Under The Hood: How Carb Back-Loading Works

Why is Carb Back-Loading so insanely effective? Well, before we get into the nuts and bolts of how everything happens on the cellular level, we first need to establish a bit of dietary philosophy in order to build a framework—and get some context—for this discussion.

Whatever type of diet we’re talking about here, whether we’re calling it Paleo, or primal, or green-faced, people originally created these programs to solve problems: cancer, inflammation, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, or even America’s claim to fame, the Metabolic Syndrome. In general, if you’re used to eating fast food on a regular basis, they’ll make you feel better. Once people feel better, they become more active—which can eventually lead to more rigorous training routines. When we reach this stage, we usually come to realize that the original diet can’t keep up with our goals.

That’s when we modify everything—throwing in change after change, trying to transform a stripped-down diet created to improve health into a fire-breathing performance enhancer. This, unfortunately, doesn’t work.

When it’s time to graduate to this level and enhance performance, I focus on the most powerful dietary tool there is: the carb. Sure, protein builds muscle, and fat forms the membrane of cells, but neither can manipulate the levels of as many different types of powerful hormones as dietary carbs. They can make us fat, help us sleep better, satiate us, and make us hungrier. Most importantly for our purposes, carbs can also unleash the potential for us to get huge[1,2].

Carbs trigger the release of insulin, which stimulates tissue growth—both in skeletal muscle and body fat. That’s why diets like my Carb Nite® were created—plans that limit carb intake for several days before adding a sudden burst of them. When you limit carbs, you burn fat, but your metabolism eventually wanes. Including them on some sort of schedule ramps your metabolism back into high gear to continue burning fat. Pretty much all physique coaches make use of carb manipulation in some manner.

The idea behind all of these next-level plans is to get shredded while sparing as much muscle mass as possible. The problem, however, is that most diets contain bulking and cutting phases—with neither happening simultaneously. There’s still disputation out there, but it’s getting harder and harder to deny that insulin release allows muscle to grow. If nothing else, carbs definitely limit protein turnover—the destruction of muscle that normally occurs with resistance training[3]. If you want to be big and freaky, you need to eat carbs. But what if you want to be cut and jacked at the same time?

THE RISE OF CBL

For a long time, I listened to the handed-down wisdom that I should eat my carbs in the morning—and, trust me, I did. Plenty of them. Carbs in the morning meant added bulk and a solid training session later in the day, but it never meant staying lean—at least not easily. I eventually figured out that carbs were the problem. After developing Carb Nite and attempting to use it to build muscle and lose fat, I finally accepted that carbs are important for muscle growth. I gained some muscle as I leaned down—and got stronger and found my long-lost abs—but I hit a plateau. I was lean, strong, and going nowhere. Stagnation sucks.

That’s when I happened upon some interesting information while researching type II diabetes (non-insulin-dependent diabetes milletus, or NIDDM) and glucose clearance. Despite being heavily insulin-insensitive, diabetic patients could achieve temporary glucose control with resistance training[4]. Of course, diabetes doesn’t offer many advantages, but NIDDM actually develops as a way to prevent the body from getting fatter. Once NIDDM sets in, fat cells can no longer absorb sugar to store as fat. Resistance training, however, allows the muscles—which also become insulin resistant—to absorb glucose. The wheels in my head began to turn.

It seemed to me that there was a golden opportunity here to trigger muscle growth and empty fat cells at the same time. It’s a concept I call Modulated Tissue Response (MTR), which causes an anabolic response in one tissue, while simultaneously causing a catabolic response in another. In this case, it makes muscles grow and fat stores shrink. Carb Back-Loading represents one of the simplest forms of MTR possible.