If I carb up at Christmas, I'm more likely to binge over the following week, the extra food on the day might not be enough to do much damage, but I'll probably gain weight for the week. I can afford to do this on holidays, although I enjoy them more if there are low carb options I can stick to. What good is enjoying cookies etc. if between cookies you feel cruddy?



I realize the opening question started out not being about cookies, donuts etc. See some of John Kiefer's early stuff, he's backed off somewhat, but his original carb ups were things like cherry danishes, jelly donuts.

If it's higher quality carbs we're talking about--the micronutrition gets better. But some of the sciencey rationales for carb-ups don't really sit well with me. You can increase leptin levels with a carb up. Ookay. A carb up increases leptin. So would injecting insulin. How do you get leptin levels lower? Increase net lipolysis in fat cells. How do you get them higher? Decrease net lipolysis. Leptin doesn't go up when you've corrected a carb deficiency, it goes up when your fat cells are getting fatter. Seems a bit counterproductive. But I'm just disputing the mechanism, if somebody tries the approach, and they lose weight or even better get healthier, good for them.

I actually don't have a problem with people eating an intermittently low carb diet, much of the time it's a lot better than no low carb diet at all. Lots of people say this is easier for them to stick to than straight low carb--for their personal case, obviously they're in a better position than I am to say.