Does Carb Backloading Work?

One of the latest fads to hit the headlines and forums worldwide in the fitness community is the notion of "carb backloading."

Promoted by some professional bodybuilders and others trying to deliver the diet to end all diets (which just doesn't exist), carb backloading is promoted as the miracle cure to gaining muscle and losing fat.

Remember the look on Elijah Woods' face when he held the ring for the first time in The Lord Of The Rings?

This is the look people are trying to get from you, in reference to their so called "miracle" diet.

The only difference is, this isn't make believe directed by Peter Jackson, this is real life.

And just like Hollywood, the possibility of the magical diet to end all diets is completely fictional.

What Is Carb Backloading?

The notion of carb backloading is to brush eating anything of any real substance in the morning (so skipping breakfast) and avoiding food again in the early afternoon.

Then, at night, it's time to really get stuck into food, notably your carbs. However, this isn't permitted until after your workout (which is assumed to be at 5PM).

And so food and carbohydrate intake is continued into the evening. So if you're a morning trainer, you can throw this ideology out the window already.

The Carb Backloading Fad - Will It Help Me Lose Weight & Gain Muscle? 

As I've told you before, losing weight and gaining muscle can be done by newbies only, and not by trained subjects.

So if you're a trained subject, forget it. But it's possible to gain muscle and lose fat as a newbie WITHOUT carb backloading anyway, and this is the point.

The notion of carb backloading is nothing more than cherry picked studies and at best possibly a more convenient way of eating, providing it fits into your lifestyle.

The author of the book about carb backloading points to research that shows insulin sensitivity in muscle and fat cells (myoctyes and adiposites) is higher in the morning in comparison to the evening (1).

So what does this mean? It means that both cells react easier to glucose at breakfast for example, compared to dinner.

So the ideology is that eating breakfast will mean:

• More glucose shuttled into muscle cells for energy
• But more glucose into fat cells - aw no!

Well if it were that simple - then the world wouldn't be eating breakfast for this reason.

But this is the thing, a large percentage of the world eats breakfast, and doesn't store fat daily.

The bro-science formula behind this is "don't eat carbs early bro, they'll store as fat. Eat them after your workout when you're more likely to replenish glycogen bro."

Essentially, you burn your glycogen during weight training, and take advantage of the heightened insulin sensitivity in muscle cells and NOT fat cells...apparently growing lots of muscle and not storing fat.

Apparently.

Well there's just a really big problem with all of this - insulin (for the 100th time on the website) doesn't cause fat gain.

I'm still perplexed at the amount of people who believe this to be true. 

Spiking insulin does NOT cause fat gains. The joke is, that protein spikes insulin too (2).

And it's even more insulinogenic than white bread (3).

So where's the logic here?

Insulin doesn't cause fat gain and protein spikes insulin.

It's not looking good for carb backloading...

What it comes down to is not WHEN you eat your food....but that you hit your macronutrient target and don't go over it for the day if fat loss is your goal.

Energy balance is what determines muscle growth and fat gains.

The Cherry Picking 

There are no randomised controlled trials proving carb backloading. This is the gold standard of scientific research, and people like me won't be shouting anything from the roof tops as gospel until this takes place.

But the studies these people use are quite honestly out of context, and don't prove the point they are trying to make.

One of the studies that's referenced quite often, is one into police officers in Israel (4).

Real science is examining all of the data, and not cherry picking to sell a idelogy and thus books.

And if the better studies (the randomised controlled trials) were mentioned (as I will shortly), then you start to see through this diet quickly.

But back to the israeli cops, and the calorie intake was self reported, which is notoriously inaccurate (5).

To quote more research here (6):

"Underestimates of 50% are not uncommon."

People have no idea how much they eat, and always get it wrong.

The other problem?

The cops weren't pumping iron either, nor getting enough protein for gains - in fact they were merely getting only 20% of daily calories from protein (4).

What a joke! So not enough protein and no resisitance training? How can you claim that as a decent study?

Furthermore, the carbs in the evening group only lost 2.2kg (5 pounds) more then the control group over a whopping 6 month period!

I wouldn't be sending mum a post card over those statistics...considering I dropped 11 kilos in about 9 weeks in my recent effort and am helping people do the same too.

The other study the carb backloading bros point to, looked at consuming 70% of calories in the morning in comparison to the evening (7).

10 participants underwent this treatment for 6 weeks, with the researchers obviously examining body composition.

The results?

Those consuming calories in the evening lost more fat than the morning participants.

But with the small sample and dreadfully inaccurate body composition measurement (8) that is total body electrical conductivity, no one is looking at this as gospel.

Except those selling you a book on carb backloading.

PART 2 of CARB BACKLOADING - The PROPER science that proves it's no better than normal dieting, and their growth hormone, insulin and cortisol untruths.

REFERENCES

(1) Morris CJ, Aeschbach D, Scheer FA. Circadian system, sleep and endocrinology. Mol Cell Endocrinol.  2012 Feb 5;349(1):91-104. doi: 10.1016/j.mce.2011.09.003. Epub 2011 Sep 10.