point of large carb up on CKD

[blaze]

What exactly is the point of carbing up so much on a CKD after your 5 days of ketosis. Wouldn't it be better to jus knock yourself out of ketosis but not overload on the carbs so you can get back in ketosis a lot quicker? I've been trying to look for the answer to this, ive read somewhere that your body can get used to ketosis and that's why you cycle it by having the carbup. But i dont see the reason for carbing up so much that it takes you like 3 days to get back into ketosis. Wouldn't it be most beneficial to get back into ketosis as soon as possible after breaking out of it?

 

[Vageta]

The whole point of the carb up is to refill glycogen stores so you have enough to last your next bout of workouts. If you were to completely skip the carb up then your workouts would suffer as anaerobic exercise, aka weightlifting, cannot be powered by fat alone. At least not optimally. There is no set reason why your carb up has to be "so long". The problem is that if it's too short you won't refill enough glycogen and you might run short before you next weeks workouts are done.

You should only carb up as long as it takes to fill glycogen stores. To fill them completely full it takes more than 12 hours as the body can only store it so quickly. However I think you can get enough filled in 12 hours or one whole day to last you the next week. Also by keeping your carb up relatively short you run less risk of spill-over(extra calories after carb stores are at full which lead to fat gain).

The best idea for anyone is to attempt a one day carb up. If you have enough energy to get through your workouts the following week then you know you know one day was enough. If you burn out before your workouts are done you didn't refill them enough. If you want to get extremely technical you could try shortening it every week until you found the point where you just started to run out of glycogen. So if you attempted to do a 12 hour carb up and you found yourself finishing all your next weeks workout without problem, then the next carb up you drop to 10 hours. If the same phenomenon happens at 10 hours you drop to 8. If you notice at 8 hours your last workout of the week suffered then you should go back up to 10 hours and call it your target. By following that target you should avoid any spillover and by keeping the carb up short you would have more time in ketosis which means more fat loss. Obviously being in ketosis 24/7 would be optimal but you simply cannot perform intense workouts without glycogen therefore only couch potato Atkin's followers can do this.

Also time doesn't mean much compared to how much actual carbs you ingest within that time. Just make sure you get them a minimum of every 2 hours during that day, and optimally every 1 hour. Track your actual carb intake versus your total time. Even if you found a 10 hour carb up optimal you must ensure that the next 10 hour carb up contains the same amount of carbs as the previous one. If not you're fighting an uphill battle and your results will differ.

 

[Onenameleft]

I agree with most of what Vageta said from a standpoint of just losing weight. If you're doing a CKD just for the purposes of losing weight faster than a balanced diet than he's right. Duchane when he described the Body Opus diet which is what most people use as their model for a CKD calls for a super-carbup with total rest for the 36-48 hours while you are doing it. The logic is to get your muscles to overcompensate and overfill with glycogen causing muscle growth during those days and not affecting your fat loss significantly. You'll also be much stronger at the start of the no carb days because your muscles are extremely pumped. After 5 days without carbs, your body is very insulin sensitive and your muscles are thirsting for glycogen. If you immediately after your last workout consume Hi GI carbs, and then sustain your carbup with both hi and low GI carbs, then you get an insulin spike that forces the glycogen into the liver and muscles because they are empty and limits spillover into fat. It's true that if you go for too long you can begin to store fat, but the reason for the large carb up is to take advantage of your muscles being empty and the insulin sensitivity to overfill your muscles for faster and better repair. If you are only trying to lose fat as fast as possible, shorten your carbup, but if you are as interested in muscle sparing and you are fatloss do a more intense carbup. My 2 cents based on research I've done. The best 2 sources I've found for this, although there are a lot, are 'Body Opus' by Dan Duchane, and 'The Ketogenic Diet' by Lyle McDonald.

 

[Par Deus]

What exactly is the point of carbing up so much on a CKD after your 5 days of ketosis. Wouldn't it be better to jus knock yourself out of ketosis but not overload on the carbs so you can get back in ketosis a lot quicker? I've been trying to look for the answer to this, ive read somewhere that your body can get used to ketosis and that's why you cycle it by having the carbup. But i dont see the reason for carbing up so much that it takes you like 3 days to get back into ketosis. Wouldn't it be most beneficial to get back into ketosis as soon as possible after breaking out of it?

Refilling glycogen is important for maintaining quality workouts.

Perhaps even more important is that it will increase leptin levels which will move the body toward a hormonal state that favors fat loss and muscle gain.

It is likely that the refeed, not the ketogenic diet itself is responsible for the muscle sparing action.

 

[Vageta]

" Perhaps even more important is that it will increase leptin levels which will move the body toward a hormonal state that favors fat loss and muscle gain. "

Par,

I've made that exact arguement a few times on this board. There are some heavy duty promoters of the CKD on this board and one of my theories was that the reason the CKD works so well for people is more to do with the carb up than the actual ketogenic portion. I believe that a ketogenic diet in itself offers no greater fat loss capability than any other well concieved diet. However the carb up itself had the side effect of raising leptin levels(which wasn't discovered yet at the time the CKD was invented) which is what truely achieves the better fat loss. If people would do a carb up/refeed on their specific diet most likely the results would be identical.

 

[Rudee34]

Periodic carb ups are needed to use insulin to drive protein into the muscles for systhesis, as well as keep T3 levels from dropping - which happens if the body feels it's not getting enough calories. Not only that, but carb ups provide a release of serotonin for the brain to promote a "satisfying" feeling, making the whole process much more bearable, as well as provide glycogen for energy.

 

[blaze]

thanks for all the info.

 

[diamonddiceclay]

mauro dipasquale's books explain why you must carb load.

 

[Onenameleft]

Dipasquale's book, 'The Anabolic Diet' describes a CKD meant to help you gain muscle with as little fat gain as possible, whereas most CKDs are designed to help you lose fat while sparing as much muscle as possible. Because of that, the carb up is much more intense and precise because he's using the anabolic properties of insulin to help you grow. The other major difference is that The anabolic diet is a CKD where you eat above maint. calories and not below. Diamond's right, though, it has a very good explaination of how to do the carbup to get the most out of your insulin release and glycogen depletion.