in the last weeks i've seen some videos on carb cycling carb loading cheat meals and i wanted to
give you my opinion of why this is so dangerous for us to do carb loading is when we eat a bunch
of carbs before we do something strenuous it could be a tournament it could be a workout carb cycling
is when they ask us to every two weeks to a month eat a higher carb count than would be
keto or carnivore and then we have cheat meals cheat days when we go over our 20 grams of carbs
per day allotment and this could happen weekly it could happen bi-weekly like it that depends
on how often the person decides to do that i want to start with carb loading because i want to help
us understand something there's this idea that we walk around with our carb so our glycogen stores
not topped up and i want us to understand that that's a myth i'm not sure why we would think that
but in fact if i'm not doing anything strenuous my body is able to keep my glycogen stores pretty
topped up and every time that i do do something like if i run upstairs to go get something or i
i'm folding some laundry or just normal things that would use some glycogen
my body's gonna replace it with with very little um issue in reality my body always has access to
the sugar in my blood to top up glycogen storage and if it really needs to get a lot of sugar back
into storage my body always has access to the fat on board that it theoretically could utilize to
replenish me but more likely it's going to send me to go get food if i'm not in a ketogenic state and
that will be used to replenish me so your body always has some ability to top up that storage
whenever it feels like it what we really do need to understand though is that although my body tops
up my glycogen stores regularly it doesn't have the ability to store more glycogen on me than my
body already stores on me and what that means is typically every one of us is walking around with
about one day's worth of storage on our body and that if we were to do really strenuous exercise
that would equal about 90 minutes of energy usage but in the course of a normal day that would last
us more than all day because like i said before your body continually tops it up where we store
extra energy that we eat so if we carb load where that energy goes is fat storage most people that
are carb loading so the typical average person doing a standard diet doesn't have access
to their fat storage when they're working out that's why they hit that thing called the wall
when they do any like big exercise because they can't dip into the onboard fat for extra energy so
now if we think about all the people that we know i know quite a few when they're going to the gym
before they go to the gym they will eat some carby something because they need energy for the gym
what you don't realize that you're actually doing there is eating a carby something that
your body is not going to use right away for that gym workout in fact what it's going to do
store it waste fat and then use the glycogen stores that were already full
for that workout the example that i have in my mind that i feel exemplifies this the best
is my ice machine at home there's water in it and it makes ice and what's interesting
is that if i put too much water in it it still only makes enough ice to fill that tray
and then the water just kind of hovers around it around the ice that was made
but it doesn't make extra ice and put it somewhere else it can only make ice to fill that tray once
the tray is full the machine stops making ice it's not making extra ice because i put extra water
our body has a kind of similar like once the glycogen stores are full they're full and if it
needs to do something else with the energy coming in that goes to another system called fat storage
for those of us who do keto what's important for us to understand is that every time we overeat
our carbohydrates we get kicked out of ketosis if i get kicked out of ketosis and then try to
eat 20 grams of carbs or less again i've now opened the door that i could re-experience
sugar withdrawal and what's worse is that if i'm experiencing sugar withdrawal that means that i've
actually re-engaged my sugar addiction that means i'm chasing sugar again this is why so many people
who try to in do this carb cycling thing end up talking about having perpetual
uh keto flu you don't have perpetual keto flu what you actually have is stepping in and out of your
addiction which means i'm stepping in and out of experiencing withdrawal symptoms over and over and
over again and when i talk to people who do this the unfortunate reality is that many of them end
up telling me that that's why they gave up doing keto it was just too hard they couldn't do it but
there's nothing about doing keto that's about stepping in and out of it all the time i
really want us all to understand that if standard Canadian diet American diet whatever standard art
you're doing caused you to gain weight when you reintroduce those foods into your diet
you will gain weight you will reintroduce inflammation and issues into your body your
insulin resistance will return all the negatives that you corrected by eating properly when you
reintroduce those poor quality foods you're undoing the work that you did and unfortunately
it can take weeks even months for people to get back on track because now we're struggling with
that addiction again and all the physiological and psychological issues will resume carb loading and
workouts is it necessary no we actually produce more growth hormone during the fastest state
in fact if you want to get the best possible workout so many doctors have spoken about the
fact that if you work out in a fasted state more growth hormone is available and you will build
more muscle and you will like you will advance faster than if you carb load which is putting
your body in a fat storage mode it's putting your body especially if you do it right before you go
to work out in a position where it's processing food so it's not going to be able to process
the workout properly because this processing food you're going to have a harder time in the gym i
also want to point out that when we talk about carb cycling in cheat meals in fact what we're
really doing is giving ourselves permission to reintroduce the toxin that caused all of
our health issues right every once in a while i'm allowed to eat sugar and resume ruining my health
i want you to understand that that's not a good idea it's not healthy it's not towards your goal
as a matter of fact it's the exact opposite of your goal not only are you risking your
physical health you're risking being addicted again and you're very likely going to be upset
with yourself when you find yourself overeating whatever junk food that you have available to you
longer than you thought you'd be doing it this one cheat meal turns into a cheat week a cheap month
this carb load before a workout becomes i'm eating junky stuff whether i'm working out or not
and because i'm so upset with myself i end up self-soothing with food what happens if we don't
overeat our carbs most people that i've spoken to who aren't overdoing their carbs actually find
themselves no longer craving carbohydrates i know for sure that that happened to me
within two weeks of being very strict 20 grams of carbs or less after living day three and four
really intense and really uncomfortable and withdrawal symptoms like you can't imagine
two weeks later i couldn't care less that there was chocolate in the house two weeks later
i couldn't care less that there was any kind of junk food in the house i wasn't chasing bread i
wasn't chasing rice or pasta two weeks later all of the physiological pull towards those foods
gone psychologically did i still think about chocolate when i got emotionally upset
sure that still happened it took me a little while to not think about self-soothing with food but the
physiological habitual eat it every day was gone that habit changed because i was no longer chasing
carbohydrates the other thing that started to happen
was that the quality of the food that i was eating improved and improved and improved over time
because now when i was choosing what i was going to eat it wasn't based on fun foods it was based
on quality foods because the pull to eat wasn't happening in a way that was causing me to feel
like ravenous causing me to feel like i need food now and like i was out of control it was a calm
i'm getting hungry what am i having for supper oh i'm getting hungry what am i having for lunch it
wasn't this intense needed immediately that i was living when i was doing the standard diet
getting home from work late at night and needing something like 20 minutes was not even a
possibility for me i was throwing something in the microwave and i want you to understand that eating
less carbohydrates leading to less self-soothing with food is not automatic but it does happen
and the question is why does it happen once that physical pull towards the carbs so that physical
pull towards the addiction of any kind and we see this with alcohol we see this with other things
when that pull the physical pull is not there we are now able to see when the psychological
pull is happening when there's a problem that shows itself and i start thinking about
eating some junk food i notice it because the physical isn't happening and what does that allow
us to do it allows us to intervene when i see myself upset and all of a sudden i want to eat
a chocolate bar well i know eating a chocolate bar isn't going to solve the argument i'm having
with joe it's not going to solve that i don't have enough money to pay my whatever and so
eating the chocolate bar would just be hurting me unnecessarily so you don't end up doing it
and by the way i want to point out that when we eat for entertainment so i'm bored i'm going to
eat something that's still self-soothing with food what you're soothing is the
fact that you're bored that you have nothing to do we use food as a distraction as a comfort as
a friend but in fact it's not any of those things it's supposed to be to build the body and to fuel
the body and because we use it inappropriately we need so much of it to accomplish this
ridiculousness right it's not my friend as soon as i finish eating it i'm lonely again
so i gotta eat some more and i gotta eat some more and i got because i'm never actually solving the
problem i need to solve the real problem when we actually start using food the right way
to build in fuel it opens the door for us to then start finding real solutions to the
real world problems that we're having once the addiction is under control we can actually now
find friends to spend time with find hobbies to engage learn a new instrument or try a new sport
we can do things to solve the real world problem get an extra job so we could pay our bills and
rather than using food to self-soothe we're engaging our world appropriately i want to
know if you guys have ever tried to carb cycle carbo load or have cheat meals what
impact did it have on your ability to resume your healthy lifestyle after the fact
i feel like if we share this information we're going to be able to help each other because i
think so many of us fall into this mistake because we get this information from pretty
reputable sources on some occasion that it's okay to do these things and then when we're struggling
we're told that we just didn't do it right eat food to fuel entertain yourself with other things
now if you are ready to commit to eating 20 grams of carbs or less this video is going to help you
to track those carbohydrates appropriately if you're new and you want to understand
more about healthy living and how to lose weight there are videos in the description share this
video with someone that you care about and i cannot wait to talk to you again next Thursday