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Carb Cycling

JohnEGreen

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This is a new one to me but others may find it old news.

Carb cycling is a dietary approach in which you alternate carb intake on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

"It is commonly used to lose fat, maintain physical performance while dieting, or overcome a weight loss plateau.
Some people adjust their carb intake day-to-day, while others may do longer periods of low, moderate and high-carb diets.
In short, carb cycling aims to time carbohydrate intake to when it provides maximum benefit and exclude carbs when they're not needed"

"
A typical weekly carb cycling diet may include two high-carb days, two moderate-carb days and three low-carb days.
Protein intake is usually similar between days, whereas fat intake varies based on the carb intake."

It is thought that it can help with IR

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/carb-cycling-101#section1
 
I’m an insulin resistant T2. I’m not eating any carbs as I don’t want to die a slow death,
 
For the "healthy" maybe (and who are they these days?) for anyone with T2 probably not so great.
 
Makes sense from an ancestral point of view in people who are metabolic gold medalists (virtually no one). Perhaps only cycling the carbohydrate during the summer months. However, as someone previously ravaged by metabolic derangement, I would personally rather cycle the bubonic plague once a fortnight...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
As this is in Diabetes Discussions, I regard myself as healthy, despite having a few medical conditions, fit and active after 30 years of diabetes and looking forward to getting to the my 50th year plus.......... I actually have a bike too
 
bulkbiker said:
For the "healthy" maybe (and who are they these days?) for anyone with T2 probably not so great.
Click to expand...
Are you suggesting anyone with type 2 diabetes is "unhealthy"?
I can only talk as someone with type 1 but, like @Robinredbreast, I consider myself healthy albeit with a defective pancreas but it doesn't stop me doing what I want in terms of exercise, career, travel, etc.
I find it very sad if everyone with type 2 is considered by society as unhealthy - I thought this forum advocated healthiness with diabetes.
 

I couldn't read it, because I wouldn't accept the links privacy conditions.
 

No ...I meant metabolically healthy..the minority in many countries these days...
 
There are many things that affect our metabolism (age, weight, drugs, diet, hormonal strengths/weaknesses ...).
I wonder if a defect in one area could be overcome by a strength in another area.
Like someone with sight loss is said to have better hearing.

(Sorry I am thinking aloud ... I don't mean to derail this thread.)
 
2/3 rds of Americans are regarded as T2D or pre-diabetics because of their lousy diet and food choices. They are definitely regarded as unhealthy. Same applies to many people in the Western world on 50 to 100 years of low fat, high carb food, and its progression in degree of processed quantity.
 
kitedoc said:
2/3 rds of Americans are regarded as T2D or pre-diabetics because of their lousy diet and food choices.
Click to expand...
Wow - that's huge. I'd like to read more - do you have a reference for this fact?
I am sure you are not suggesting all people (or at least all Americans) with Type 2 or pre-diabetes is just down to their lousy diet and good choices. My understanding is that diabetes is much more complex than that.
 
The article in the OP is aimed at the metabolically healthy who wish to weight train or train physically in other ways.

It has absolutely no bearing on me, a metabolically dysfunctional, insulin resistant person who can shoot up to diabetic blood glucose levels with a single portion of bread or rice.

For type 2s, the 'last meal effect' will mean that an unexected intake of carbs will spike levels higher than if the same amount of carb were eaten every day. In light of this, carb loading would, IMHO cause far more damage than simply eating carbs regularly - and we all know what eating carbs regularly does to insulin resistant Type 2s. I have no wish to 'carb cycle' my way to retinopathy, neuropathy and nephropathy.

@Helensarahmay the following links show what is happening to the US and the UK on high carb diets:
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p0718-diabetes-report.html (2017, so already out of date)
https://www.nhs.uk/news/diabetes/one-in-three-adults-in-england-has-prediabetes/ (2014, so already out of date)
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322614.php (2018)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6057684/ (2018)
 
For some full on LCHF works for me it does but there are those that have found for them is doesn't or they can't sustain it regrettable but true, I thought this may be an alternative for them but am unsure as to it's viability or advisability this is why I put it up for discussion.

Also it does mention in the scree that it has been found to help lower insulin resistance often, this surely would be a positive if true.
 
Bye the way I came to this by a rather circuitous route I was reading the thread on low carbing as a religion and recalled that people had declared their religion in the census as Jedi so I googled Low carb and Jedi and ended up on this page.

https://www.newbeauty.com/blog/dailybeauty/11696-star-wars-the-last-jedi-cast-diet-carb-cycling/

And thought carb cycling ***?

""We use carb-cycling to reduce people’s dependency on carbohydrates and get them started on a high-fat, low-carb, nutrient-rich diet," says Jack Graves, an Altus Health coach and trainer. "You begin the cycle with two days of low carbs and one normal healthy diet day, and do this for two weeks. The next two weeks, you do three days low-carb and one day of normal healthy diet. And the following two weeks, you do 4:1, and gradually, you reduce your overall carb intake. It’s important to up your fats on the low-carb days to make up the calories needed." "
 

I agree with you about the insulin resistance, but I am unsure how anyone would test this theory - especially as the article only seems to promote carb cycling in conjunction with physical training - which is known to reduce insulin resistance by itself. Not sure how the addition of carb cycling's impact on insulin resistance could be measured outside a lab.
 

Question.

In the initial post by the term carb cycling...

With a source of fuel as carbs and another as keyones... it takes time for the body to change between both modes...

Could it be used to aid weight loss... ?

My wife found something along these lines but no diabetes in her... my answer to her was maybe...
 
Thanks for the links @Brunneria .
Whilst the numbers quoted are not good, they don’t seem as extreme as the 2/3rds mentioned by @kitedoc .
Both US papers quote the same numbers: 30.3M with T2 (one quarter of which didn’t know they had diabetes) and 84.1M with pre-diabetes. With a population of just over 300M, that’s about a third with T2 or pre-diabetes. Half the numbers KiteDoc mentioned.
Perhaps he had a different reference ... I believe he does a lot of research so there may be more papers he has read?
 
JohnEGreen said:
Also it does mention in the scree that it has been found to help lower insulin resistance often, this surely would be a positive if true.
Click to expand...

I would think that eating some carbs at reasonable intervals may ward against physiological insulin resistance, but given the etiology of T2DM, I doubt very much that any level of carbohydrate will ever be of use in reducing pathological resistance.
 
Sorry it occurred to me I had not included the original article that led me to post that is in the post I cross posted with yours
 
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