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To Drumwright,
who always hoped
I’d write a book.
i
Acknowledgements
I’d like give the proper thanks to those who had such a
profound influence on my attitudes and, consequently, helped
shape this book. To Mike Hamlin, my 11th grade Calculus
teacher: Thanks for showing me that it’s OK if you don’t know
the answer straight-away, but you should at least try to figure it
out. And to Bob Glidden, my 11th grade English teacher: You
made me realize that being skilled in the Sciences is no excuse
for being poor in the Language Arts.
ii
A Letter From My Closest Friend, Nicole Morgan
Hey,
I know you asked for a testimonial but I really don’t want to
write one. I’m sure you would have wanted Drumwright to
write your bio for you, but since that’s not possible, I thought
maybe I could do it for you. See what you think.
John Kiefer started his academic career in electrical
engineering before deciding to pursue sports medicine.
Always unpredictable, he instead ended up getting BA’s in
physics and mathematics at the same time—in only three
years.
From there, he decided to try his hand at the next level
of academic endeavor: graduate school in physics. That is
where I met Kiefer (he prefers ‘Kiefer’ to his first name for
some reason; I think it suits him better than ‘John’). He had
this strange humility about him that was intriguing. He
always seemed to pass tests with high marks without much
studying and attributed his performance to luck—lady luck
must be his best friend because he did it time, after time.
He didn’t even study for our qualifying exams (four four-
hour tests covering various branches of physics) claiming he
was just going to fail them all. Of course, he passed all of
them with flying colors. It wasn’t a case of false humility; he
simply holds himself to incredibly high standards.
Since I’ve known him, he’s excelled at a wide-range of
endeavors. As a few examples, he designed and helped
build a human-solar powered hybrid vehicle that won a
national race; within a couple of months of starting as a
programmer, he took over development of legal software
designed to streamline contract disputes; consulted for a
technology development company; prepared for body-
building and triathalon competitions and successfully trained
others for the same; and for a year he even taught 9th
grade algebra. Kiefer’s skills range the gamut from
theoretical physics to music to philosophy, but with all these
iii
diverse interests and activities, there’s been one constant:
his passion for the human body.
Kiefer has been interested in maximizing his athleticism
since he was a teenager. He’s experimented with his diet
and trained his body for years, but when he began writing
his book, I half-expected that something else new and more
interesting would come up. I’ve known him for a long time
and he thrives on new challenges. It seems I under-
estimated his passion for his work. Instead of becoming
tired of the voluminous research, his enthusiasm grew as he
pieced together the puzzle. His excitement became
infectious.
The most amazing part of seeing this process unfold was
hearing Kiefer become more and more dedicated to the
cause of providing the truth to others. Remember those
high standards? Kiefer worked feverishly to craft a book
that was clear and engaging as well as scientifically valid.
He agonized over layout, pictures, diagrams and even word
choices. The result is a book that answers your questions—
even those you don’t even know you have yet—and that is
also a pleasure to read. If you are at all interested in
understanding your own body, read this book. Kiefer’s done
all the research (a Herculean amount of research citations
alone!) and he puts everything into context. You’ll
understand what you are doing and why. More importantly,
you will see results—I know I did!
Let me know if you can use it or what,
Nicole
Yes Nicole, I can definitely use it.
Y
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xiii
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xvii
Preface
We can all remember being pulled down into the pit-of-
endless-promises by doctors, athletic trainers, nutritionists and
even TV psychologists. We see our ideal bodies at the far edge
of the chasm, but the “experts” assure us, if we only follow
them to the bottom, we’ll be able to climb the other side and
capture the dream of a forever-slim figure. Reluctantly, we
follow. During the descent, our hopes shatter as we realize:
there is no bottom.
Instead of leading you down a bottomless pit, this books
aims to bridge the gap between you and your ideal-self.
Everything, from the Food Lists to the Menu Plans, is designed
with this intent—even the text. Information presented here is
precise, pithy and perhaps even a pleasure to read. But, most
importantly, it provides the crucial framework needed to
succeed and nothing more. So, although critical, discussions
about general health and wellness or metabolic diseases are
sparse. This book focuses on rapid, permanent fat loss.
Increased health and wellness follow naturally. For those
craving dizzyingly in-depth and up-to-date information about
diet, disease, health, hormones, metabolism and food, visit
www.physicsnutrition.com; you’ll also find information on
upcoming books in the series.
Now, building the bridge to success is one thing;
convincing you to cross is another. To cross fearlessly, you
need confidence in the quality of the structure. References to
more than 1700 supporting research papers should give you
assurance, despite the short, crisp treatment of several complex
subjects. So if a statement sounds too incredible to believe, the
xviii
reference marks on the inside margin direct you to the
overwhelming evidence located in the Citations section. The
references mean to enhance your journey, not distract your
focus. Paragraph referencing like this, however, makes it
difficult to know which papers support exactly which
statements; line-by-line citations reside at www.CarbNite.com,
if you’re interested.
Finally, unlike many texts, the FAQs are real questions
from real people and present material not covered or not
covered with great detail in the main text. Be sure to skim
through them.
Let’s get started.
1
Beginning The Journey
We’ve All Been There
Nearly all of us have battled with our weight—some of us
as early as our teens, but many more as we reach our 30’s, 40’s
and beyond. We’ve used every new diet, adhering to every
rule, trying to squeeze every last promise from the text. Daily
menus are earnestly followed, we purchase exotic foods, adopt
life-altering exercise programs and, perhaps most burdensome
of all, buy every recommended supplement. The religious
fervor of few monks can compare with the zeal of our dieting
discipline.
We fly through the first few weeks fueled by the nearly
instantaneous weight loss. Confidence rises, excitement takes
hold and we press forward. But then everything comes to a
screeching halt. Almost as quickly as we lost the initial weight,
our progress stalls. We’re no longer losing weight, the food
choices are monotonous, we’re feeling weak and drooling over
decadent treats as if we haven’t seen food in months. Believing
we’ve done something wrong, we return to the pages of our
current dieting bible and look for the missing details that can
put us back on track.
But we’re doing everything right. Calories are in the
allowable range, there’s not too much fat or too many carbs and
we’re getting plenty of exercise. What’s wrong? Frustration
replaces confidence then quickly turns to desperation. We cut
The Carb Nite Solution
2
calories. We ratchet up the exercise. We cut the fat. We cut out
sugar. We cut out more fat. Still, little progress is made.
Disgruntled and disheartened, we finally throw up our
hands and we quit. Clearly the diet didn’t live up to the claims,
but we normally blame ourselves for the disappointment. We
figure we’ll give it another try further down the road when we
can devote more time, as if we didn’t rearrange our entire lives
and sacrifice precious time already. Even after we gain all the
weight back, like brainwashed disciples we defend our diet of
choice until the end, reciting, “It really worked for me.” Our
audience looks in disbelief at our overweight, out-of-shape
body.
———
Thousands of people experience this situation every year.
Many popular diets are excellent for achieving health goals like
lowering cholesterol and triglyceride levels or managing
conditions like insulin resistance. Problems arise when using
popular diets to achieve a goal for which they were never
intended: fat loss. Manipulating the different aspects of the
body responsible for fat loss, namely metabolism, hormones,
fat cells and enzymes, defies conventional methods and
requires a radically different approach than those intended for
improving other aspects of health. Current dietary plans
improve specific aspects of health and assist weight
maintenance; the usefulness, however, ends there. Don’t
misunderstand: good health is always a concern. But if your
goal is weight loss and, in particular, fat loss—cellulite, flabby
butts, beer bellies and love handles—then you’ve been using
the wrong tools.
Beginning The Journey
3
The Puzzle
Unlike many in this field, I’m not a medical doctor or
nutritionist to the stars: I’m a physicist. Like you, spending
years trying to conquer my problem with body fat left me tired
and frustrated. I’ve tried every diet imaginable—low-calorie,
low-fat, low-carb, high-protein, zones, phases and many
more—while attempting to erase the stigma that first began
when, in the middle of my sixth grade class, another student
looked me square in the eyes and said, “You’re fat.”
In the following years, firmly committing to weight loss
was no small task. The late 80s witnessed a flood of discoveries
about hormones,
food, metabolism and fat cells
that
overwhelmed experts in the fields of health, nutrition and
weight loss. Faced with a million scattered puzzle pieces, all
from the same box, experts began arranging pieces to form
their own images. There was only one problem: nobody knew
what the final picture should look like.
Beginning with relatively few, nicely fitting pieces, they
continued by expanding to broader and broader topics. As
pressure mounted to explain the growing number of
discoveries, interpreting study results liberally and often
incorrectly became commonplace—pieces that didn’t quite fit
were beaten into place. Rather than clear, crisp images, these
randomly created mosaics fueled an eruption of new and
speculative diets. Unfortunately, the mosaics contained gaping
holes and incorporated only a small fraction of the pieces.
The surge of research and speculation did, fortunately, set a
renaissance of sorts into motion. Diet books, with their new
theories, needed support and authors began including citations.
The diet industry renaissance coincided with my growing
The Carb Nite Solution
4
interest in weight loss. Living within minutes of an extensive
medical library, my curiosity led me to examine the offered
proof by consulting the original scientific papers.
I remember the weeks spent looking up, xeroxing and
reading numerous journal articles. It took time to learn the
terminology, but within months I’d made my first startling
discovery: the research available, even some of the research
cited, did not support one author’s theory. The cites consisted
primarily of nicely fitting studies along with a few results
twisted beyond recognition—the obvious smashed-to-fit pieces.
The author ignored or belittled everything else.
Insatiably I began checking the validity of other diets over
the following years, accumulating vast stores of research in the
process. I eventually abandoned the pseudo-scientific diet
books and began seeking my own answers. I wanted to know
why it seemed nearly impossible to lose my body fat and why
so many others were having the same trouble. Was losing the
extra pounds really hopeless? Or did some method of
stripping fat from the body, something effective for everyone—
not just the extremely obese—exist? If such a method did exist,
I was going to find it and, well, if it didn’t…at least I’d know
enough to never get duped into trying another fad diet.
Being a physicist gave me a different perspective than most
in the field of diet and weight loss. Relying on the research of
others when pursuing your own work is essential to success in
the academic world of physics. You can never assume any-
thing if you expect to be successful. You need scientific proof.
So I applied the same principle as I searched for a solution.
The mind-boggling amount of information and numerous
considerations gave me the exact same million-piece-puzzle
others had already grappled with and, still, no one had the
Beginning The Journey
5
slightest idea of the final picture. I refused to throw valid
pieces away or distort results to my own ends. If only a quick
glance at the answer was possible. After reading over 20,000
peer-reviewed research articles, a stroke of luck turned out to
provide the badly needed glimpse of the completed picture. A
single event helped pull together years of research and The
Carb Nite Solution emerged.
Destined to Fail
The solution to all our problems rests in the design. All the
diets you’ve tried were designed for one of two purposes.
Nutritional plans intended to improve athletic performance
hold the spot of oldest special-purpose diets. Low-fat diets
started in this area as did another popular diet, The Zone.
Whether they actually improve performance and what kind of
athletic performance they improve—endurance, sprinting,
strength, power—is the subject for another book. Both,
however, wormed into the mainstream market as fat loss
programs, an area where neither is well suited.
The second and most common purpose involves improving
a condition known as Syndrome X. Syndrome X describes a
collection of metabolic diseases such as insulin resistance, high
blood pressure, high triglyceride levels, high LDL cholesterol
levels, low HDL cholesterol levels and, the only visible
symptom, central obesity. Plans target controlling and
reversing aspects of Syndrome X one at a time. Some only
target cholesterol levels, others insulin resistance and still
others high blood pressure. Over the years tweaking these
diets to tackle more and more aspects of Syndrome X led to less
and less effectiveness. Stretching a plan beyond its original
A
The Carb Nite Solution
6
reach crippled the previous benefits. A recipe originally
resolving one aspect of Syndrome X can’t be expected to tackle
every aspect, like obesity.
You don’t need to imagine what happens when diets
designed for different purposes offer the promise of fat loss
because you already know. They rarely deliver. To some
degree, they do reduce weight, but only as a side effect of their
original intent. As many now suspect, little of the weight lost
comes from body fat—the majority may just be stored water,
carbohydrates and muscle. It’s easy to see why so many
different diets—low-carb, low-fat, The Zone, South Beach and
others—perform identically when used for fat loss: the original
design was never meant to produce fat loss at all. We need a
tool created specifically for fat loss, not something with the
side effect of weight loss.
The solution, the right tool, does exist. Unlike any previous
diet, The Carb Nite Solution is designed specifically for
ongoing fat loss—and I emphasize fat loss, not just weight loss
and not just fat burning. For the entire time you’re on the diet
you will burn the stubborn body fat deposits on your thighs,
waist, stomach, love handles, underarms and everywhere else.
Every diet thus far has failed to accelerate the loss of body fat.
Sure, some may help you to burn fat, but it’s the fat you eat
(dietary fat), not the fat you’re trying to get rid of (in this case,
body fat).
The Carb Nite Solution is a tool, not a lifestyle. Designing
one diet to at once promote optimal health and rapidly shed
body fat is nearly impossible for several reasons. Often,
lifestyle diets promote specific health benefits and cause only a
small amount of fat loss as a side effect. On the other hand, The
Carb Nite Solution is focused on body fat loss. Fortunately, the
B
Beginning The Journey
7
process of losing fat reverses Syndrome X. It simultaneously
raises HDL cholesterol levels, improves insulin sensitivity, and
lowers triglyceride and LDL levels. At the base of all these
problems is excess body fat, so it’s no surprise that deflating the
spare tire improves many of the deadly features of Syndrome
X.
The Road Ahead
Don’t be fooled into thinking The Carb Nite Solution is just
another Frankenstein creation that’s worth a try. Welcome to
the world of power-dieting. Food produces powerful, drug-
like effects and as with any drug you need to know how it
affects your mind and body. The Carb Nite Solution not only
teaches you how to rid yourself of all the excess body fat but in
the process you’ll discover several things about yourself. You’ll
quickly learn how much extra water and carbohydrates your
body normally stores and how long it takes to get rid of the
surplus. You’ll learn how to eat with convenience and ease,
controlling hunger all day long. You’ll learn exactly how
common items like caffeine affect you. You’ll learn how carbs
can heat up the night while giving you a good night’s sleep. In
short, you’ll learn exactly how your body reacts to things you
normally don’t think about twice.
Within a few days of starting the diet, you may discover
some shocking things about your body. Though not a new
experience for all, stripping the carbohydrates from your diet
will produce profound changes; and removing carbs from your
daily meal plans is exactly what you’re going to do for the first
nine and a half days. These are your first few fat and protein
days. Water weight falls away. Bloating after a meal becomes
C
The Carb Nite Solution
8
a distant memory. Some sluggishness may strike briefly, but a
fresh sense of calm, cool collectedness quickly follows. Your
mood stabilizes, your body lightens, and you realize you’ve hit
your stride. You feel like you could do this forever.
But you don’t need to. Actually, it’s not that you don’t
need to, you can’t. On the tenth night comes a treat. More than
a treat, it’s actually the key for fat loss success that’s been lying
dormant in the research for decades. It’s Carb Nite™, the
solution to all your past dieting frustrations—especially the
frustrations of those controlling carbs.
The tenth day unfolds as a typical fat and protein morning,
just as the previous nine days, but the thought of Carb Nite
starts a small trickle of excitement, building into a torrent as the
afternoon rolls around. You take note of pastries and pasta,
chocolate and cheesecake, donuts and daiquiris.
The
temptations approach from every direction: Are you on the
verge of stumbling, tantalized by all these decadent treats? No,
you have a secret—you’re seeking them out for your dieting
pleasure. Yes, dieting pleasure. Carb Nite is about the treats
and sweets because carbohydrates matter most. Rising insulin
levels in response to all the sweet, sticky, crumbly carbs is the
secret behind Carb Nite’s magic. Anticipating this opportunity
to feast and enjoy what seems like a break from the diet, you
find yourself noticing all the things you’ve given up over the
last nine and a half days. You’re about to enjoy them all and
you know it’s a necessity. Your success depends on a full
enjoyment of Carb Nite. What many consider a set back on any
diet, a pleasure plagued with never-ending guilt, instead
creates the hormonal afterglow essential for the success of this
diet—the reason for calling The Carb Nite Solution a power-
diet.
Beginning The Journey
9
Carb Nite ends with a warm feeling all over. Your body’s
disabled ability to convert carbohydrates into fat causes the
overload of carbs to be burned off as heat—this in addition to a
spike in overall metabolism caused by the sudden shot of carbs.
Weathering the rise in body temperature smoothly transitions
to a good night’s sleep. Sleep will be deeper and more sound
than normal from an increase in your brain’s ‘feel good’
hormone, serotonin. Again, the feel-good sensation is caused
by the late-day carbs. You may even find yourself experiencing
dreams more lucid than ever before. The only thing
interrupting the night’s sleep might be some muscle cramping
if you fail to drink plenty of fluids and take other minor
precautions.
The next morning, morning eleven, you awaken to…fat and
protein. Carbs are a distant memory by noon and you feel
yourself easing back into the groove. Not to worry, you won’t
suffer another nine-and-a-half-day stretch without carbs. For
the week, the 30 gram daily limitation on carbs—the amount of
carbs in two slices of white bread—is still in effect, but now you
have a choice: What night to make Carb Nite. Maybe you have
a dinner party Sunday night or a date night with the spouse on
Friday or even a special celebration for one of the kids on
Saturday. Whatever the occasion, or for no occasion at all, your
once-a-week Carb Nite will be the night of your choosing—
assuming you’ve given yourself enough time since your last
Carb Nite.
And this is how it is for possibly up to six months. You
routinely take a reprieve from the severe carbohydrate
restrictions of the week to enjoy everything you’ve been
missing—everything you’ve probably been missing for years.
Carb Nite, once per week, in combination with severe carbo-
The Carb Nite Solution
10
hydrate restriction lays the groundwork for achieving the body
you once had or always wanted.
11
Often Ignored Hazards
Muscle: What Are You Willing to Lose?
While sitting in the lobby of the restaurant waiting for your
reservation, a child grabs your attention as he flexes his arm,
mimicking the obvious gym rat walking by. You glance away
to hide your thoughts: visibly defined muscles really do
portray a sense of health, confidence, beauty and attractiveness.
Nostalgia for those school days of a tight, toned figure well up
inside. You can’t wait for the opportunity to see yours take
shape again.
———
The essential goal for any weight loss plan should always
be the preservation of muscle. Maintaining muscle size and
strength during weight loss nearly guarantees the lost weight
to come from water, carbohydrate stores and most importantly,
body fat. Fat loss results when the focus shifts from simple
weight loss to losing weight while saving muscle. Hence the
reason for stressing fat loss throughout the book and not
merely weight loss. The Carb Nite Solution is not a weight loss
diet; The Carb Nite Solution is a fat loss program. An emphasis
on sustaining muscle and consequently losing only body fat is
still consistently ignored by other diet plans.
You may be wondering why the short sermon on insuring
fat loss as opposed to weight loss. During an otherwise
uneventful conversation with someone about popular diets, he
The Carb Nite Solution
12
volunteered a striking comment, “Who cares what kind of
weight I lost?” There are three important reasons why
everyone should care.
1) Losing body fat makes you healthier while losing the same
weight as combination of fat and muscle actually degrades
your health. In other words, by losing fat you can decrease
your chances of developing disease. By losing the same
amount of weight from a combination of muscle and fat,
you increase your chances of developing disease.
2) Muscle tissue is an important, metabolically active tissue.
By losing muscle tissue you reduce your metabolism and
make it easier to regain the weight you lost.
3) Laboratory animals, subjected to calorie deprivation—
either throughout life or during their final years—live
longer than well-fed peers. Years of research on this
phenomenon show the loss of strictly body fat, not muscle,
explains the extended, active lifespan.
Are you willing to lose vigor and vitality? Or maybe you’d
rather focus on losing those hips or love handles.
Fat Cells: A Formidable Enemy
It seemed too good to be true. The excitement from losing
weight at such a fast pace was dizzying. Low and behold, it
was too good to be true. You denied the symptoms, hiding the
facts from yourself. Maybe you ignored it for a week or even
two, but now a month has passed. You feel the phrase urging
forth at every inquiry about your diet. You fight to hold back
the mantra of defeat. On one lousy day you finally cave to
BA C
Often Ignored Hazards
13
reality by uttering the most dreadful phrase among dieters,
“I’ve hit a plateau.”
———
A plateau, as applied to dieting, describes the situation
normally occurring within the first few months of a typical
weight reducing diet. No matter what you do, you simply
cannot continue losing weight. All dieters on nearly all plans
experience plateaus. Fat cells determine significantly when or
if plateauing occurs.
As obvious as it may seem, fat cells store the fat in your
body. They’re not made of fat; they just hold it. Collecting in
large amounts around the internal organs and under the skin,
fat cells are like little balloons inflating as they fill with
additional fat and, once full, signal the body to create many
more. When body fat reserves dwindle, a large number of fat
cells sit empty because fat cells rarely, if ever, die. Even fat cells
responsible for your baby-fat—the fat everyone said was so
cute while pinching your cheeks—still lurk beneath your skin.
Not only are fat cells practically immortal, your body can create
an unlimited number at any age.
There is an up side. Full fat cells give the body an intense
message signaling the release of excess body fat stores—
metabolism rises, hunger loses intensity and fat cells empty out
while refusing to store more fat. This contrasts with the
popular notion that obese and overweight people have slow
metabolisms. In fact, being overweight raises metabolism and
accelerates fat loss. In the beginning, the greater the amount of
body fat to lose, the more quickly it’s lost because all those
extra fat cells overwhelm the body with a signal to waste
energy. And why not be wasteful when there’s plenty of
energy in reserve? The massive amount of rapid weight loss is
DE
The Carb Nite Solution
14
the exact reason diet book authors love to showcase the success
of their diets using obese participants—they would be equally
successful on any diet plan, at least initially.
But as helpful as bloated fat cells are to the dieting effort,
empty fat cells are nothing less than catastrophic. Dieting alone
normally causes debilitating metabolic changes within a few
days and emptied fat cells intensify the signals. The body halts
fat burning—both dietary and body fat—metabolism nose-
dives and hunger grows uncontrollable. Eating even loses the
ability to satisfy. The excess of empty fat cells tells the body it’s
time to refuel and without a proper plan, you’re likely to
oblige.
When popular diets bring you to this point, you experience
a plateau. All diet plans create empty fat cells and risk
plateaus. Current attempts at a solution are rash and crude,
making the situation worse. Using these plans only offers the
chance of emptying a few cells while failing to even ease this
difficult task. Losing anything more than a few pounds of fat
sounds bleak—your progress screeches to a halt before even
coming close to your goal. The Carb Nite Solution finally gives
you the power to tame the dreadful effects of these little cells,
avoiding the anxiety and aggravation of another plateau.
Rebounding: A Dreadful Conclusion
Weight loss stalled and determination wavering, you
choose relief to torture—dieting is abandoned, if only for now.
As feared, you feel the weight creep back in less time than it
was lost. The daily climb through the numbers on the scale
suggests things aren’t as bad as imagined. You lost 30 lbs and
gained back 30 lbs, but something doesn’t quite feel the same.
F
Often Ignored Hazards
15
You can’t explain the new sense of softness on your thighs and
around your waist. You expected your energy to return with
the weight; it didn’t. You expected your strength to return; it
didn’t. You expected to look just as you did before; you don’t.
There’s something going on. You check the scale again. There
it is in black and white: you really do weigh the same as
before. What’s different?
———
As difficult as losing weight may seem, current weight loss
plans make regaining the pounds a breeze. This rebounding
effect—gaining the weight back in a much shorter time than
lost—is a natural consequence of traditional weight loss plans,
mainly because of fat cells. But there is a second, much worse
aspect to rebounding, one associated with stress.
Affecting more than just med school students and parents
of unruly teens, stress plays a role among dieters as well. And,
as anyone who’s experienced dieting knows, trying to lose
weight is psychologically taxing.
The physical strain
experienced by your body, however, normally escapes
attention and the combination of these two—mental and
physical—creates a state of constant distress.
No conversation involving stress is complete without a
brief discussion of cortisol, levels of which rise in response to
stress. Cortisol levels normally only increase at night and
during exercise, situations resulting in increased body fat
burning. These bursts of cortisol drop quickly upon waking or
cessation of exercise; in contrast, levels remain elevated for long
periods, sometimes days, in response to chronic stress.
Connecting the dots reveals an unwelcome conclusion: typical
dieting keeps cortisol levels elevated for the duration. Soaring
cortisol levels bear a large amount of responsibility for the loss
GH
The Carb Nite Solution
16
of muscle described earlier, but another, possibly worse result
comes from this enduring elevation.
Being familiar with the world of nutrition through your
experiences with dieting, you probably know that eating
carbohydrates causes a release of insulin in the body. Nearly
all weight-reducing diets cause substantial and often sustained
insulin release along with stress. Normally, levels of only
one—insulin or cortisol—are elevated at any given time. The
simultaneous increase in insulin and cortisol levels causes a
terrible problem, one you’ll experience using these weight
reducing diets: the creation of an abundance of new, empty fat
cells. This does two things. First, it slows your fat loss
progress more quickly, hurrying the advance to a plateau.
Secondly, when you end the diet the newly created supply of
empty fat cells help make you fatter than ever before.
Picture someone starting at 180 lbs, 30% of which is body
fat. Having only briefly achieved their goal of reducing body
weight to 140 lbs—possibly a wedding-day weight—the loss
quickly returns. Returning to a former number on the scale
doesn’t sound so bad until experienced: it’s like inheriting a
different body. The regain no longer consists of a balance
between muscle and fat, but is primarily fat. The loss of
precious muscle combined with an appearance of the many
new fat cells make the excess fat storage at a familiar body
weight possible. Now, instead of being 180 lbs at 30% body fat,
they’re 180 lbs and 40% body fat. Being actually fatter than
before starting the diet, they feel softer, less energetic and
weaker.
I J
Often Ignored Hazards
17
The eventual regain of weight—over several years—holds
fewer consequences than rebounding, but still carries a serious
repercussion: an indefinitely slowed metabolism. For many,
even escaping a short-term rebound does little to prevent this
long-term gain. Regardless of timeframe, weight regain creates
frustration among dieters echoed by health-care professionals
when they ask: Why diet if you’re only going to gain the
weight back? Nearly eliminating the rebound effect and
narrowing the possibility of long-term weight regain, The Carb
Nite Solution renders the question meaningless. Fat loss can be
permanent.
K
The Carb Nite Solution
18
19
Problems With What We’ve Been Trying
Cutting Calories
You can’t help but notice the methodical chanting of
athletic trainers, nutritionists and even your friends who watch
Oprah religiously: calories in, calories out. What does it mean?
Sheepishly you ask and discover the simplistic logic. Lower
caloric intake to less than daily needs and you’re guaranteed
the slim figure you’ve been imagining for years. You anxiously
plan an 1800-calorie menu for the next day. A couple months
of limited success pass, but you don’t look or feel as good as
you ought and the weight loss fades—you must be eating too
much. You plan 1400-calorie menus and your march to
slimness slows once again. Then 1200-calorie, 1000-calorie, 800-
calorie menus fall like dominos as you struggle to sustain
mental and physical energy. How long can the downward
spiral continue? And why isn’t a fitness model staring back
from the mirror yet?
———
The single most popular method of weight loss is cutting
calories. Despite the popularity, the cutting calories approach
carries many heavy costs. The first is muscle loss. How much
muscle might you actually lose on the traditional low-calorie
diet? In the first two months of low-calorie dieting about half
the weight lost comes from lean tissue. That’s one pound of
muscle lost for every pound of fat lost. Over time this
A
The Carb Nite Solution
20
percentage drops to anywhere from 25% to 15%, meaning
normal dieting continues to disintegrate muscle at the rate of
one pound for every three to four pounds of fat.
Imagine setting the goal to lose 30 lbs of body fat. You
begin by losing 20 lbs of total weight during the first two
months. Concentrating solely on the number displayed by the
bathroom scale, you’re unaware of the loss of 10 lbs of muscle
along with only 10 lbs of fat. Over the next two months you
lose another 12 lbs but again, the total is not body fat—only 9
lbs came from fat. Four months have passed and the scale
welcomes you with a pleasant surprise: 32 lbs vanished since
beginning your diet. Unbeknownst to you, the scale masks the
terrible truth that only 19 lbs of fat is gone with another 11 lbs
to go if you want to reach your goal. The destruction of 13 lbs
of lean mass also occurred. Scales often deceive us in this way.
The severe muscle loss is only the tip of the metabolic
iceberg. Before substantial amounts of muscle evaporate,
metabolism drops sharply as calories dip below maintenance
levels. Only four days of caloric restriction suppresses all the
major hormones responsible for burning body fat, maintaining
energy levels and controlling hunger. The result: less energy is
burned at rest and when active, less fat moves out of storage,
more fat is stored in fat cells and hunger becomes unbearable.
By day four you’re already entrenched in a losing battle.
Not to be beaten, low-calorie advocates recommend a
solution. Simply cut calories further. After all, this is low-
calorie dieting. How low will you go? Before you realize,
calories wither to such meager levels that decreasing them any
further will jeopardize your health—as if you haven’t already.
And to be successful at maintaining your fat loss—you will not
B C
Problems With What You’ve Been Trying
21
continue to lose, only maintain—your only choice remains
severe calorie deprivation for the rest of your life.
Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
Low-Fat
Exciting news is quoted over and over in newspapers and
magazines: Research shows low-fat dieters eat as much as they
want and lose weight. New research? It must be true. Once
again, you try low-fat dieting thinking of your failed attempts
and bland food choices but motivated by the thought of eating
as much as you want. You will succeed this time and you’ll do
everything to insure it, even if it means cutting fat calories to
near zero. Dressing-less salads, fat-free pastries, pretzels,
potatoes, pears and even popcorn—minus the butter, salt and
taste—round out your menu. You discover pasta with fat-free
spaghetti sauce, fat-free candy, fat-free cookies, fat-free chips
and more. Even soft drinks are fat-free. It’s been a week, time
to check progress. You head back to your new friend, the
bathroom scale. The numbers are in and…you gained three
pounds. What the…? Your friend, the scale, wouldn’t play
such a cruel joke. What’s going on? Science proves you can eat
as much as you want while losing weight if fat calories are kept
extremely low. Doesn’t it?
———
As a matter of fact, American consumers eat far less fat
today than thirty years ago, but skyrocketing rates of obesity
imply something mysterious about those all-you-can-eat
studies. What do the studies really say? The technical
classification of these smorgasbord-sounding studies is the
Latin phrase ad libitum. Think of ad libitum as a way of saying
the researchers and participants were too lazy to keep track of
The Carb Nite Solution
22
the calories. You can generate excitement by suggesting the
subjects ate to their heart’s content. On the other hand, you tell
the real story by saying the subjects ate as little as they
wanted—eating only low-fat foods proved difficult.
During low-fat diets, when participants and researchers
actually recorded or controlled calorie intake, the only subjects
experiencing weight loss were those cutting calories below
maintenance levels. To sustain their weight loss, they suffer the
same fate as those who start by cutting calories: eternal dieting.
The apparent magic of all-you-can-eat, low-fat dieting comes
from a clever spin on words or maybe a misunderstanding
among reporters, not from the diet itself.
Familiarity with diet plans leaves few surprised by the
truth: low-fat diets require calorie restriction to achieve weight
loss. Cutting calories is simply an accepted part of the sacrifice.
But choosing the low-fat method for weight loss means
sacrificing more than just tasty treats and calories—you’ll be
sacrificing muscle. Of all the popular dietary schemes, none
destroy more muscle than low-fat dieting. Over the first year,
only 20% of a low-fat dieter’s weight loss comes from body fat.
Losing 50 lbs of weight means only 10 lbs of fat loss, with the
majority of the balance from muscle. Eliminating dietary fat
only magnifies the worst aspect of cutting calories—
significantly less muscle loss occurs when cutting calories if
dietary fat remains intact.
As if the negative impact of muscle loss on health isn’t
enough, there’s more. Keeping levels of dietary fat below
10%—the recommendation of low-fat plans such as The
Pritikin Principle—aims to reduce cholesterol levels, a task for
which it performs well. Resolving this one feature of
Syndrome X, however, is countered by increasing four, more
DEF
Problems With What You’ve Been Trying
23
deadly aspects of Syndrome X. Not only does a low-fat
approach to weight loss jeopardize your health through muscle
loss, but such severe dietary limits on fat accelerates the
development of a syndrome known to shorten your life
expectancy.
Ready to jump on the low-fat bandwagon?
Low-Carb
First no food, and then no fat and now it’s no carbs. As you
tell friends about your new diet you’re warned about, no,
almost threatened with a list of ailments: inability to think, bad
breath, clogged arteries, obesity and cancer. Finally, your
nutritionist
strikes
the deathblow—your body needs
carbohydrates to live. Your head spins. How can all this be
true when studies confirm the opposite? And you’ve never
heard about anyone dying from not eating carbohydrates, but
the idea is so new, nobody really knows much about these diets
yet. Right?
———
The low-carb diet—more properly, the ketogenic diet—is
nothing new. The long and varied history began with a small
publication written by…William Banting? That was 1863. You
might have been thinking Dr Atkins, but his first book, Dr
Atkins' Diet Revolution, wasn’t published until over one
hundred years later in 1972. And he was still preceded by three
other versions of the low-carb diet, two of which made it to
publication in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Even by then,
another version emerged in the 1920s to fight childhood
epilepsy and its use continues today. While not a pioneer, Dr
Atkins did popularize the low-carb approach by allowing users
G
The Carb Nite Solution
24
to continually increase dietary carbohydrate levels. This simple
change, as opposed to the strict lifelong limits associated with
earlier versions, makes low-carb diets highly marketable—and
very risky.
To avoid confusion, we need to identify a clear difference
among these ketogenic diets and find a more useful phrase
than ketogenic. Mainstream low-carb dieters restrict carbs to
50% or less of daily calories, hovering regularly near the top of
the scale. Advocates don’t normally explain it this way, but it
appears to be the common thread. Scientific research, however,
describes a more specific range from 8% to 50% of calories from
carbs. This is about 40 to 250 grams per day. Anything less
than 8%—specifically, 30 grams or less—falls under the
heading ultralow-carb. Since these are both ketogenic diets,
this may seem like splitting hairs, but the difference between
the two is the difference between success and failure.
During an ultralow-carb diet, the body stops making some
very special and bothersome enzymes. These enzymes convert
carbohydrates into fat, which can then be stored as body fat.
The ultralow-carb diet cuts off the one avenue available
through which carbohydrates can become body
fat,
guaranteeing that an overdose of carbs has no possible way of
heading to your stomach or thighs in the form of body fat. On
the other hand, with their extra carb allowance, simple low-
carb diets trigger the production of these carb-to-fat converting
enzymes making it possible to store all those extra carbs you
thought you were enjoying as fat.
As an example, Atkins begins as an ultralow-carb diet for
two weeks, after which you slowly switch to the standard low-
carb diet by adding fruits, vegetables and loads of sugar-
alcohols (more about these later). Had Dr Atkins required
HI
Problems With What You’ve Been Trying
25
maintaining the ultralow portion for the next six months, you
would enjoy ongoing and significant fat loss, even though the
rate of fat loss would slow and eventually plateau. Instead, as
carbs increase in the diet, so does body weight—as a matter of
fact, by the end of the sixth month you’ve stopped losing body
fat and started gaining. For us, for our goal of fat loss, this is
the most important difference between these two ketogenic
diets: ultralow-carb and simple low-carb.
The simple act of eating carbohydrates, even as little as 50
grams per day, prematurely stops fat loss and can accelerate
body fat gain. Avoiding these problems takes 30 grams or less.
Does adding more and more carbohydrates to your diet still
seem like a blessing from Dr Atkins?
But we can’t ignore the common fault: neither diet—low-
carb or ultralow-carb—spikes insulin levels. This is incredibly
important. The body produces the hormone insulin in
response to a carb-rich meal; insulin then helps the body use
carbohydrates for energy. Since both diets limit the intake of
carbs, both diets limit the release of insulin. Low-carb
enthusiasts flaunt this as an advantage, since elevated levels of
insulin often mean little fat burning. An insulin spike,
however, only temporarily stops fat burning, but the resulting
hormonal afterglow accelerates body-fat burning for days.
Besides enhancing metabolism by itself, insulin also
creastes a lasting glow by acting similar to a booster rocket.
Booster rockets provide a short burst of extra force to propel
some thing—airplane, satellite or space shuttle—before being
ejected. In much the same way, a short and powerful burst of
insulin boosts levels of several, to say the least, impressive fat
burning hormones. Insulin levels plummet within two hours,
but just as the space shuttle continues on without its booster
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Problems With What You’ve Been Trying
27
levels to plunge, no matter how much fat and protein you eat.
Actually, leptin levels mimic the lows found in starvation when
carbs are lacking. And low leptin levels signal fat cells to stay
full and store as much incoming fat as possible—in other
words: kiss your fat loss good bye. This may explain why
several years of maintaining low insulin levels causes
unavoidable fat gain—even for those eating only carbs causing
small amounts of insulin release. Fat loss and even weight
maintenance are nearly hopeless without periodic insulin
spikes. Unfortunately, as neither the ultralow-carb nor low-
carb diet offers any hope of spiking insulin levels, there appears
no way to overcome this fatal problem while clinging to the
requirements of these diets.
Dr Atkins claims a low-carb diet creates a metabolic
advantage. What do you think?
Low Glycemic Index
A new wave hits the diet industry and you soon find
yourself swimming in conversations laced with phrases from,
apparently, another language. You search for meaning in the
expressions low-glycemic index carbohydrate and high-glycemic
index carbohydrate. Relief comes when you learn simply that
some carbs are good and some bad. But there are also friendly
carbs, which sound good as well. When you search through
the different food lists you make a startling discovery: some
good carbs aren’t friendly, some bad carbs are. You learn more
and the confusion only mounts. Can the glycemic index do
anything other than complicate your life?
———
M
The Carb Nite Solution
28
As acceptance fades among medical professionals, the
glycemic index (GI) moves to the field of weight loss for a
second chance at life. Before diving into a technical discussion
about what glycemic index means, how it’s used, the difference
between high- and low-GI, friendly, or good and bad carbs, the
scientific research sums up the fat loss and even health claims
with a single word: nonsense.
Rather than restricting carbohydrates altogether, reliance
on glycemic index for menu choice approaches the same goal as
low-carb diets: insulin control. Like low-carb diets, low-GI
diets focus on limiting insulin release because insulin can stop
the body from burning fat. The truth: Simply eating
carbohydrates, alone or in combination with other nutrients,
prevents your body from burning fat regardless of how much or
how little insulin levels rise.
Glycemic index diets recommend eating low-GI carbs,
which create the smallest rise in blood sugar levels and,
normally, the lowest rise in insulin. Unfortunately, low-GI
carbs also stop you from burning fat for the longest periods
because low-GI carbs cause the longest periods of elevated
blood sugar and insulin levels. And some of the lowest GI
carbs are undeniably the most fattening of all. Yes, low-
glycemic carbs are the supposed ‘good’ ones—good for what?
Nobody knows as researchers continually fail to find a
connection between low-GI diets and weight loss, or a
connection between high-GI diets and weight gain.
Despite the absence of a connection between low-GI diets
and weight loss, a link to weight gain—specifically, fat gain—
does exist. Similar to low-carb diets, a low-GI diet fails to spike
insulin levels, causing metabolism to slow over the years and
body fat storage to increase. With low-carb diets, less than a
OPN
Problems With What You’ve Been Trying
29
year passes before this slow, consistent weight gain settles in,
but low-GI diets may take several years before landing you in
this situation. Although the time frames differ, the result is
identical: a slow, steady gain of a few pounds of body-fat per
year. According to research, you can do little to stop the
process while meticulously following the strict
low-GI
guidelines as recommended by The Zone, Sugar Busters!®, Fat
Flush® and even South Beach.
Do you still believe South Beach will get you into a Speedo®
swimsuit as the diet implies?
Mini-Meals
Wow! You finally learned the secret: eat six meals per day
and lose weight. The idea makes perfect sense: going too long
between meals scares the body into storing excess body fat. But
eating every three hours relaxes the body and the weight melts
away. It’s so simple. You plan for the next day with plenty of
time for preparing easy-travel meals. Before you realize,
work’s piled up and you scurry every morning to put your
meals together. This week’s even worse and you settle for the
cafeteria, nutrition bars, vending machines and, heaven forbid,
fast food restaurants. Eating went from enjoyable to irritating,
but the results are worth it, right? That cover-model body is
just around the corner. You’ve been watching your weight for
weeks now and it’s down two pounds one week, up one the
next, maybe the same the week after that, then down,
then…well, it’s just not changing much at all. You’re not losing
weight, eating is a full time job and missing one meal sends
hunger pains off the chart. How did you get into this mess?
———
Q
The Carb Nite Solution
30
Trying to discover the perfect number of daily meals for
health and weight loss has been going on since the 1950s and
the vast majority of studies—32 of the 36—reveal this
conclusive result regarding weight loss: the ideal number of
meals per day is…whatever you feel like. Whether you eat one,
two, three, all the way up to six or more meals per day you‘ll
lose exactly the same amount of body fat, keep exactly the same
amount of muscle and, therefore, end up with identical weight
loss but only by restricting calories. If daily calories are kept
low and equal, say 1200, identical fat loss occurs with one 1200-
calorie meal per day, or three 400-calorie meals per day, or even
six 200-calorie meals per day. Regardless of the number of
meals, the previously discussed problems of calorie restriction
are unavoidable—muscle loss, falling metabolism, and fat cell
buildup.
The studies prove a few more interesting things. First,
consuming several smaller meals throughout the day actually
lowers metabolism over time: even without calorie restriction,
the ill effects of a low-calorie diet materialize from spreading
meals thin. Secondly, a powerful hunger-stimulating hormone
called ghrelin establishes a strict eating schedule. Forcing
yourself to stick with a rigid and frequent eating schedule
eventually triggers rising ghrelin levels prior to each mealtime,
causing extreme hunger pangs. Besides ravenous cravings,
missing a regularly scheduled meal results in sluggishness and
irritation. Finally, having to eat more than three times per day
brought complaints from nearly every study subject about the
difficulty of scheduling so many meals—even when meals were
prepared for them.
R S
Problems With What You’ve Been Trying
31
Just what you’ve always wanted in a weight loss plan:
slower metabolism; increased hunger; difficult scheduling; all
with no benefits. Ready to start eating every three hours?
Exercise for Weight Loss
Exercise sounded foolproof. With all those svelte, reedy
runners and lean, buff bicyclists it must work. Everyday you
pull yourself from the warmth of the bed to begin those chilled
morning runs. You even welcome free afternoons with a little
burned rubber from the new bicycle. The weather sometimes
forces you to the treadmill or stationary bike, but you don’t
mind—the whirring motors lull you into your zone. Six
months of unwavering dedication and you’re shocked by the
results: you’ve lost four pounds. Four pounds? You fume
after remembering all those wasted hours running and cycling
to lose less than one pound a month. How can you spend so
much time, expend so much energy and lose so little weight?
———
Being nearly as old a recommendation as low-fat, exercise
often replaces diet as a way to lose weight. Who better to
follow than those already there? Professional distance runners
and cyclists, along with other elite endurance athletes, maintain
a small, toned figure throughout their careers, which many
began as children. And this is the key: they’ve always been
thin, slim and trim. Never in their lives did they need to lose
body fat. When using exercise, any type of exercise for weight
loss—including running, cycling, weight lifting, walking,
bouncing—the average person is lucky to lose one pound a
month. For the first six months, it’s normally less. Don’t expect
those few pounds to be fat, either. After a large group
T
The Carb Nite Solution
32
attempted exercise for fat loss, the results led researchers to
advise waiting at least nine full months before hoping to see
any fat loss resulting from exercise—nine full months of zero
fat loss.
As time goes on, the research only becomes more
convincing. Comparing those who start diet and exercise with
those who only diet reveals both groups lose identical amounts
of weight—exercise contributed nothing to the loss. Taking it a
step further, comparing those who begin exercise without a diet
plan with those who just sit around all day still shows identical
weight loss, which is zilch in this case—again, exercise
contributed nothing. Even those trying to maintain their newly
achieved figures failed when using exercise without diet—once
again, nothing. And unlike those trying to convince you with
one or two studies that exercise will help you lose body fat,
over two-dozen studies show exercise doesn’t help fat loss
sooner than six months into your routine. Although many
compelling reasons to exercise exist, short-term fat loss is not
one of them.
Still planning on running to help get you into that swimsuit
by spring?

U
33
A Good Start
We Have a Winner
You’ve been reading this book in the hopes of learning how
to rid your body of those annoying fat deposits and, so far, the
entire discussion has detailed what’s wrong with everything
else. By now, I hope you’re convinced to at least try a different
approach. But the current options seem useless for fat loss, so
what’s left?
Returning to the primary goal, which is weight loss while
sparing muscle, there’s only one option to reconsider—the
ultralow-carb option. In a diet containing high levels of
carbohydrates, if carb supplies ever fade too quickly—such as
eating too little or during exercise—muscle is converted into
sugar for energy. Muscles continue wasting away until the
body receives a fresh supply of carbohydrates or no longer
needs any. While not always perfect, low-carb diets stop
muscles from being destroyed for energy.
When low-carb plans keep carbohydrates low enough and
dietary fat high enough, the resulting change in metabolism
makes the body more comfortable burning fat for energy as
opposed to muscle. Carbohydrate levels must be kept
consistently minimal because the body always prefers carbs,
and once these run out on a carb-rich diet, muscle becomes the
next source of energy. As a carb-restricted diet wears on,
AB
The Carb Nite Solution
34
muscle remains safest
from destruction when dietary
carbohydrates are lowest, making the ultralow-carb diet an
excellent starting point for a fat loss plan.
Besides sparing muscle, the ultralow-carb diet provides
several other advantages. Not only does the ultralow-carb diet
avoid some of the physical stress associated with dieting—
meaning lower cortisol levels—there is little insulin around to
initiate the growth of new fat cells. The very nature of the
ultralow-carb diet keeps both insulin and cortisol levels
extremely low, making it immune to the most disastrous side
effect of traditional diets.
The ultralow-carb diet also controls hunger more readily
than other types of diets. Contrary to popular belief, insulin is
not the most potent hunger-stimulating hormone. Actually,
insulin’s role in stimulating hunger is poorly understood. The
current theory involving insulin (as explained in South Beach,
Atkins and other soures) lacks conclusive evidence. A newly
discovered hormone, ghrelin, stimulates hunger more than any
other. When ghrelin levels are high, hunger rises and when
levels fall, so do the cravings. Carbohydrates cause a crash in
ghrelin levels immediately after a meal, delivering a feeling of
satisfaction, but a carb-based diet also causes ghrelin to spike
between meals making hunger extremely powerful. The
ultralow-carb diet avoids this problem by keeping ghrelin
levels under control—levels are never too high and most often
low.
The other major problem when dieting is the plunge in
metabolic rate, which is also partially avoided with the
ultralow-carb diet. Your basal metabolic rate—the rate at
which your body burns energy when resting—slowly falls on
an ultralow-carb diet instead of plummeting within the first
CD E
A Good Start
35
week, as occurs with typical diets. Regrettably, problems with
leptin levels falling still persist and metabolism will drop. Of
paramount importance is finding some way to avoid these two
problems or those fat cells will never empty. And if they do, a
plateau will quickly develop.
The real trick is finding some way to preserve or even
increase metabolism and levels of fat burning hormones like
leptin. Resolving this problem not only guarantees ongoing fat
loss, but also makes a rebound unlikely.
A Painful Epiphany
Having just completed my Master’s work in Physics, I
decided to try my first bodybuilding contest. This wasn’t my
first attempt at getting into contest shape. Several times before,
diet and exercise were combined in the hopes of seeing my
abdominal muscles. All prior attempts ended in failure—no
diet had ever worked as advertised. I began to believe my
body would always be against me. So, this was my last ditch
effort.
At the time, the only diet with any promise of dropping
my body fat levels to minimum was the ultralow-carb diet.
Other amateur bodybuilders chose a low-fat, ultralow-carb
diet, but my research showed that higher levels of fat are
important. Research at the medical library also supported the
promise of saving as much muscle as possible during the
weight loss. I’d tried it once before without success. This time
I convinced myself it would work. I ate nothing but eggs,
ground beef, chicken, cheeses, and oils.
Sticking to the diet became difficult after the first week, but
I continued for five more. Then, late one night, I had a run in
F
The Carb Nite Solution
36
with a couple of dozen donuts. I still remember the smell of
those warm, freshly made Krispy Kremes® as I slipped into a
mindless feeding frenzy.
Within minutes, 20 donuts
disappeared. Shortly after emerging from the zombie-like
state, I found myself curled in the fetal position. Prior to falling
asleep—or maybe passing out—I moaned
from
the
stomachache.
The next morning I collected myself and recommitted to
preparing for the bodybuilding competition. I noticed a little
bloating, otherwise the damage looked minor. I returned to my
regimen of meats, cheeses and oils. By the next day there were
no signs of the donut disaster. On the third morning a rush of
excitement hit. The first ever appearance of my abs made it
clear, I was ahead of schedule—farther than I’d ever dreamed.
I repeated a less painful variation of the donut disaster once a
week to achieve the chiseled physique needed to win the
contest. The Carb Nite Solution was born.
Over the next couple of years, I invested the majority of my
time researching why this worked. In the process, the diet has
been highly refined—nearly perfected. And it turned out to be
simpler than ever imagined and held further surprises.
click “Download Now” button below to
End of Free Chapters...
Obtain the Complete Version


Carb Back-Loading
Manual For Total Body Fat Control









John Kiefer, MS


™
Disclaimer

The Content presented herein is for informational purposes only
and intended for use by adults capable of understanding the Content
and capable of seeking medical advice from appropriately licensed
professionals when necessary or appropriate. Although I have
researched various topics extensively and attempted to organize
numerous issues associated with diet and exercise in a clarifying
manner, the Content is not intended as a substitute for professional
medical input or action. Always seek the advice of a qualified health
provider regarding a medical condition or your ability to apply the
Content in a safe manner. Please never disregard professional
medical advice or fail to seek it in a timely manner because of
something you have read anywhere, including here.



vi

Contents


Get Started Now!




xii
About the Author




xiv
Acknowledgements




xvi

Section I

Introduction
Chapter 1
The Ultimate Drug

4
Chapter 2
Catalyst



8
Chapter 3
Cliff Notes:


Carb Back-Loading

14
Chapter 4 Modulated Tissue Response 16

Chapter 5
Always Improving

20
Section I
Essential Points


22

Section II
Bricks
Chapter 6
Controversy


26
Chapter 7
Insulin: The eXtreme


Growth Agent


28
Chapter 8
Carbs to Burn


30
Carb Back-Loading
Chapter 9 Glucose Transport

32
Chapter 10 Why So Sensitive?

36
Chapter 11 Sensitivity, It Varies

38
Chapter 12 Exercise a Little Control
40
Section II
Essential Points


44

Section III
Mortar
Chapter 13 Some Assembly Required
48
Chapter 14 Best Breakfast Ever—None 50
Chapter 15 Eat At Night


52
Chapter 16 No Carbs, No Problems
56
Chapter 17 The Sweet Spot


58
Chapter 18 16 oz Carb Curls,


Post-Training


64

Chapter 19 Slam the Carbs


66
Chapter 20 Highly Inefficient Design
70
Section III Essential Points


76

Section IV

Aftermarket Add-Ons
Chapter 21 High Performance Tuning
80
Chapter 22 Omega-3s



82
Chapter 23 Medium Chain Triglycerides 86
Chapter 24 High-Insulinotropic Carbs
88
viii
Chapter 25 Whey Isolate


90
Chapter 26 Hydrolysates


94
Chapter 27 Leucine



96
Chapter 28 Caffeine



100
Chapter 29 Creatine



104
Section IV Essential Points


108

Section V
What To Do
Chapter 30 Tell Me How,

Hold the Details


112
Chapter 31 Strength Accumulation

& Density Bulking

114
Chapter 32 Preparation Phase

116
Chapter 33 Upon Waking


120
Chapter 34 Low-Carb Mealtimes

122
Chapter 35 Pre-Training


130
Chapter 36 Intra-Training


132
Chapter 37 Post-Training


136
Chapter 38 Carb Loading Mealtimes
140
Chapter 39 Before Bed


144
Chapter 40 Off-Days



146
Chapter 41 All Day Supplementation
150
Section V
Essential Points


152


Carb Back-Loading

Section VI
Nobody’s Perfect
Chapter 42 Customize


156
Chapter 43 Training Fasted


158
Chapter 44 Middle Training


162
Chapter 45 Late Night Sessions

164
Section VI Essential Points


166

Section VII Dos and Don’ts
Chapter 46 Everybody Needs Advice
170
Chapter 47 Don’t Be a Fat Kid

172
Chapter 48 Gluten Allergies


174
Chapter 49 Don’t Let Training

Derail You



176
Chapter 50 Cardio



180
Chapter 51 Gender Differences

184
Section VII Essential Points


186

Section VIII
Experiences
Chapter 52 Case Study:


Jay DeMayo


190
Chapter 53 Professionals


196
x
Chapter 54 Everyday Success


Stories



206

Section IX
Appendix
Appendix A FAQs



216
Appendix B Ultra-Low Carb Vegetables
222
Appendix C Carb-Needs Calculators
224
Appendix D Pre Carb-Mealtimes Macro



Calculator



230
Appendix E Sample Days


238

Section X
References





Carb Back-Loading


xii

Get Started Now!



Read Essentials: p22, 44, 76, 108, 152, 166 & 186.

Read the FAQs, p216.

Determine carb needs, p224.

Determine protein and fat needs, p230.

Read attached sample diet plans (see Appendix E)

Get Jacked!







Carb Back-Loading













xiv

About the Author



KIEFER
WARNING: He goes only by Kiefer
John Kiefer is a highly sought after training and
nutrition consultant. To guide his work, he has
read over 40,000 medical research papers covering various facets of
human biology. His extensive knowledge of human nutrition and
performance is tempered by 15 years of experience applying,
observing and refining his methodology.
Kiefer holds two B.A.s (Mathematics and Physics) from Otterbein
College and a Master’s of Science in Physics from the University of
Florida. He published his first diet book for radical fat loss, The
Carb Nite® Solution,
in 2005, which can be found at
http://www.CarbNite.com.
He is currently an advisor to Muscle&Fitness and Men’s Fitness
magazines and his clientele includes world-record powerlifters,
internationally ranked fitness competitors, CEOs and recreational
athletes who want super-human results without the super-human
torture.
Find more of Kiefer’s work at http://DangerouslyHardcore.com.
Carb Back-Loading


xvi

Acknowledgements


I want to thank:
Brian Carroll for trying out a crazy new diet from a crazy physicist
and spreading the word once he realized I’m not a hack;
Bob Ihlenfeldt for his honest impression of the first version of this
book, which was that he hated it, he hated me and hated Carb Back-
Loading—luckily, that meant he thought it was pretty good;
Naomi Most for helping keep me and DH.com organized so I could
finish this book;
Caroline Gick for helping out in a pinch;
And everyone else who made this project possible.





Carb Back-Loading



Section I

INTRODUCTION







Section I: Introduction
Carb Back-Loading



4
Chapter 1
The Ultimate Drug



Carbs are a drug. As with any drug, knowledge of
effects—and side effects—is the only way to guarantee the right
outcome. Drugs often hit the market before all the effects show,
leaving consumers scrambling for answers, alternatives and
adjuncts. Carbs share this trait, having become a part of the human
diet millennia ahead of our capacity to understand their full
influence. Years of ignorance left a trail of recommendations
prepackaged with folk-lore, hearsay and guesswork as to what type
to eat, when to eat and what, exactly, their role in the body is.
This common-sense approach to carb inclusion ranges from eating
carbs first thing in the morning, to cycling them; some people go
anabolic—eating carbs just on the weekend—and still others have
just one Carb Nite® a week. But only recently have people started
eating their carbs at night.
Oh that’s right, Oprah’s trainer says don’t eat them at night. As a
matter of fact, don’t eat anything at night. That’d just be dumb
according to the supposed experts. There’s nothing to gain but fat.
Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if a pepperoni pizza before bed—the
whole pizza—could cause fat loss and make muscles grow. Stop
right there, they say; that’s crazy talk.
Section I: Introduction
Carb Back-Loading
Admittedly, not everyone’s concerned about their carbs, as some
people eat them at-will without affecting strength, muscle mass or
waistline. The rest of us, unfortunately, need to control the starchy
dinners and sugary sweets. Pancakes for breakfast; sure and how
about a serving of moobs—man boobs for the un-indoctrinated—in
a few weeks to go with it.
For those who don’t need to worry, the pancakes won’t matter, nor
will ice cream or pasta or even post-workout nutrition. They’re
freaks. Most of us seethe over the inequity of it because despite how
carbs cause body fat stores to bulge, carbs spark muscular growth
too. Forget the sweet savory taste, forget how they turn a boring
slab of breast meat into chicken and dumplings—growing huge
rounded shoulders, sculpted pecs and massive quads requires carbs.
They’re a means to an end.
Most people need the carbs to approach the realm of freakiness, but
on the way, fat accumulates and hides the hard work. That’s what
carbs do, they make things grow. They make lots of things grow like
fat cells and muscle cells. Carbs don’t discriminate. The solution:
limit the carbs, cut them out or cycle them in some way. It’s not fun
going sans carbs and even less fun going months without, only to
lose some of the muscle and strength gained along the way.
We can do better.
That’s what this book is about. Forget about the constant cycle of
bulking up, leaning down, bulking again, leaning down and so on,
taking one step backward for every two steps forward. It’s time to
gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. An extra 100 pounds of
body fat is not a prerequisite, either. Starting at a typical low-20’s
The Utimate Drug
6
body fat percentage, anyone can gain muscle, strength and maybe
even good looks while dropping into the sub-15% body fat range
and lower. No magical supplements or crazy food combinations
needed; it’s as easy as pie…literally.
I don’t live in a vacuum and know that these promises float around
the internet like fairy dust, and they’re about as real too. The empty
promises only empty the wallet. Yet gurus everywhere chant the
mythical formula: gain muscle and lose fat at the same time with
ease. Hell, the cover accompanying my article in the May 2011
Muscle&Fitness advertised Carb Back-Loading as The Holy Grail of
Dieting. Had I been a typical reader, I would have been skeptical, as
were the magazine editors when I first discussed it with them—
until they tried it. And loved it.
I'm not going to convince anyone to read further or to rush to the
checkout counter for those flipping these pages in the bookstore. I'm
not going to say, I’m awesome, trust me. I won’t even mention how
stupid-simple the program is and how anyone can get results with
only half-assed effort. But I will issue a warning: if you keep
reading, the excitement and impatience to achieve the physique of
your dreams—or your significant-other’s dreams—will overwhelm.
Knowledge is power; after reading this book, you’ll be omnipotent.


Section I: Introduction
Carb Back-Loading




8
Chapter 2
Catalyst



Every diet worth its salt has an origin story, some reason
the thing exists in the first place, the catalyst. Most of the time, it's
fabricated, a lot of marketing with a smidgen of personal history for
authenticity. Carb Back-Loading’s origin story is nothing of the
kind. I invented it twenty years ago when a group of military
scientists drafted me to become part of black-ops human
enhancement project with the ultimate goal of...
Wait a second. That's not what happened at all. I've been spending
too much time on the Internet again.
If no super-soldier origin story exists, then how did an average guy
from Podunk, Indiana come up with what everyone's chased for
years?
Simple: I was a fat kid. A very smart, very tenacious, very self-
conscious fat kid.
The details bore the paint off the walls, and there’s no reason to
share them, so here’s the short of it: my parents fed me breakfast
cereal, pop tarts and coca-cola, I grew moobs, students made fun of
me, my gym teacher made fun of me, I started working out and it
changed my life—sort of. Training brought strength, muscle and a
Section I: Introduction
Carb Back-Loading
definite change in my physique, but I was still doughy. I wanted
jacked and I wanted ripped.
My diet needed help. Hell, my family taught me that washing down
a grilled cheese sandwich with ketchup packets constituted a
healthy lunch. Grains, dairy and vegetables: what more could a guy
need? The fact that I believed it is embarrassing enough, but the
physique it created was more so. The epiphany took time, but I did
realize that maybe my family—and their trouble with their own
weight—hindered me rather than helped. I did what any science-
minded youth would do, I hit the books.
This was before the Internet, so I literally hit the books. I quickly
learned that the books weren’t any better than my parents because
none of them could produce the results I wanted. Maintaining
muscle while leaning down seemed beyond the knowledge of the
most famous diet writers. And forget about getting shredded.
The first serious reduction in my body fat came with my near
religious dedication to—in my opinion—the first legitimate attempt
at harnessing the drug-like potential of carbs, Dr. Mauro
DiPasquale’s, The Anabolic Diet. This was back in 1995 when
science still didn’t know about things like ghrelin, leptin, nutrient-
activated protein synthesis channels and the function of glucose and
fatty acid transporters, but we were discovering new things every
day. The Renaissance had started and Dr. DiPasquale took advantage
of the emerging information, filling gaps with his experience.
The Anabolic Diet didn’t take me all the way, however, and I
definitely didn’t gain muscle, even when I tried the bulking phase.
Catalyst
10
But I didn’t gain body fat either, I lost it—exclusively. For the first
time in my life, I didn't have love handles.
That was a long time ago. Discoveries built upon discoveries,
growing faster than all but the most diligent—and geeky—could
keep up with, and now, even they can’t ingest the deluge quickly
enough. Everybody and their brother learned that to become
successful in the fitness world took no real knowledge at all: throw
out a few buzzwords, promise a quick-six-pack or eight minutes to a
sexy figure and spew random opinions about health on the Web and
success would follow. Who could have guessed that a Renaissance
would bring the Dieting Dark Ages that exist today?
I couldn’t take it anymore. The tallest boots I found still didn’t reach
high enough to avoid getting splattered with pseudo-knowledge
exrement. I devised The Carb Nite® Solution, an ultra-low carb diet
that includes a night of almost literal binging on carbs: pizza,
donuts, pasta, cupcakes, pretzels, popcorn, etc.
I spent a ridiculous amount of time researching the human body to
refine Carb Nite® to cause massive fat loss without a loss of muscle
tissue and without devastating metabolism in the process. No
excrement necessary. I’m not here to talk about Carb Nite, though,
because it has one fatal flaw: it doesn’t allow much muscle growth
unless starting off portly.
A few years ago, I found myself engineering software for a large
company, glued to my chair for some 80 hours per week. I didn’t
train, I didn’t eat well and it showed. My body reverted to its true
fat-kid nature, not only in function—because of all the shit I ate—
but also in form. I felt and looked disgusting.
Section I: Introduction
Carb Back-Loading
Not a big deal. I quit my job, decided to build a business for myself,
trained my ass off and followed Carb Nite with the blind dedication
I once had for The Anabolic Diet. In no time, I dropped 20 lbs of fat,
was shredded, vascular, freaky and lifting big. But as short of a time
as it took to get back to normal, I became frustrated. I was stuck at
normal.
I didn’t want to be just shredded, I wanted to get huge again, back to
my 230 when I was cut and jacked, before diving full-time into the
software world. No matter how much I ate, even the addition of a
second Carb Nite per week, my muscle mass didn’t budge. What did
happen? I stayed shredded, felt exhausted most of the time and
started accumulating injuries.
Know the song Baby Got Back, by Sir Mix-a-Lot? One-hit wonder
without a doubt and I believe he still performs Baby Got Back at
some of the more progressive Bar Mitzvahs. Diet writers are like this
too: one-hit wonders who keep peddling an out-of-date product.
They don’t realize, or refuse to realize, that science learns more each
day and we’d be wise to take lessons, adapt and prosper.
That’s why I’m always poring over research. Maybe it’s a strength
routine to correct scoliosis, maybe it’s about cellular receptor sites
like the mammalian target of rapamycin, or maybe epigenetics and
why all those pop tarts as a kid screwed up how my genes express,
making it easier to stay and get fat. On the day of the epiphany that
sparked the creation of Carb Back-Loading, I was reading papers
about using resistance training to help type II diabetics control their
blood sugar.
Catalyst
12
This might seem like an odd topic to inspire the creation of the Holy
Grail of Dieting, but that’s where it started. I’ll explain with more
detail later, but basically, in type II diabetes the cells of the body no
longer react to insulin and, therefore, can’t absorb sugar. After
resistance training, however, the muscles of diabetic subjects can
absorb and burn sugar without increasing their sensitivity to insulin.
This set off a cascade of thoughts and a new research focus.
Before I explain why and how it works, maybe I should first tell you
how to do it.




Section I: Introduction
Carb Back-Loading





14
Chapter 3
Carb Back-Loading:
The Cliff Notes


Carb Back-Loading runs contrary to about everything out
there. It bucks many established norms. Many of these norms grew
from a time before a deep understanding of human metabolism and
performance existed, making some of the most common truths no
more than anecdote. Take breakfast’s place as the most important
meal of day in health folklore, or the idea to eat most calories before
evening or even ensuring that the first meal of the day needs to be
carby and fatless. Not a single one of these can be established as fact.
It’s not because scientists never researched the topics. They have.
That’s how I know they’re not fact; the research shows that none of
these ideas is true.
Carb Back-Loading snubs all three of these recommendations and
does so because of the existing research, not because I want to be a
contrarian. Back-Loading does, however, also complement many
lifestyles. Even with these seemingly thrown-in-for-convenience
rules, I base the prescription on science rather than marketability.
What results is an easy, ridiculously effective plan.


Section I: Introduction
Carb Back-Loading
Carb Back-Loading Cliff Notes
1. Shift calories to later in the day, eating lighter in the
morning and early afternoon, and feast at night. This
may include skipping breakfast.
2. Keep carbs at an absolute minimum throughout the
day until training.
3. Train in the afternoon, at around 5pm or so.
4. Start ingesting carbs after your training session, up to
30 minutes later.
5. Continue eating carbs throughout the night.

That’s all there is to it. It may seem too good to be true, that I
designed this simply to sell, but it's how the body works. Eat bacon
and eggs, maybe a chicken salad, a few nuts, cottage cheese, a
hamburger patty with a tomato and some mustard—fat and protein
with some fiber—before training. Train in the evening, say from 5
to 6:30, then start slamming the carbs. When I say slam, I mean
slam. Pizza, French fries, donuts, sandwiches, ice cream, whatever,
as long as there’s carbs involved.



16
Chapter 4
Modulated Tissue
Response (MTR™)


To the less astute, Carb Back-Loading may look like
normal nutrient timing: eat carbs post training, end of story. But this
misses the point—it misses the whole target. The mechanisms that
allow Carb Back-Loading to build muscle while simultaneously
losing fat with ease depend on daily biological rhythms, bio-
molecular manipulation and, unlike most diet protocols, a specific
window of time in which training should occur.
One of the guidelines is to train in the afternoon. Back-Loading
accommodates other training times while remaining simple but, as I
explain later in the book, the best results will come with an
optimum training schedule.
The reason is a principle I call Modulated Tissue Response™, or
MTR. It may sound complicated or esoteric, but the gist is not. MTR
describes the process by which we give each tissue of the body a
specific
instruction, either through diet, activity or both.
Understanding the interaction of food, exercise, and daily rhythms
gives control over any aspect of the body, from health to
performance or simply aesthetics. MTR makes getting and staying
ripped stupid-simple, or it can make dropping even a few pounds of
fat impossible.
Section I: Introduction
Carb Back-Loading
I am not going to tell a story involving post-WWII Bulgarian
research that defines the principles of MTR. Not until the last
decade have experimental methods existed to develop targeted
procedures of body-manipulation. Sure, we knew the basics: eat too
much and get fat, train enough and get muscular—but everything in
between was a crap shoot and created an industry of pet-programs
without basis in science and often without real-world results. Any
rationale—illogical or not—was enough to convince the desperate.
Hope fostered an unscrupulous industry of shit-slingers.
MTR utilizes the latest research to target and manipulate
biomolecular signals to achieve any goal with the least possible
effort. If I could choose a tagline, it would be work smarter, not
harder. This bleeding-edge research allowed the creation of the
soon-to-be-released Shockwave Protocols that integrate training
and diet for maximum results toward various goals. Carb Back-
Loading forms an integral component of the protocols.
Everyone, every day utilizes MTR. Look at the typical American,
the result of undirected MTR. The lack of activity tells the body to
lose muscle and bone, to waste and weaken; the standard desk-
posture tells the trapezius muscles to enervate and lengthen and
pecs and front delts to shorten and tighten; eating carbs while being
inactive signals fat cells to multiply and expand; and because they
give the body far more calories than it needs, it becomes diabetic,
the body’s last attempt to prevent the addition of more body fat.
Understanding MTR makes one thing clear: sole responsibility for
how the body looks and functions lies with the owner.
On the other hand, even a little direction creates huge change.
Training gives muscles the signal to grow, redirecting the growth
Modulated Tissue Response (MTR)
18
signals produced by eating food. Lift heavy weights, eat carbs and
protein and muscles expand and strengthen, which in turn
strengthens bones and increases nervous system efficiency. But the
carbs give fat cells the instruction to grow as well. The side effect is
expanding fat mass along with muscle mass. Our signaling is still
100% anabolic.
Of course the signaling should be anabolic; growth requires anabolic
signals. That’s exactly what anabolic means, stimulating tissue to
grow. Catabolic, a word loathed in the health and fitness
community, means to destroy tissue. Testosterone is anabolic for
muscle tissue; estrogen is anabolic for fat tissue. Insulin is anabolic
for muscle and fat tissue; cortisol is anabolic for fat tissue and
catabolic for muscle tissue, but, depending on conditions, can be
catabolic for fat tissue instead. The list of actions goes on and on.
The short of it: hormones and other signals set the thermostat to
grow or shrink based on a large set of complicated interactions.
Manipulate these signals and transform the body. Even medication
plays a part. Think about it: 100 years ago the average person
needed to exert an incredible amount of effort to reach 300 lbs, but
now that food science and the drug industry have mastered the
correct signaling process for unlimited fat mass, we longer need to
pay a nickel to see the fat man or woman at the carnival. Sit in front
of Walmart and watch as 300-plus pounders stream by in herds.
MTR, however, does not and cannot define one perfect diet, as
many experts and authors like to assert about their plans. These
experts pick up a single fact or study—or worse, an unfounded
personal belief—and push it as the only option. There are no
alternatives, they say, but what they mean is that they know little
Section I: Introduction
Carb Back-Loading
about the human body. They may know one diet and its effects, and
the rudimentary knowledge to defend it, but take them from their
sweet spot, and they're clueless.
No absolute best diet exists; no absolute best diet exists for anyone,
but there is an absolute best diet at a specific time for a specific goal.
This makes the principles of MTR invaluable by offering the
opportunity to fine-tune the body through diet and training to meet
any need at any moment. Acquiring the knowledge—not just a
collection of facts, but experience applying the information—to
competently invoke MTR takes a massive commitment, the time for
which few have.
But don’t worry, my job is understanding MTR and describing how
to use it. In this book, I teach a specific method of combining MTR
principles—Carb Back-Loading—to enhance performance and
aesthetics. You can use the content as a synergistic-whole or dissect
it, decompose it and reassemble it for other purposes. Each section
contains enough information to bend the MTR methods to your
needs if your needs are different than wanting to look and perform
like a super hero.



20
Chapter 5
Always Improving



The Version 1.0 on the cover of a performance oriented
nutritional guide might seem odd. I designated this book Version
1.0, not because I engineer software—well, it obviously has
something to do with that—but because any nutritional protocol
claiming to be the bleeding edge needs to adapt quickly as new
research unfolds and as the author gathers more experience.
As such, the old publishing model of first edition, five years on the
shelf, second edition, five years on the shelf and so on is defunct and
for human performance manuals detrimental. As limiting as this
old-style procedure may be, it is mimicked by online ebook
publishers.
Adopting antiquated systems is not my style. I like to forge new
paths, so I decided to do the same here. In the software world
companies release the best product available at the time, then make
improvements as rapidly as possible. They designate each release
thereafter with versions, minor revisions or additions being labeled
by a 1.1 or 1.2 and major revisions—new editions in old-speak—
being labeled 2.0, 3.0, etc.
I made this mistake with my first published book, The Carb Nite
Solution, and now after five years, I feel I could have been adding
Section I: Introduction
Carb Back-Loading
periodic refinements, producing an exceptional manual. The
information it contains is still cutting-edge and, most importantly, it
works better than its competitors. But it's no longer bleeding-edge.
As I incorporate newer information and add alterations based on
mounting experience, I will release new versions as warranted, and
for those of you jumping onto the ground floor with Version 1.0,
each minor upgrade will cost little; and each major upgrade will be
steeply discounted.




278f2ce47c5558b287daf6ba2478cfe64nkebikbtwbz01nl

22
Section I
Essential Points


Carb Back-Loading Cliff Notes

1. Shift calories to later in the day, eating lighter in the
morning and early afternoon, and feast at night. This
may include skipping breakfast.
2. Keep carbs at an absolute minimum throughout the
day until training.
3. Train in the afternoon, at around 5pm or so.
4. Start ingesting carbs after your training session, up to
30 minutes later.
5. Continue eating carbs throughout the night.


Modulated Tissue Response (MTR)™
The ability to select which tissues grow and which shrink, e.g.
growing muscle while losing fat.

Section I: Introduction
Carb Back-Loading




24
Section II

BRICKS





Section II: Bricks
Carb Back-Loading




26
Chapter 6
Controversy



Carbs cause controversy. While the health experts and
celebrity doctors battle over whether humans need carbs to
survive—we don't—the more performance minded nutrition
experts ponder an intelligent question: how best can we use carbs to
achieve various goals?
Science has yet to answer this question for all the various athletic
scenarios. Researchers drag
trusted assumptions,
like
the
dependence of endurance training success on carbohydrates, into
the laboratory for verification and discover that the assumptions
were worthless. Deeper exploration of the carb conundrum reveals
that carbs impart little benefit except when used in precise, timed
fashion. For endurance, achieving maximum performance does not
require carbs during the training phase; but for peak performance at
the event, the body needs carbs. Precision is key.
To reach that level of precision, however, the simple ideas handed
down through the years about food, particularly carbs and insulin,
need to be modified and sometimes abandoned. With all the
discusson about sugar and insulin in the media, it might appear that
I'm wasting time talking about the two. Turn on the TV, fire up Dr.
Oz and listen to how simple it sounds: eat carbs, the carbs cause a
rise in insulin levels and then the insulin pushes the carbs into cells
Section II: Bricks
Carb Back-Loading
for energy. Throw in a little type II diabetes and the cells just don't
listen to insulin and then sugar floats around in the bloodstream
doing nothing.
For the average person who needs to lose 50 to 100 lbs of pure fat
and is probably only a week away from full-blown diabetes, this
explanation is good enough. But if you're 15% body fat, want to gain
30 lbs of pure muscle and maybe lose a few percentage points of
body fat along the way, you need to know more than 6th-grade
basics.



28
Chapter 7
Insulin: The eXtreme
Growth Agent


Most people with whom I work don't fully understand the
function of insulin. From the information spewed all over the web
by the current cavalcade of health gurus, I know why: many of the
experts don't quite get it either.
In the health industry—to distinguish from the scientific
community—people see insulin like lighter fluid. Sugar is fuel. Hose
it down with a little insulin and a roaring inferno ensues. This is not
the case. Insulin’s main function in the body is anabolic: it wants to
build stuff. That’s why insulin rules amongst the anabolic elite: it
makes everything grow from muscle mass, fat mass and even
glycogen, which is essentially human starch.
Insulin, however, has no real plan about how to build anything, nor
does it participate directly. Its job—the most critical in any building
project—is to transport raw material. Insulin alerts cells to the
presence of material and gets them ready to absorb. This goes for
everything from blood sugar to cholesterol molecules1.
Most cells can absorb these raw materials to some extent without
insulin, but insulin turbocharges the process, which I’ll explain
later. A host of factors determines how cells use the raw material,
but if more material flows in than the cell needs, it’s going to store it
Section II: Bricks
Carb Back-Loading
as something: triaglycerol (fat), glycogen or even muscle tissue (of
which there is a type that’s made for storing protein and is
essentially non-functional).
Insulin does seem to know which material should be used first,
however. That’s why when insulin’s around, not only is it anabolic,
but it’s greatly anti-catabolic. It can stop muscle protein
breakdown2—which is good—but it also stops the body from
releasing and burning fat3. When insulin levels drop, however, fat
burning goes through the roof4. When insulin is high, it increases
the efficiency of fat storage—insulin makes storing fat easier for the
body5.
Eating carbs with all 6 to 8 of the traditional every-two-hour meals
tells the body that if there’s excess material, do something with it.
Protein, sure, is going to be used for tissue repair and growth,
enzyme and hormone production and so on. Fat, well, excess fat will
get stored as fat. For carbs, if glycogen levels are full—which they
normally are—fat cells convert the excess to fat before storing it
away.
The point: don’t think you need super-elevated levels of insulin
24/7. You don’t. It’s extremely useful to elevate insulin levels at
times, and detrimental at others. Carb Back-Loading is the easiest
way to optimize your eating and training schedule so that insulin is
always targeting the correct tissues while not interfering with fat
burning.



30
Chapter 8
Carbs to Burn



Throughout this book I make reference to low-carb
portions of the day and yet meal plans located later in book contain
lots of vegetable suggestions like lettuce, asparagus, some tomatoes,
olives, cucumbers and so on.
Without clarification this may seem oxymoronic. It’s not. What
doesn’t make sense
is using chemists'
classifications
for
carbohydrates instead of a modern system that recognizes effects on
the endocrine system. From the body’s point of view, only two types
of carb exist: usable carbs and fiber.
Carbs, in general, as is well known, cause a release of insulin, get
burned in lieu of fat, augment blood sugar levels and get stored as
fat. This last condition occurs when eating more than the body
needs at that moment, as I alluded in the previous chapter. These
burnable, fat-inducing carbs include sugar, starch, glycerine and
sugar alcohols—also called polyol—and make up what I term usable
carbs.
Fiber, however, doesn’t do any of these things and often does the
opposite. The only way for the body to get energy from fiber is
through fermentation in the colon1. The result of the fermentation
is not sugar or alcohol, but short chain fatty acids. Fiber—a