation to training. However, athletes face a compromise when employing low-carb diets; they need the carbohydrates to perform at the highest intensity (especially in a race), and want to keep that energy system working well, but still want the benefits of carb restriction.
Making sure the body has carbs for tough training can help performance. The body needs fuel for the most difficult exercise days. Since carbohydrates are the body’s most readily available fuel source, consuming carbs before a workout enables the body to train harder for high-intensity, short-duration exercise. Interestingly, even the presence of carbohydrates in the mouth (meaning, not actually ingested) can lead to increased performance, because they activated brain regions believed to be involved in reward and motor control.
Carbs can also help accelerate recovery. After exercise, consuming carbohydrates can lead to glycogen re-synthesis and protein synthesis (after resistance training). So, it’s easier to perform and recover if you have enough carbohydrate in your diet. Carb cycling means those big training days can be high quality.
Other Benefits
By cycling carbohydrate consumption, you may be afforded some of the benefits of both higher-carb and lower-carb diets–and avoid some of the common negative side-effects.
Metabolic Health
The combination of two types of diets may help you become metabolically flexible.
The days with low-carbs may have a positive impact on insulin sensitivity; this study showed the benefits of a low-carb, high-fat diet on glucose metabolism, lowering fasting glucose and insulin values. And when compared to a low-fat diet, a low-carb diet led to greater weight loss, which in turn led to a decrease in triglyceride levels–high levels of triglycerides have been associated with cardiovascular disease.
Hormone Health
There are some concerns that hormones might be negatively affected by a badly put together low-carb diet, but this could be mitigated by strategic carb feeding.
High-carb feeding periods can potentially boost the levels of some vital hormones, like cortisol. There are some concerns that cortisol can decline when following a low-carbohydrate or ketogenic diet (although not much research supports this fear). To combat this possibility, either make sure your keto diet is well-formulated with enough calories and nutrients, or cycle periods of carbohydrate feeding to give your body a break.
In men, testosterone concentrations were higher after a ten-day high-carbohydrate diet, while cortisol concentrations were consistently lower on the same diet, suggesting the power of diet (specifically the ratio of carbohydrate to protein) as a factor in hormone regulation.
Thyroid hormones are essential to regulating metabolism, being crucial determinants of resting metabolic rate. But they themselves are in turn regulated by diet and metabolism because glucose fuels the production of those thyroid hormones. The thyroid produces a large amount of T4 hormones, which are then converted into T3 hormones (T3 is the active thyroid hormone influencing many body processes). When carb intake is reduced, conversion of T4 to T3 reduces. People worry that this might lead to a lower metabolic rate and thus slow down weight loss with a low-carb diet.
Longevity
The ketogenic diet may help to increase lifespan and healthspan.
This might be increased further by taking a cyclical approach to the diet: alternating high-carb and low-carb weeks. One study fed a ketogenic diet to mice every other week. Results showed avoidance of obesity, reducing midlife mortality, and prevented memory decline.
How to Carb Cycle
Before a single carb touches your lips, think about your goals. These will formulate your carb cycling plan.
Do you want to lose weight, or maintain weight? Do you want to boost aerobic fat burning capacity or target a lean body composition?
Then consider your typical training week. Which days are your most intense workouts? Which days can you recover, even without carbs? Do you meal prep to make sure you get enough quality, low-carb foods?
Serious athletes might want to take it one step further and consider carb cycling over a longer period, to keep up with training or competition cycle. Instead of breaking up a single week into high-carbs and low-carbs days, each week would have a different carbohydrate goal. Weeks with a heavy training load would be carbs-heavy, while weeks with a lower training load or coming into a weigh-in could be more low/ moderate-carbs.
Your answers to these questions will determine how you go about cycling carbs. Don’t be afraid to change the schedule and be a bit flexible once you get started.
Log calories and macros
Establishing a calorie goal could prove helpful (especially if you’re trying to lose weight). Multiply your bodyweight by ten, and that’s the amount of calories to work toward if you want to lose weight. To gain weight, you can multiply your bodyweight by 15 to garner a ballpark daily calorie target.
Tracking your macros in a food journal or an app will help keep you accountable. Taking note of everything you eat will let you make sure you get enough calories from the right type of macronutrients while giving you a better understanding of how diet impacts your training output.
Target for a High-Carb Day
High-carb days should accompany your toughest training sessions of the week, such as intense intervals or prolonged weight training. These days call for about 2g of carbs per pound of bodyweight, and they’ll be your highest calories days. If you’re working out four times a week, and weight training once or twice a week, then you should have about one or two high-carb days each week.
Target for a Medium or Low-Carb Day
Low-carb or medium-carb days can be used to fuel less-intense workouts or recovery days. Depending on training volume, low/medium carb days can be anywhere from 50g – 150g of carbs.
Training low doesn’t mean training on zero carbohydrates. On low-carb days, be sure to prioritize other macronutrients such as good quality protein and fat. High protein intake is important for post-workout recovery and the development of muscle mass. When cutting back on carbs, make sure you get enough calories, and the bulk of these should come from fat.
There are a few strategies that you can use to control your carb intake around your training sessions.
Foods to Remember
A carb cycling diet requires high quality, healthy carbs and whole foods. Every once in a while it’s fine to treat yourself in epic, The Rock-like proportions, but from day-to-day, it’s all about maintaining balance.
Fiber plays an important role in weight loss, energy maintenance, regulating blood sugar and controlling hunger. Though fiber is a carb, it doesn’t raise blood sugar like other carbs and plays an important metabolic role because it doesn’t convert to glucose.
Building a meal plan to incorporate all these types of food should help with each phase of the carb cycling.
Is Carb Cycling Right For You?
It depends on your goals. It also requires some experimentation–based on your lifestyle and fitness routine, finding the right balance of high-carb and low-carb days can take some time and will probably change over the long-term.
What’s nice about carb cycling is the flexibility. It empowers a dieter some choice, while also providing the ability to fuel on days where it’s required, like ahead of intense training sessions. Benefiting from each could help an athlete reach goals for exercise, as well as goals for body composition. But remember to check with your doctor before implementing such wholesale changes to the way you eat.
If you’ve tried carb cycling, let us know the results in the comments.
Originally published on HVMN
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