Lokidixon's Journal, 12 June 2015

Hmmm - I alternate carb days; I go 20 total carbs or under for several days then have a couple higher carb days thrown in once a week. It works OK. 

Thanks for sharing your experience, HCB. That's encouraging. This week should tell a lot. 

I would discourage it. Eating low-carb gets your body in a gluconeogenesis (GNG) state where you are converting fat into glucose for energy. When you up your carbs, or "cheat", you cause your body to stop and use glucose that you've eating. When you go back to low-carbs, you'll again take a bit to get back into that gluconeogenesis state. The insulin spike will cause 2 things. You to store what ever glucose you don't use as fat and in addition, it will cause your adipose tissue to inflame and retain water with it's new accumulation of glucose. Water retention is semi for type 2 diabetics because of their need to inject insulin. You'll be releasing this insulin on your own. When I read 'cheat day' I think what I would do on a cheat day which would be Frito Pies, Steak Fries and Nachos; triple digit carbs. How much carbs need to be upped to loose GNG? How long to get back into GNG? I don't have a clue, but I'm fairly certain it is different for each person. Before you cheat, ask yourself if you want to delay your goal. Some people have 'tighter deadlines' then others. I really don't mean to be doom & gloom and often times when people ask questions like this, we as humans, usually answer the questions as if we were asking ourselves that question, which I'm pretty sure I did. lol. I don't have cheat days. I've 'cheated' my whole life. 

LOL - also agree with Frosty. Although I carb cycle at times - my "high" is still low 

Wow, thanks for the excellent breakdown, Frosty. I'd worried about that. For this weekend, I'll look to keep my "high" low, in the fashion of HCB. I realize that that will still screw up my progress toward GNG, but I'll take stock early next week, assess the damage, and figure out the next move. Likely I'll return to my zero cheat mentality. I really appreciate your taking the time to lay it all out so clearly and persuasively.