More Carb Nite and Carb Back-Loading Tips Part 2

More Carb Nite and Carb Back-Loading Tips Part 2

In an effort to stay on top of things despite so much travel, I’ve been doing my best to listen to all of my regular podcasts and taking notes when I hear things that are interesting.  Here is the second edition of my Kiefer notes.  Again some of these are from his own site, Body.io and some from when he appears as a guest on other podcasts.  For those that don’t know, Kiefer is the author of both The Carb Nite Solution and Carb Back-Loading, both ways of eating that I’ve been playing around with recently.  Here is the official link to all of his guest appearances.

Here are links to the prior notes I’ve taken from Kiefer’s stuff:

• Carb Back-Loading Pearls and Criticisms
• More Carb Nite and Carb Back-Loading Tips

Now that we’ve gotten all that out of the way…. here we go!

Body IO FM #15 – Dr. Rhonda Patrick

• Importance of micronutrients and importance of multivitamins.
• Mistake of given folic acid to former cancer patients since folic acid can actually promote cell growth
• Very rarely hear Kiefer go all super fan boy on someone… and he definitely IS with Dr. Patrick!
• Glucose and insulin cycle interrupts mitochondrial autophagy and makes mitochondria susceptible to reactive oxygen species and interrupts normal healthy mitochondrial division, leading to accumulation of more damaged mitochondria
• Leads to disrupted metabolism which leads to more ROS.
• This will then will manifest as degenerative diseases and neurodegenerative stuff.
• Antipsychotics and brain atrophy have been linked.
• Branch chain amino acids competitively inhibit uptake of tryptophan which is precursor to serotonin.   Serotonin depleted people are more impulsive and act differently. Impulsive gambling. Violence.
• BCAAs – I was very surprised by this correlation.
• Vitamin D also essential in serotonin metabolism.

Body IO FM #16 – Research Review 2

• Benefit of butter from grassfed cows was first study they discuss.
• Study examined butter from grassfed/pasteur cows and conventional danish cows (they use different grains and rapeseed which is what canola oil is made from, but not the corn that american cows eat)
• No difference in metabolic parameters in people who ate these things after 12 weeks (they assessed markers of metabolic syndrome) and LDL, CRP
• Grassfed butter vs conventional butter had content: saturated fat 59%  vs 64%, mono un 31 vs 21, PUFA 3 vs 3%
• Conventional butter had 20% more lauric, myristic, and palmitic acid
• They concluded that grassfed butter may not be MORE beneficial over span 12 weeks.
• Second study the examined was the role of glycogen and exercise recovery
• Intramuscular glycogen stores are key factor in carb back-loading
• Insulin surge helps fight inflammation and stuff from training
• Glycogen that is trying to replete is needed for next days training session and critical for muscle protein synthesis and prevent muscle protein break down.
• Having full glycogen stores is trigger for increased muscle protein synthesis and ablate muscle protein break down.
• This is also why it’s difficult for hypertrophy on strict low carb
• Kiefer says Shockwave protocol designed to minimize muscle loss
• Applicability to Carb Nite – move bigger body parts / heavier workouts immediately after Carb Nite
• Kiefer’s optimal experiment – Carb Nite on saturday, take sunday off (because there is refractory period of when glycogen stores are being replenished), then Monday 2 hr shockwave session, then rest of the week just medium level cardio
• Third study they looked at was a Wheat study – Review – Invalidated a lot of William Davis stuff
• Gluten isn’t as bad as we think it is
• Its the carbs that’s bad!
• Next they looked at – Muscle memory – hysteresis effect of training – if workout and then stop, and then re-start, will be easier to gain strength and mass 2nd time around.
• Once you develop the nuclei in the muscles, they stay there, so when you stimulate them, they are there already and will make more protein easily.
• Muscles are unique in that they have multiple nuclei per cell.
• This effect of increased nuclei in muscles will last up to 90 days.
• So can have 90 day lay off and still retain strength.
• Next they looked at the effect of – Order of resistance and endurance training and MTOR
• MTOR interruption when resistance training followed by endurance.
• It is the last component of your training, per training session, that defines what will happen at the molecular signaling level in the muscle
• Cardio before resistance -> major effect is resistance
• Resistance before cardio -> main effect is cardio
• This is evidence against crossfit, which is mixed exercised, and not much programming, and may explain injury rates of crossfit.
• Lastly they looked at Whey protein
• Whey protein does not perform better than any other protein source for fat loss although there is greater amount of muscle gain (however this is barely statistically significant).
• What is most important when trying to gain muscle mass is amount of protein ingested, and whey protein may be more beneficil than other forms… by a small margin.

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Body IO FM #17 – Rachel Guy

• She does caloric restriction for mma guys trying to make weight for 5-6 weeks and then reintroduce carbs.
• She cuts out cardio for some girls right away.
• Perils of too much volume. Kiefer story of cutting back his biking leading to improved time and feeling after race.
• Kiefer talks about how easy it is for him to maintain.
• People have a lot of guilt with what they eat.  Important about not feeling deprived.
• Anti paleo pre-packaged things now with tons of ingredients.  Paleofying previously unpaleo things.
• More important to eat single ingredient foods
• Better not to obsess over things especially where eating becomes an additional stressor in life.
• Need balanced diet especially for micronutrients. When young can get away with just paying attention to macros but when older micronutrients are more important.
• Importance of cooking, especially like with slow cookers. Not having enough time to cook is a cop out.

Body IO FM #18 – Q&A No. 2

• Carb cycling in pregnancy – not much research available.  Carb restriction shown safe in Inuits.
• Bikini Competitor who did carb night pregnancy and continued after pregnancy, successfully. She won 3rd place.  Child meeting normal milestones thus far.
• Rocky states caveat to make sure enough calories are ingested
• Acute interference hypothesis.  You cannot achieve maximum results if you are trying to achieve multiple modalities at once. Like if you are training for strength and endurance at the same time, you won’t be able to max out on both at the same time.
• Therefore important to have periodization in training.  We don’t know what periodization model is best, but we know what’s worst, and crossfit is one of these since it’s too general.
• Increasing anaerobic capacity in mma fighters without training… Secret is to don’t eat carbs.
• Also will need reduction of training volume to 40% of normal when cutting out carbs.
• Don’t eat carbs applies to all ethnicities too.
• Research for carb back loading is not based on diabetics. The research was done in healthy human beings and mammals. The diabetic research was gateway to lead kiefer to look further into research
• Ideal macro starting point for larger body fat individuals like 40% body fat – Start off 2 gm of fat per gm of protein.
• The larger you are, the greater caloric deficit you can endure while preserving muscle mass.
• Rocky checks thyroid function tests on carb night and sees no thyroid dysfunction. That’s one of the reasons carbs are added into diet to ensure proper thyroid function.
• Can see decreased levels if weekly caloric load is too low.
• Kiefer adds Splenda into his coffees.  Trains in morning. Has protein powder post training with mct and carb shock (his supplement).
• Then eggs and bacon few hours later.  Then goes through rest of day.
• He never cooks.
• He takes an ‘animal pak‘ and some D3.
• Carb nite 2.0 will be focused more on health, like how to heal gut, how to protect against cancer, etc..
• Worrying about including fat that can blunt insulin response is something you should only worry about if you are performance athlete.
• Only thing to worry about is the extra caloric load from fats like eating an entire pizza.
• Rocky rarely sees people who gain weight from carb nite.
• If you’re going to eat carbs at nite, will glycogen stores replenished already when you wake up.
• In first 24 hr your body tries to protect those stores.
• Should wait about 24 hrs before working out ONLY if goal is optimizing hypertrophy.
• Best to workout within 24 hrs if goal is to control blood sugar and burn through glycogen.
• Confusion of this because of context.
• Pros and cons of super high protein diet like 2 gm per lb of body weight.
• Strong genetic component to this.  Most people who thrive on super high protein diets are genetic freaks!
• Mismatch of some science and anecdotal.  Not much performance on diet. May be good in aesthetics because being in gluconeogenesis has diuretic effect.
• Carb nite plateau – either lower calories or add resistance training. If still stuck maybe an additional carb night the week.
• Kiefer believes that you don’t need to optimize gut health. But if you optimize your health, your gut health will follow.  Because bacteria adapt with you. If you are eating too much and become obese, your gut bacteria will also become obesogenic.

Body IO FM #19 – Bret Contreras

• Occlusion training and mechanical damage and metabolic stress.
• Or blood flow restriction training.
• Rocky Patel, thanks for bringing discussion back to the average joe when these guys go off the geeky deep end

Kiefer on Proteinking.com

• Carb Nite hard to do with resistance training that’s why he created shockwave protocol which is designed to prevent overtraining.
• Ketosis isn’t the goal in carb night. Insulin control is.
• Also rare to get into ketosis with carb back loading – Yes, this is my experience also!
• Hard to eat too much fat.  Story of person eating 10k calories of fat and not gaining weight.
• Protein is what should be watched. If not training, then 100 gm is upper limit.
• CBL people say they eat 10% more calories and still losing weight – Not quite my experience.
• Carb Nite should not be an issue if you are meeting requirements on ULC days.
• Purpose of fat in diet is to force metabolism to be efficient at burning fat, to keep insulin levels as low as possible from the protein load.  Especially important in a high stress setting, because cortisol can help burn fat in the setting of a low insulin.
• Cholesterol going up when eating LCHF.  Even when going up, can see reversal of markers of arterial damage.  And everything else gets healthier – Definitely saw this happen with me
• Ideal fasting blood sugars in 50s to 60s.  Can bring it down further with eating more fiber.  Sometimes eating too much protein and not enough fat.  Sometimes the glycerol released from triglyceride metabolism can cause increased blood sugar, and actually signals improved fat mobilization – I was never able to get my sugars that low.
• Prefers real foods like bacon rather than processed foods and snacks.
• Splenda fine.  Stevia fine.  Aspartame for most people fine.
• People who smell something sweet can sometimes have an automatic insulin response!  Powerful psychological effects – I was very surprised to learn this.  Smelling good food can stimulate insulin secretion!  WOW!
• If gaining too much weight on CBL steps are
• 1 – Make sure eating enough fat during ULC portion, 2:1 gm fat to protein. 
• 2 – Cut back on frequency of back-loads. 
• 3 – Cut back calories.
• Carb Nites – quality of carbs is no big deal.
• If plateauing on Carb Nite can cut back amount of carbs on carb nites and/or cut back protein during ULC portions.
• For maximum performance for endurance athletes, want to rely on stored glycogen in muscle, not glycogen from liver, and not from ingested carbs.  Optimal to carb load 2 nights before to make sure muscular glycogen replenished.
• Kiefer’s big ass smile when he describes what turnovers are and how they are made is classic… that’s true love right there
• Coconut may or may not help with keto-flu as that is due to body trying to up regulate mono carboxylate transporters which is needed to bring in ketones and fatty acids into brain.
• NO ON QUEST BARS – Same conclusion I arrived at
• Kiefer Becoming more of a fan of Multivitamins.  Says he never thinks to recommend these because it’s so obvious, until he realizes that no one is taking them.

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Dean Dwyer’s Make Shift Happen Ep 6 – Making health super simple and profitable

• Kiefer’s goal is to make it stupid simple for people to get healthy.
• Kiefer’s Origin Story
• He first started for aesthetics, no matter how much he exercised, never looked how he wanted to look… ie low fat low calories.
• Turned onto scientific journals and turned onto a program that worked for him, that he started helping some people.
• Had banana titties, stretch markers, love handles as a kid.
• Started doing own research when in high school, and has been doing research until now.
• 2 undergrad degrees, one in math and one in physics
• Grad school in physics.
• Went to college for a year on scholarship.
• Then took a year off and started commercial warehouse painting company.  Ended it.  then started network installation company for small businesses.
• Went back to school for 2 years and finished 2 degrees!
• Grad school funded with stipend.
• Taught highschool for a year.  Hated it.
• Did some work with software companies.
• Self published Carb Nite in 2005.
• Carb Nite designed to strip body fat while preserving muscle mass as fast as possible.  ULC during week, and on weekend on one night, need to eat carbs in window of 6-8 hrs.
• Depasquale wrote book about cycling carbs, didn’t work for Kiefer, but he found that ULC worked for him.  He broke down ate a dozen donuts, threw it up, then ate another dozen, and found this worked for him.
• Looked into insulin and thyroid and other hormone rhythms and put it all together.
• He stumbled upon this concept accidentally.
• He tried promoting his book at expos and wearing promotional hats!
• Popularity of CBL was what brought Carb Nite into main stream, and now CNS sells better.
• Kiefer actually had already given up on CNS.  Decided to focus on internet projects as a software engineer.
• Working as a software engineer wrecked his body working 90 hrs a week.  So he quit doing that and focused more on his health business.
• That’s when he accidentally discovered how CBL worked, which helped him grow an audience.
• He tried a few equity plays with internet startups that didn’t go anywhere and worked a bit as a contractor.
• He was cyclist, bodybuilder, raquetball player, and stopped all that when he was software engineer.
• When he quite is software engineer job, he looked the worst than he had in a few years.  He went back to gym and doing CNS, but had trouble gaining muscle mass.
• Read about diabetics and how type 2 diabetics can clear glucose with resistance training which helped him come onto CBL.
• People started noticing the changes in his body as he gained more muscle.  Then people started demanding a book!
• He started both these diets to solve his own problems.
• CBL – High fat, low protein diet during the day, then exercise, then eat carbs at night.
• Came up with name of CBL, carbs and back-load them during the day, so that’s where the name comes from.
• Power of CBL as a verb, “back-loading!”
• Kiefer also now focusing on brand creation and brand titling.
• When he was creating CN, he tested it out on groups.  He was dating massage therapist at time that had a lot of female clients.  He worked with around 40 women from pamphlets and fliers.  Ran it for 60 days and got their feedback, and used that to mold final product.
• CBL – he used it first with friends at gym and then on athletes, tweaking it the entire way.  This also ended up spreading the word.
• CBL published 2011.  Idea was generated 2009.
• Had a good friend die from dietary problems.  Wanted to help with big obesity problem.
• CNS – Geared for people struggling with their health
• CBL – For people who are exercising or trying to improve their performance.  Athletes.
• He separated with his wife, was couch surfing, didn’t have a car, had credit card debt, and was bankrupt.  Used his friend’s conference room and wrote CBL from start to finish.  It was do or die at this point, if this didn’t work then he would have to go back to software engineering.
• Wrote a lot of guest posts and actually writing in print magazine was big for getting his name out.
• Wanted to build an audience to collect data for his software program that will formulate diet plans for people and change along with them.
• His goal now is to change public policy with a 5-10 year plan.
• He now has to force himself to stop and do things he enjoys.  Hard for him because he was always a workaholic.

Body IO FM #20 – Alex Navarro and Mary Gines

• Topic is ULC recipes.
• Mary and Alex both have experience in fitness/bikini competition
• Base of ultra low carb ice cream they use is heavy cream
• Kiefer suggests adding MCT oil instead of lecithin to ice cream
• Stevia is primary sweetener they use.
• Trying to avoid splenda, sucralose and truvia because of potential of ‘insulin response’ – ??? Kiefer’s view on artificial sweetener’s lately has been that they are all ok!
• Kiefer likes Torani syrup because just pure sucralose since some have a mix of maltodextrin
• Obesity is negative correlate with how often you cook.
• Cooking a good way to help kids understand food quality.
• Kiefer asking awkward questions of how friendly they get when they are cooking together or if it is a friendship building activity…. met with a little bit of awkward silence.
• Body can sense sweetness, salty, and spicy throughout entire digestive tract, and will adjust accordingly depending on how much you eat.
• They like pork rinds!
• They all don’t like liver – I can relate.