Sports Dietitians, Aidan Muir & Leah Higl, discuss whether carbohydrate cycling could be beneficial for fat loss and if it could be relevant for any other applications.
(0:00) - Introduction to Carbohydrate Cycling
(1:20) - Does Carb Cycling Affect Body Composition Outcomes When Calories and Protein Are Matched?
(2:06) - Potential Benefits for Lifters, and Endurance Athletes
(8:47) - Practical Applications
(10:25) - Carb Cycling for Personal Preference
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Our dietitians 👇
Aidan Muir @aidan_the_dietitian
Leah Higl @plantstrong_dietitian
Tyler Brooks @lift_dietetics
Hanah Mills @hanahmills
Samantha Staines @nourished.by.sammy
Monica Cvoro @fuellingperformance
Josh Wernham @josh_does_health
Katelyn Bowden @katelynbowden_dietitian
(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the Ideal Nutrition podcast. I am Leah Heigle and I'm here with my co-host Eden Muir. And today we're gonna be answering the question, is carbohydrate cycling good for fat loss? Now, carb cycling involves consuming different amounts of carbohydrates on different days. As you can imagine, there is kind of an endless list of possibilities when it comes to how you can go about carb cycling. But the three main ones that we'll be focusing on include having higher carbs on training days than rest days. Specifically putting more carbs on harder training days as opposed to lower volume or less intense training days. And then also having an aspect of maybe personal preference where carbs are a little bit higher on things like weekends as opposed to during the week. Particularly looking at potentially fat loss phases and other contexts like that. So this particular episode is not overly dissimilar to a podcast we have done previously on calorie cycling. So there is quite a bit of crossover there. But for this one today, we'll be focusing specifically on the carbohydrate aspect of that. - And we'll go even a little bit deeper directly on the carbs. But let's start by talking about direct body composition outcomes. I'm gonna be making a fatal content creation mistake by stealing the punchline of the episode 'cause this might be the one biggest thing people are interested in. But when total calories and macros are matched over the course of a week, assuming you also hit protein is daily, research has not found noticeable differences in body composition even with this carbohydrate cycling approach. So that's a really good starting point to then lead into something like, okay, when we're looking directly at body composition outcomes, it's not magical. But then why would we talk about it? For all of those other reasons and seeing if there's any indirect benefits of it that we can cover. - Yeah, and I think from a benefits point of view, having more carbohydrates on training days versus rest days, there are multiple logical arguments that could be made for having this kind of approach. One is simply that because you are burning more glucose carbohydrates on training days, you could argue that you just generally need more. On the flip side of that, on rest days, I'd say that we're also replenishing glycogen stores for the next session. So carbs are still arguably important. So you could make the argument that, yeah, we're burning more carbohydrates, therefore carbohydrate availability should be more. But then again, it really depends on the context in which you're talking about this. From a body composition perspective, like Eden said, there is no noticeable difference in most cases, everything else being accounted for. In a blog post that Aiden actually did on this topic, which is listed in the show notes, he went a lot deeper into unpacking things like the insulin and carb side of things, but given that we did that only just a couple of episodes ago, we're not gonna go into too much depth there. But like I said, there could be absolutely logical arguments made around having more carbs on training days versus rest days. - Personally, I often add more carbs on training days for certain clients. And I often like to do it in simple ways. So it's not adding complexity for the sake of complexity. One example of this is for a lifter, I might add pre-workout carbs. Or if they also do particularly long or intense sessions, I might also add intro workout carbs. That is a key variable that is gonna be long or intense, like it can't just be like a standard 45 minute session. But those really simple things to add 'cause you could just add them on top without doing anything crazy to account for that. And potentially just have a slightly lower calorie intake throughout the rest of the week. So it's still super simple. This logic is partly for glycogen related reasons. Although we'll talk about that more in a bit, I guess, but like particularly if it's long or hard sessions, but it's also more of the priority of feeling good to train harder. Like if somebody noticeably feels better when they have a pre-workout meal that contains more carbs, or they perk up when they have intro workout carbs, or whatever it is, it doesn't really matter. But if they feel better, they might get more good quality work done, and that could help with stuff. Talking about glycogen for lifters, have we talked about this a little bit on the podcast? - Oh, for sure, yeah. - So I don't want to go too deep on this then, but like I've linked a deep, deep glycogen article by Stronger Biceps in the show notes. So if you want to go deep on that topic, you're more than welcome to. The quick one that I often talk about is that there's research looking at six sets of leg extensions to failure, where I can't remember the exact number of the top of my headband was somewhere around 40%, or 42% of glycogen depletion in certain types of muscle fibers. So the average came out a bit of a less depletion, but the top end was 42%. And that's enough, there's like, okay, if you entered a training session in a low glycogen state and you were doing a lot of work, you would then come to the point of potentially getting out less reps here and there on certain sets, even if you were working just as hard. That creates a whole deep rabbit hole about being like, how much does that even matter for long-term progress? If you're still training within the same proximity of failure, would you get the same muscle growth? If you don't overthink it, it makes sense to go into every training session well-fueled, but it's a deep topic. So if you want to read a deep topic, go look at the show notes. (laughing) The next one I'm gonna talk about is an endurance example. So for endurance athletes doing long distances, it can be a bit of a no-brainer to add carbs on certain training days. For example, if I have a runner doing a long run, I might add gels during their sessions, like that is a no-brainer. The rest they think becomes more complicated there though, because say I have a runner doing a long run on a Sunday and let's say for the sake of it, it's a 30K run, like a really long run. I'm going to have them have more carbs a day before than usual. So even though it's a rest day, I'm giving them more carbs to help prepare them for that next session. 'Cause even if I'm not doing a full carb load, even if it's like a mini carb load, that will still help their performance the next day. - Hey you, yes you're listening to this podcast. If you're enjoying listening to this episode, there's a good chance that you'll enjoy learning about nutrition. Have you ever considered getting some tailored nutrition advice that meets both your personal requirements and your goals? Or have you thought about how easy to be to follow a meal plan that meets your requirements without having to think? If so, then I'd recommend making appointment with one of our dietitians. Simply search up ideal nutrition on Google and click book now. Thank you, be later. - Another context in which carb cycling might make sense is hard training days versus easy training days. It's not uncommon for bodybuilders to have more carbs on certain training days when trying to absolutely optimize everything. So for example, if someone felt their legs are really lagging and they might choose to have extra carbs on leg day or prior to leg day so that they're really fueling that session well, I see that with powerlifters, a lot of people are going to fuel maybe a little bit more heavily with carbs and like deadlift days as opposed to a bench heavy day. And I think that that can make sense. Like it could absolutely help from a glycogen perspective, but going back to bodybuilders or in contest prep specifically or even looking at other strength athletes in fat loss phases, it might also mean that even though they're going through that caloric deficit, they can still maximize those harder sessions and still go in and feel their best. So I think there are, like I said, absolutely context where it makes sense to just change the carbohydrate availability depending on the day, especially if there is a restriction in overall calorie budget and we're wanting to emphasize certain sessions and really dial up our performance within that. However, it's not like we have research that actually supports this. So we see the logic, the research is absolutely lacking. I do think it does make sense to do this more so in a deficit than a surplus 'cause ideally if we're in a surplus or even at maintenance calories, like ideally there's going to be an abundance of glycogen storage and we should feel good majority of the time, so less of an argument to be made for carb cycling in those circumstances. - Yeah, and it's also like the slightly softer wording of it like not really directly mattering for body composition, but I also get that like, let's use a bodybuilder going through competition prep. I'm not saying this is what I would do but I can see the logic of doing carb cycling there. Everything's a trade off though 'cause having more carbs on one day would therefore mean you have less carbs on other days but I can see the logic in doing it. So talking through what I often do with clients 'cause I don't work with bodybuilders in competition prep, I have no interest in that. - Yeah. - With some letters, I'm far more likely to add intro workout carbs on lower body days than I am on upper body days, particularly 'cause I work with a lot of higher level power lifters. Like their upper body days are often shorter than their lower body days and that whole concept I talk about, where is glycogen related or not? Or whether it's just feeling good. I often find people tend to feel good during these longer sessions or feel better during these longer sessions if they're adding intro workout carbs but that's also case by case. I just ask people, how does it make you feel? Like real simple, whereas doesn't seem to matter that much on upper body days. With endurance athletes, I adjust it way more. For example, hot take but I sometimes have athletes intentionally under fuel with carbs a little bit for zone two cardio and then that gives a bit more room to go into their more intense sessions with higher carbs. Whether or not there are advantages to doing zone two work in a lower carb state 'cause there is a debate about that. Like whether or not that is the case. Like I personally don't really care about that 'cause it just doesn't seem to matter that much. And it's also not like the athlete is as concerned about performance in that specific session. It's intentionally a lower intensity type of session. So as long as they feel good enough to go and do that session and it's not like they feel massively under field or anything like that, I'm not as concerned. So long as we're also balancing that out somewhere else in the week to optimize performance elsewhere it probably matters more. - One of the final context in which carb cycling might make a little bit of sense is just around that personal preference aspect. So maybe having more carbohydrates available on weekends as opposed to weekdays to allow for a little bit more flexibility in the diet overall. So typically this would be more relevant to calorie cycling. So check out that episode if you're interested but it can also come in the form of carb cycling as well. So it could be either adding 300 calories of anything in a more flexible approach to weekends and then taking that out of your weekday or it could be stated as adding like 75 grams of carbs to those days and then vice versa taking that out of your weekdays as well and then just not changing protein and fat as much. So it's almost like carb cycling is that more specific approach to doing some form of calorie cycling, whether or not that makes sense for you. Like obviously different contexts would have a different opinion but it is still an option for people to partake in especially when it comes to dieting if they wanna have that more flexibility on the weekend and there's a lot of different ways that we could go about that and it wouldn't be noticeably different from a body composition perspective. - For my clients that have on a plan that doesn't involve tracking calories so the majority of my clients would be following a plan that doesn't involve tracking calories. I often have that aim for 80 to 90% on the plan so that gives them flexibility so they've got that 10 to 20% of flexibility where they could go slightly higher calorie on those days. That wouldn't be kind of cycling as you were kind of talking about I'd do that as like, it's almost like calorie cycling without tracking it and they just pick and choose where they do it. It could be on the weekend, could be during the week, they just choose wherever makes sense to them and what will bring them the most value for their life. For the clients who I do have tracking they obviously have more flexibility to adjust their intake. Even if they didn't add more calories theoretically, they could still be more flexible 'cause they can just change it. They're not on a specific plan but they can still do this concept of having slightly higher calories on some days. They pick and choose where they do it. That's another option as well but once again that would be more of a calorie cycling approach. From the flexibility perspective, I don't think it makes sense for it to be carb cycling specifically just because it's adding flexibility in a way that's unnecessarily strange. Like I would just adjust the calories for that. - Yeah. As a summary, carb cycling likely doesn't actually improve body composition outcomes more than having the same amount of carbs each day but there are still some situations where it might be worth considering and it's not a completely useless tool. Like there are definitely times where we might utilize this as we said but overall it's not a game changer for most people. This has been in episode 166. As always, if you could please leave a rating and review, we would massively appreciate that. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]
