Is Carb Cycling Bad for Your Metabolism?

Should you carb cycle to lose weight?

If you’re a carb lover or not, you’ve probably heard of carb cycling on the internet at one point or another. 

Carb cycling is an eating plan where you have low-carb days & high-carb days to still get some of the benefits of eating low-carb without completely sacrificing carbs. 

But, is carb cycling bad for your metabolism? 

In this article we’ll discuss if carb cycling is bad for your metabolism or not, & who should carb cycle.

What Is Keto?

Keto dieting is a diet plan that involves cutting out all carbohydrates from the diet to lower insulin & put you into a state of ketosis. This can be done in order to lose weight, increase energy levels, or improve health conditions such as epilepsy or diabetes.

There are many reasons that someone might choose to be on a ketogenic diet. 

However, the most common reasons people do keto is to lose weight, improve energy levels, reduce inflammation, cure diabetes, help solve other health conditions like epilepsy, slow down aging, or even prevent cancer.

What Is Carb Cycling?

Carb cycling is a method of eating where you’ll have low-carb days and then high-carb days. The goal of carb cycling is to reduce the intensity of a keto diet by eating more carbs on certain days.

Now let’s discuss the benefits & negatives of carb cycling.

The Benefits of Carb Cycling

The biggest benefits of carb cycling are that it makes keto easier to stick to, & it makes you “dual-fueled,” meaning you’d be able to use both carbs & fat for energy. It may also improve gut biodiveristy.

• Easier to Follow — If you eat carbs some days on your mostly keto diet, then you’d lose weight slower, but it’d be easier to follow. More freedom with your food choices can be especially nice when you’re eating out.
• Makes You Adjusted to Carbs & Fats — If you eat both carbs & fats at different times, then your body would be adjusted to using both of them as fuel. This would make your body more balanced, kind of like a hybrid car.
• May Improve Gut Health — If on your carb cycle you eat healthy carbs — like peas, beans, corn, etc — then your gut’s good bacteria would grow. However, the opposite is true if you eat refined carbs, your gut’s bad bacteria would grow.

The Negatives of Carb Cycling

The biggest negatives of carb cycling are that you’d lose weight slower, you’d have less energy, your appetite may increase, & you may have digestive issues.

• Less Weight Loss — If you stop doing a keto diet, then you’d stop losing weight. Though it may be easier to stick to than a strict keto diet, your weight loss would take a huge hit since you’d get kicked out of keto very frequently.
• Lower Energy Levels — If you consume both carbs & fats, then your body wouldn’t be able to process both of them for fuel, it would only use carbs as fuel & just store the fat. This is because when insulin is high, your body cannot use fat as energy. That’s why you may experience a big decrease in your energy levels.
• Increased Appetite — If you consume both carbs & fat, your body won’t be able to use its own fat for fuel on the low-carb days. That’s because you’d just be getting back into ketosis, & then you eat carbs on your high-carb day, kicking you out of ketosis. This means you wouldn’t be able to use your own fat, causing you to be hungry.
• Possible Stomach Problems — Consuming both carbs & fats on different days may cause problems with your digestive system since it won’t have the necessary bacteria diversity built to handle either food source.

Because of these reasons, it’s best to only do carb cycling after you’ve lost all the weight you wanted to lose on a keto diet.

Is Carb Cycling Bad for Your Metabolism?

Yes, carb cycling is bad for your metabolism. When you carb cycle, your body cannot use either fuel source — fats or carbs — to a full extent, so your metabolism would go down. If you carb cycle, you likely would stop losing weight & become tired.

If you want to burn fat & lose weight on a keto diet, it’s much more important to eat low-carb all the time so you can reach ketosis.

Once you adapt to ketosis, your energy levels will go up & your cravings will go down, making you not even need to take breaks with carb cycling.

If you carb cycle, your weight loss will stop & your energy levels would go down. So, if you’re new to keto, or haven’t lost all the weight you intended to, just keep doing strict keto until you reach your weight loss goal.

Who Should Carb Cycle?

If you’ve lost all the weight you’ve wanted to on keto, then you can carb cycle to get benefits like being adapted to both carbs & fat, having more dietary freedom, & having more gut biodiversity.

• Being Adapted to Both Carbs & Fat — If you carb cycle, then your body would get adjusted to using both carbs & fat. This would make your overall body & metabolism more balanced.
• More Freedom — If you carb cycle, then you’d have more dietary freedom since you can eat out without worrying about the carbs in your food.
• Better Gut Health — If you eat healthy carbs on your carb cycle, like beans, quinoa, etc, then your gut’s healthy bacteria would improve, improving your gut’s biodiveristy.

But, remember that if you haven’t hit your weight loss goal, don’t carb cycle since it would slow down your metabolism & stop you from losing weight.

How to Carb Cycle Correctly

There are two types of carb cycling approaches: short-term & long-term. However, long-term carb cycling is much better for your metabolism then short-term carb cycling since your body can get used to either fuel source better.

In short-term carb cycling, an approach where you eat let’s say low-carb for five days of the week & high-carb for the other two days. 

It takes around six weeks for your mitochondria to go through their life cycle. 

The problem with short-term carb cycling is that you’d get kicked out of ketosis too often, so your body wouldn’t be able to adjust to either fuel source 100%. 

This would make your metabolism & weight loss slow down, & make you more tired.

The better option is to do long-term carb cycling, for example eating carbs two months of the year & eating keto for the other ten months.

This would give your body time to adjust to each fuel source 100%, so you get the benefits of each side.

However, still keep in mind that this is an advanced strategy only applicable for people who don’t want to lose anymore weight but just want to make their body more balanced overall.

Conclusion

Carb cycling is bad for your metabolism, so if you want to lose weight, don’t carb cycle. This is because it doesn’t give your body enough time to adjust to either fuel source — carbs or fat. However, if you don’t want to lose anymore weight on keto & just want to become more healthy & balanced overall, you should consider carb cycling.

If you’re interested in finding out the best keto approved foods, here’s my list of the best foods to eat for beginners to keto.