We all survived the low-carb mania that swept the country a few years back, and if you’re like me, you didn’t have too much difficulty retraining yourself afterward to indulge in pasta dishes and sandwiches sans guilt. But lately it looks as if the pendulum may be swinging back. As I browsed the diet and exercise shelves of my local bookstore recently, not only did I run across a few different books and articles about the latest carb-related diet, but I also realized that some of my acquaintances have jumped back on the carb-conscious bandwagon.
Carb-cycling diets claim to be the new-and-improved version of their low-carb predecessors because they rotate carbohydrates in and out on a daily (or semidaily) basis. The logic behind carb cycling is that it allows us to reap the benefits of a low-carb regimen (fast weight lost, less bloating) without having to suffer through the pitfalls (crankiness, low energy, all those other reasons the Atkins diet went kaput). I couldn’t help but be a little skeptical. Is this legit, or is it just another fad that benefits diet-book publishers?
The Claim
According to carb-cycling proponents, our bodies are better able to maintain muscle mass while shedding fat when we reduce carbs on some days and eat more on others. Technically, the diet isn’t new—it’s been around informally for a few decades, used mostly in the bodybuilding community. Great for heavy lifters, but is there really a relevant takeaway for us noncompetitors who don’t want to calculate the nutritional breakdown of everything we eat?
According to one of the trend’s biggest enthusiasts, Jay Robb, author of the book The Fat Burning Diet, carb cycling can be a powerful weight-loss tool for everyone. “Excessive consumption of carbohydrate foods stimulates the release of a hormone called insulin,” he writes on his Web site, and that’s a problem, because it causes us to store excess blood sugar (which we obtain from carbs) as fat. On the other hand, if we switch things up and give our bodies carbohydrates only every other day, Robb argues, the variety will keep our bodies guessing just enough for them to stop storing excess energy as fat.
How It Works
Carb cycling touts glycogen management (not elimination) as the key to its success. By alternating between eating and not eating carbs, we break the fat-storing cycle without being totally carb deprived. (Glycogen is a broken-down form of carbohydrates that we store in our muscles and liver for energy.) We need to refuel our glycogen stores every time they run out, such as after a workout or just a day around town. We can store about fifteen grams for approximately every 2.2 pounds that we weigh, which means that when our stores are depleted, we should take in at least this many more grams of carbohydrates to refuel. Carb cycling tries to give our bodies exactly that amount to avoid storing any excess: “If levels exceed your glycogen storage capacity for energy,” writes Robb in his book, “they will get stored as fat.” Carb cycling means keeping these levels right where we need to them to maintain our energy—eating carbs only when we’ve used up our stores.
“Compared to the traditional low-carb diets, which I also tried, this is a huge improvement,” says Britta Rizzo, who is currently on a carb-cycling plan. “I haven’t experienced the same low energy as I did with Atkins and have definitely lost some weight.”
Trend or Truth?
All right, I’ll admit even I was starting to see how this whole system sounds appealing. But what does a real nutritionist—and one who doesn’t have a book to sell—think? “Our diets don’t need to be played with that much to lose weight,” says Jill Daniels, a nutrition counselor and coach based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
While carb cycling will probably leave us with a little less flab, the results are much less likely to stick. Depriving our bodies of carbs, even if it’s just every other day, will increase our cravings for other foods, especially sweets, says Daniels, and therefore make regaining weight much more likely.
