Carbs are usually taboo in the diet world and the first thing that appears at the top of the ‘Do Not Eat!’ list, but the carb backloading diet looks to change that. It’s the diet that (finally!) lets you eat all your favorite foods while simultaneously growing muscle and melting off the pounds. Developed by fitness expert John Kiefer, the carb backloading diet focuses on using the foods you love to eat to your advantage. By combining carb consumption with workouts, this diet actually makes carbohydrates beneficial to your weight loss.
So how does it work? There are two key components to the carb backloading diet: Timing and resistance training. It’s important that you eat your carbs at the right time of the day so that they fuel your metabolism and help you lose weight instead of just making you fat. In addition to the timing, resistance training is used to prevent the storage of carbs and sugar as fat. Plus, the training accelerates muscle growth.
The backloading of the diet means that you would save your carb feast for the end of the day because that is when your body produces the least amount of insulin. Carbohydrates are usually banned in diets because consuming large amounts of carbs causes your body to raise the amount of blood sugar produced. In order to neutralize the increased amount of sugar, more insulin is manufactured which then stores the extra calories as fat cells. Since your body’s sensitivity to insulin is higher in the morning, eating carbs later in the day will prevent your body from working overtime to combat the blood sugar which in turn would impair your ability to burn fat.
The timing of carb intake is the most important factor of this diet, but the addition of workouts helps to speed up the process of losing weight and gaining muscle. Eat little to no carbs in the morning and early afternoon, but feel free to eat as many carbs as you want after your workout. Weight training before your carb intake will cause insulin to store the carbs in your muscles rather than create fat because studies show that lifting increases muscle sensitivity to insulin. Since your body has been depleted of carbs all day, the insulin will rush those carbohydrates to your muscles during your carb feast after your workout.
This diet includes a lot of workouts, so it revolves around more of a schedule than a menu; therefore, what you eat will depend on when you train. First, you will need to cut back on some of those carbs in order to prep your body for about five or six days. Once you start training, shoot for workouts from between 3pm and 6pm. After your workout, eat as many carbs as you want until you go to bed. You can even eat up to 400 grams of carbs per day and still see results. On days without any lifting in your workout, you’ll need to limit the amount of carb intake.
The popularity of this diet has increased because of its accessibility. For most people with busy schedules, focusing on their diet regimen in the evening makes carb backloading the perfect fit. There are lots of mechanics and timing involved in this diet that may seem daunting to keep track of, but the reward is that you can eat whatever you want. In fact, you’re encouraged to eat foods like pizza, donuts and ice cream that other diets would have you stay away from. And the timing can become fairly routine and easy to keep track of after just a few days. The carb backloading diet works whether you’re looking to lose weight, gain muscle or both. For more information, you can purchase Carb BackLoading 1.0, which is an e-book (in PDF format) that gives you all the details behind this diet and can be found at http://carb-backloading.info/.