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The Exercise A Little Control chapter in Keifer's Carb Backloading book is fascinating. It corroborates something I've known about myself for YEARS; I am basically insulin resistant, which is why I can neither get fat nor muscular, as both require insulin sensitively to happen.

I've always been this way from birth, probably borderline type ii diabetic. I also have always been ravishingly hungry and skinny since birth; starving, two hrs after ANY size meal.

The catch? The starving feeling was because, due to my insulin resistance, my body was not getting the energy I was putting into my mouth. The starving feeling was always MUCH more pronounced on days I was sedentary. Whenever I would exercise, whether endurance or lifting, I could eat, and be satisfied without getting that feeling of starving hunger for the remainder of the day!

It never made sense why before, but I recognized on a base level years before I began to diet research that when I exercised, even though to my understanding the exertion should have made me MORE hungry, it in fact made me LESS hungry!

After reading this chapter, I see why! I don't gain fat or muscle really because I'm insulin resistant period. But, exercise causes non insulin mediated glucose uptake; exercise causes the GLUT to relocate to the surface of the muscle cells and take up sugar from the blood without needing insulin to initiate the process as normal, before insulin is even released by the pancreas!

So exercise works for glucose uptake for even the completely insulin insensitive person....me! Glucose actually goes into my starved muscles when I exercise and eat; so I don't feel starved that day afterwards.

On rest days, I felt starved because the cells never got fed, as there was no exercise induced glucose uptake, and the insulin trigger for GLUT mobilization/cell surface relocation is broken in me, the insulin resistant.

I also knew long ago that carbs always made me feel terrible unless I exercised first! This totally is explained by the same situation above. And, while carbs made me feel terrible in non exercise times because of my insulin resistant body's inability to clear my blood sugar (without exercise to bypass the need for insulin), I had never gone fully ketogenic for long enough to adapt to clean and efficient fat burning, so eating only meat and fat made me feel starved too, just not shitty in addition as it didn't jack my blood sugar!

Makes total sense now. Since I went keto for 5 months I got better at / adapted to burning fat for energy, which resolved the starved condition making me believe i had to eat a meal every 2-3hrs! Keto allowed me to try, and enjoy intermittent fasting. Ive eaten 2 meals a day at 12:00 and 7:00 ever since.

And Leangains reminded me that STRICTLY eating carbs only on exercise days and AFTER training was the only way for me to tolerate carbs bloodsugar-wise, as well as the only way for my muscles to absorb the sugars because of the non insulin mediated glucose transport mechanism! I understood that it worked for me but not why, until now, after reading Keifer's research!

It's all coming together now!

What do you all think? Also, I wonder if this non-insulin mediated glucose uptake in muscle cells initiated by resistance training is shut down by taking antioxidants?

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Makes a lot of sense! Must feel good to have found some answers for yourself -- and the more you understand about how your own body works and what you need to do and when, the better your results will be across the board. – Amy B. Jan 3 at 16:22

4 Answers

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Have you ever seen an endocrinologist? If your insulin response is really that messed up, you should have experienced a LOT more adverse effects than just the inability to gain mass in the from of either muscle or fat.

Anyway, your experience with carb backloading is very consistent with the idea that your insulin sensitivity isn't that great.

Based on the scientific literature, endurance as well as strength workouts upregulate GLUT4 expression on the surface of skeletal muscle cells, although it's still unknown how different workout routines really affect the extent and duration of that upregulation. Insulin- and exercise-induced upregulation of GLUT4 do not use the same intracellular signal transduction pathways. It is highly unlikely that antioxidants will impact exercise-induce transporter upregulation. Ascorbic acid does use a glucose transporter to access mitochondria, but not GLUT4.

The fact that Kiefer recommends postponing exercise and backload until late afternoon/evening has to do with the fact that we are much less insulin sensitive at night/during sleep. His protocol aims at shuttling carbs to muscle through GLUT4 with minimal access to fat tissue. This is best done when the carbs themselves will have minimal capacity to access fat through insulin dependent mechanisms. But since you seem to have a intrinsic insulin insensitivity, you should have great results with that protocol no matter when you work out ... lucky you :)!

I would stick to your routine ... you seem to have a lot of success with it!!

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no i havnt. dont have the money or trust for docs. im teaching in tokyo living the life :) yes ive never been able to gain a shred of muscle no matter the heavy lifting/mad eating, whatever. i can gain belly/handle fat, but i dont get FAT per se. my training yields neuro adaptation and strength increases for sure. so i focus on climing and sports that is good for. leangains has shredded my abs like nothing else. but its been hard work. when i was a cyclist i found i could pound sugar and carbs during and just after long ass rides, but later that day felt off. – animaleater Dec 6 at 0:46
same for long mountaineering climbs 6-10 hrs...pound and absorb carbs wonderfully all day long. if im at rest, they feel crappy. so this is all conjecture. as for my routine, im experimenting with new methods. leangains routine for the past months has been wo fasted 11am, tater and lean beef feed at noon, more taters and beef at 8pm. recently tried to take same amount of carbs, but all pwo meal at noon, then only meat and fish oil 8pm. felt like they absorbed, but the rest of the day after all those carbs was not smooth. – animaleater Dec 6 at 0:50
so this week im trying 11am fasted wo, l2pm whey and bcaa only to facilitate protein synthesis, continue fasting to fat burn, eat lean beef and 15g fish oil 3pm, then all my carbs and rest of lean beef at 8-9pm, so sort of a carb back load type program, but training at midday. i know why keifer recommends evening training, but i work 1-9pm. – animaleater Dec 6 at 0:52
It's not like insulin sensitivity goes from 100% in the morning to 0% in the evening anyway, so making the protocol fit in one's life is already pretty good! – Olivier Dec 6 at 1:24
@animaleater - curious as to why you still take fish oil. You seem to be in good health and have a clean diet that is probably full of omega 3's. Do you have a need for it? Or is it just a habit at this point? – Craig Dec 6 at 1:30
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Well does that mean I am insulin resistant too? I can't gain fat or muscle, and sometimes my hunger is uncontrollable. I have been experimenting with different meals and various macronutrients too see which give me the best satiety and sense of well being. I have ate mostly protein rich meals (this was the worst, I was hungry 10 minutes after finishing the meal). Fat rich meals, there was satiety but a certain emptiness, and I was very nauseous. Then I ate very high starch meals, with zero animal protein, and I was able to stay satiated and very energetic for hours. I was able to work for 6 hours straight without yawning or feeling any sort of fatigue.

The meals consisted of 2.5 pounds of sweet potatoes with various green veggies, and a bit of added fat (very little). Theoretically, this kind of meal should have raised my blood sugar to the roof, and then should have given me a brutal energy crash, but it didn't. However, if I was to add 4 ounces of animal flesh, I would get sleepy and hungry shortly after.

I can't figure out why this happens. Am I sensitive to protein, or does the protein actually raise insulin more than the carbohydrate I was consuming? Anyways sorry for kind of deviating from your question, but I could somewhat relate to you when it comes to constant hunger on rest days, and lack of fat and or muscle gains.

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Firstly, i feel best with 2g animal protein per kilo of bodyweight per day. More and I get hungrier. Less and I get weak. Secondly, did you ever try to go through a proper ketogenic/fat burning adaptation period? It takes 3-4 weeks before feeling any semblance of "well" when beginning. Eat at least 65-70 percent of calories from fat, rest from protein, during this period. It'll feel like crap. Stick it out, not a drop of sugar or starch. 4 weeks in, you'll start burning fat like a furnace. This allowed me to go from eating every 3hrs to twice or once per day! – animaleater Nov 8 at 4:40
Don't limit calories during adaptation or first part of honeymoon period...just enjoy and eat fattiest cuts of beef, lamb, etc. stay this way for at least 3 months. I did for 5. Since, I do Leangains and have become more shredded than i imagined possible. After adapting to burn fat, I can now eat sweet potatoes or rice after training only and not crash. Intermittent fasting has been made possible by the keto adaptation period which taught me the difference between hormonal and true hunger. – animaleater Nov 8 at 5:02
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 Trust me I did keto for five months. I was downing 300 grams of fat and only 20 grams of carbs, but I have felt the most satiety with a higher starch, lower protein diet. When I first increased starch I didn't lower protein, which left me feeling like crap all day. Maybe because protein plus carb equals too much insulin? – ROB Nov 8 at 19:30
update: ive been eating 2.5g/kg protein and feel much more satiety and can get by all day with less calories. also, i was having insane sugar cravings after i ate ice cream on my birthday after YEARS not touching sugar. was downing 20 pops three times a week like cocaine addiction! started taking chromium glycinate 1000mcg a day spread out, and poof, no cravings or even hunger! seriously awesome. you could have a carb/sugar craving problem if youre tend to eat higher carb for satiety. try the chromium. – animaleater Dec 6 at 0:39
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Makes sense.

My experience has been a bit different though - exquisite insulin sensitivity thus easy fat gain when eating excess carbs combined with wrong type of training (too much cardio and little resistance). I went LC then VLC combined with ramping up resistance exercise and had no muscle gain and a bit of chub gain in fact despite the exercise (note to self, one needs a bit of the insulin for muscle gain). Despite having little to no hunger while constantly LC, I also experienced little satiety - if that makes any sense. Like a need for more of something but no desire to eat? Weird, I know.

So using hard resistance exercise along with carb timing makes perfect sense to me. In fact I've been backloading (or just simply timing carbs for night) along with RESISTANCE exercise with some pretty great results. I'm not going for contest prep or anything so I don't binge on the carbs or anything. I also like to keep them clean so tubers and rice are my go to.

I emphasize resistance exercise because it translocates GLUT 4 but endurance exercise may not (at least that's how I understand it). I think there's a place for BOTH but resistance should be the priority IMO.

@ROB - from what I understand a lot of amino acids are quite insulin promoting and in fact the combo of those proteins plus carbs is the most insulin promoting macro combo (bodybuilding diet). I have wondered about using something like gelatin as a good protein to eat with lots of carbs (shanks, broths etc.) as glycine is supposed to help insulin do it's job better. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12450897 I dunno but it's something I'm going to mess around with a bit.

The antioxidants thing is a tricky one I think. Some studies on endurance athletes say they have no effect on insulin sensitivity: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21325105. Someone else prolly knows more than me about this but I think that it's specifically ascorbic acid (which is the common form of supplemental C) that uses the GLUT transport system and insulin mediated uptake and competes with sugar for entry into the cell http://www.newswithviews.com/Howenstine/james52.htm . I guess in theory this can blunt post exercise GLUT expression by taking up some of the transporter spaces that you want to remain available for the carbs you are about to pound.

I've read that some polyphenols and caffeine are great at helping upregulate those GLUT transporters. Coffee + fasted exercise + carbs = win.

$.02

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So train with coffee at 11am fasted for 15hrs, eat huge carbs at 12pm meal, protein/fat only at 7pm, no carbs rest days, win? – animaleater Nov 8 at 6:30
What about Keifer's advice to eat carbs at night? – animaleater Nov 8 at 6:31
Keifer's advice is solid on the issue, IMO. – Craig Dec 3 at 18:43
been trying my usual 11am fasted workout, but then taking only whey and bcaa pwo at 12pm, continuing to burn fat, eating protein (lean beef and 15g fish oil) at 3pm, then rice/potatoes and lean beef for dinner 8-9pm. feels good so far. my worry is that carbs are better absorbed PREFERENTIALLY by the muscles and not fat or brain tissues within 30 min of training via tGLUT translocation, so waiting until hours later to carb load may be more fat storage inducing. but, it honestly feels better than eating carbs at noon...rest of the day feels off. before bed is great. – animaleater Dec 6 at 0:42
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 also research shows nite carbs yield better body composition overall, even without training at all. – animaleater Dec 6 at 0:43
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You Should Try looking over your routine if you aren't satisfied with your gains, maybe even revert to starting strength, partnered with the correct calories its nearly impossible not to achieve strength gains if not visible body re-composition. If you truly feel you are insulin resistant, go see a specialist, there's no point in looking great if you're hospital ridden due to an undiagnosed disorder. Given my relative lack of experience, I'd bump up your protien a little bit as well, it cant hurt. If you feel like it'll help, post your stats, I'm sure someone who has a fair amount of knowledge on the issue will be able to offer you some genuine tailored help instead of this vague paragraph. I have a friend with a thyroid disorder that directly affects their ability to yield results and it can be fairly frustrating.

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I've run various panels over the years, all normal. By feel I know my body doesn't like carbs well unless long hard mountain climbs or the like are involved, in which case it loves carbs. My gut may well malabosrb nutrients. My genitive potential may be reached. Not sure. But I've been strength training 5 reps or less, heavy, for years. I'm a lot stronger than when I began. I'm. A born fast and light guy. Protein is 2.5g/kg now btw. – animaleater Feb 27 at 23:52

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