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Here is what I have in mind.Start once you are strongly ketogenic then have first Carb Nite going the full 8 hours.1. Three days of calorie restriction with just enough protein to maintain nitrogen balance and just enough fat to keep fat burining primed.2. One day with Carb nite that lasts full 8 hours with a high glycemic meal every hour. 3. RepeatMy ThoughtsI know calorie restrictions is bad and fucks up all your hormones. But wouldn't more frequent carb nites fix the hormones?
Prolonged calorie restriction downregulates your metabolism. Meaning your body attempts to compensate for the lack of energy but suppressing, or turning off some bodily functions. It's not JUST a hormonal thing. But this idea could work depending on the energy load, as an average, for the week, I'd think.
Prolonged calorie restriction downregulates your metabolism. Meaning your body attempts to compensate for the lack of energy but suppressing, or turning off some bodily functions. It's not JUST a hormonal thing. But this idea could work depending on the energy load, as an average, for the week, I'd think.
Anyone know what controls this metabolism down-regulation besides hormones?How does the body know there is a lack of energy coming in? If leptin is high from the refeeds and insulin is low due to being ketogenic then the fat cells should open up and there should be enough energy available for the cells in your body. If your body's cells are all being properly fueled then what would cause a down-regulation of metabolism?How would your body know you are are feeding off of your own fat stores rather than dietary fat if your leptin is high due to refeeds? Is there another way the body measures incoming energy?
Someone may correct me here, but the simplest answer is “Insulin”. This is the switch that controls either fat burning, or fat storing. When you eat over 10gms of carbs (could be a bit more…could be a bit less), the Insulin spike flips the switch to “ON” for burning incoming carbs for energy and storing any excess. When Insulin is not spiked, the switch is in the “OFF” mode, and the body stays in a fat mobilization mode, whereby stored fat is mobilized and available for use.hope this helps....again, anyone feel free to correct any inaccuracies.
It's the concept of homeostasis. Your body is always trying to achieve it. That's why training works. You create a stress, your body adapts to it to handle that stress if it happens again. (Put super simply)So, if the body is operating optimally at say 2000 units of energy, and you begin to only provide it 1000, it recognizes it cannot sustain that. So it starts shutting off non-essential functions (like in women, their menstrual cycle. A famine is no time for reproducing) in order to get energy usage down that low. Transiently, this can be a good thing. Prolonged, not so much. And this is also where the "rebound effect" of dieting comes from. Someone will severely calorie restrict themselves, the body down shifts energy output in order to try to match what is coming in. The person cannot do the low cal anymore, they then start eating more, but your metabolism isn't using that much, and it sees the surplus and thinks oh shit, we'll store this and save it while we can in order to continue life.This is all paraphrased from some of Joel Jamieson's work. He explains it much more eloquently, ha. But it really makes some pretty simple sense.
I guess no one really knows the answers to my questions. I googled it as much as I could and I think some of the details are unknown to science. I am going to calorie restrict on my no-carb days (approximately 1300 calories per day) and then have a really big carb nite once every 4 or 5 days. I'm hoping that the carb nite tricks my body into thinking food is plentiful despite being in a caloric deficit for most days. Without a better understanding of how the human body measures short term and long term energy input there is no way to see what would happen without personal experimentation I suppose.
How much do you weigh now? Are you physically active at all?If you are set on doing this I would suggest you look at calories over a weekly basis or the 4-5 ULC days + the CN. I would try to make the average from this a deficit from what you would be intaking if you ate unrestricted but not a huge deficit (500-800 calories max).If you lose weight it will be fat & muscle tissue for sure. You'll want to monitor things closely as 1300 calories is a big deficit for any male over 150 pounds. Too big a deficit and the body will fight you over losing fat (it will consume muscle tissue but hold on to fat stores). I could see the same happening if you go too long between carb nites as well.
Too big a deficit and the body will fight you over losing fat (it will consume muscle tissue but hold on to fat stores).
Why would too big a deficit cause the body to fight you over losing fat if you fix your hormones with frequent carb nites? That is one of the main points I don't understand.
Too big a deficit and the body will fight you over losing fat (it will consume muscle tissue but hold on to fat stores).
Why would too big a deficit cause the body to fight you over losing fat if you fix your hormones with frequent carb nites? That is one of the main points I don't understand.
TCB pointed it out above. The body like homeostasis (stability with no change) and it will fight to keep itself in homeostasis. This includes body fat levels so when you lower your caloric intake to well below what your body needs to operate it will do what it can to remain in homeostasis. This includes catabolising muscle tissue over fat tissue (muscle is more expensive to maintain so the body will sacrifice this first in heavy deficits) and storing incoming calories as fat vs. using them for operation. What TCB mentioned about shutting down non-essential functions happens as well.Using carb nite to "fix" your hormones probably won't be able to fully combat that process if you are in too large of a deficit or go too long between carb nites while utilizing a large deficit. The main concern would be too aggressive of a deficit I could see leptin levels rise for a day or two but quickly be shut down and ghrelin spike, same with cortisol you may get a boost for a couple of days but the body will shut this down to a minimum. Hence why I asked how much you weighed, if you were physically active and why I told you to monitor things closely if you really intend on doing this. Large deficits are discouraged for a reason in the fitness community.This is just my personal opinion though so the only real way to know what will happen is to try it.
Too big a deficit and the body will fight you over losing fat (it will consume muscle tissue but hold on to fat stores).
Why would too big a deficit cause the body to fight you over losing fat if you fix your hormones with frequent carb nites? That is one of the main points I don't understand.
TCB pointed it out above. The body like homeostasis (stability with no change) and it will fight to keep itself in homeostasis. This includes body fat levels so when you lower your caloric intake to well below what your body needs to operate it will do what it can to remain in homeostasis. This includes catabolising muscle tissue over fat tissue (muscle is more expensive to maintain so the body will sacrifice this first in heavy deficits) and storing incoming calories as fat vs. using them for operation. What TCB mentioned about shutting down non-essential functions happens as well.Using carb nite to "fix" your hormones probably won't be able to fully combat that process if you are in too large of a deficit or go too long between carb nites while utilizing a large deficit. The main concern would be too aggressive of a deficit I could see leptin levels rise for a day or two but quickly be shut down and ghrelin spike, same with cortisol you may get a boost for a couple of days but the body will shut this down to a minimum. Hence why I asked how much you weighed, if you were physically active and why I told you to monitor things closely if you really intend on doing this. Large deficits are discouraged for a reason in the fitness community.This is just my personal opinion though so the only real way to know what will happen is to try it.
I am already aware of all this knowledge but I'm trying to understand the details of the body is doing. Obviously the body tries to stay in homeostasis. But this is a very general concept. I think this answer creates more questions that it answers.1. For the body to stay in homeostatis the body will need a way to measure variables such as energy intake and level of energy storage. I thought the body did this through the monitoring of hormones by the hypothalamus but some postings in this thread have indicated that there might be other factors. I'm trying to figure out what those factors are?2. I thought the body measured body fat levels through leptin. Why would low calorie levels throw the body out of homeostatis if leptin levels were kept high through carb nite?3. I thought low blood sugar spiked ghrelin. But If you are running on ketones on your low carb days your glucose requirements are lessened. Why would ghrelin play a factor here?4. Why would muscle tissues be catabolized over fat tissue if leptin was high due to previous carb nite and insulin is kept low due to being ketogenic? 5. Why would the body partition incoming calories as fat rather than muscle in the presence of high enough leptin despite being in a large caloric deficit?6. Why would the body shut down non-essential functions if leptin is high due to a carb nite? I thought it was low leptin levels that resulted in non-essential functions in the body being shut down.I agree with you that Leptin levels would fall much faster when you have a higher caloric deficit. That is thread is about having more frequent carb nites with a larger calorie deficit.
It is tough to answer your questions because you and I do not know how fast your hormone levels will change at such a large deficit. There is no way to monitor leptin directly so I don't know how long leptin would stay high which changes the answers to most of the questions.1. The body is a system of systems. Hormones won't be the only monitoring system but I don't know enough about physiology to say what else. I could guess that a lot of enzyme and cell functions will not be utilized as much when calories are restricted and the body would notice this but that's just a wild guess.2. Leptin is the main measuring device but ghrelin, insulin, and cortisol all play a roll in the measurement. Again the low cal/homeostasis part depends on how fast leptin levels fall.3. Ghrelin is produced upon any sort of weight loss as a signal to get you to stop losing weight.4. Muscle requires a lof of energy to maintain if you don't give the body that energy it will dispose of that tissue to reduce it's energy requirements.5. Depends on how fast leptin falls but building muscle requires way more energy than storing fat. You will not be intaking enough calories to build muscle.You could do more frequent carb nites with a larger calorie deficit and technically it would work. It will take a lot of monitoring to make sure that you are keeping hormone levels up. The main concern is that you just don't know how the body will react to such low calorie intake. It would be interesting to experiment with.
Cgrimsl1, good point about the rate leptin falls. I totally didn't think of that but it is totally conceivable that if the body senses a really fast leptin drop the body might think it is starving and all the nasty things you mentioned in the previous post like muscle catabolism and increased fat storage might happen. Previously I was just focused on leptin levels rather than the rate of leptin change. I really should start a journal in the Member Logs section to track my food intake, exercise, and progress.
Definitely logs are very helpful in tracking your progress. I think your approach could cause massive weight loss and even a big weight loss with minimal muscle loss if you can get the CN timing right. It is a bit more of an extreme approach which is tougher to handle/maintain with weight loss so I just wanted to throw out some cautions before hand. I would absolutely suggest that any physical activity is cut to minimal levels such as walking (you might be able to get away with lifting the day after CN but that would depend on your weekly caloric average). Good luck with this I am interested to see where it gets you.
Definitely logs are very helpful in tracking your progress. I think your approach could cause massive weight loss and even a big weight loss with minimal muscle loss if you can get the CN timing right. It is a bit more of an extreme approach which is tougher to handle/maintain with weight loss so I just wanted to throw out some cautions before hand. I would absolutely suggest that any physical activity is cut to minimal levels such as walking (you might be able to get away with lifting the day after CN but that would depend on your weekly caloric average). Good luck with this I am interested to see where it gets you.
Thanks. I think you are right about the cautions you gave. The approach I am planning might be risky. For the short term I don't care about muscle mass or weight. My only goal is to get my waist measurement down from 43.5" down to 38" ASAP. I am planning on going to the gym and doing some circuits before each carb nite unless I am too sluggish from a calorie deficit. I will work out all my major muscle groups.Age: 41Height: 6'1Weight: Don't know and don't care. (I would guess around 230 lbs)Waist: 43.5" Body Composition: Skinny Fat. Not exactly skinny but majority of excessive weight in belly. My belly is not too flabby so most of fat seems to be visceral. I got the pregnant look going on.
Your plan sound very similar to this one:http://www.bulletproofexec.com/rapid-fat-loss-protocol/
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