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What's the time frame before you "un-do" things
Deena_Bean
Posts: 906 Member
So say you've been good at your low carb levels and you stay in your goal area (for the sake of simplicity lets say 75 total carbs a day). You're doing well with it for the most part, but some days are just no good. This is sort of what's happening to me, but nothing serious. I've had a few relatively high carb days lately, but most of the time I do ok. In terms of losing weight, how big of a set back is a few days? Does it matter if the days are consecutive, does that make it worse or does it make no difference? I'm not super worried about it or anything, I'm just curious of how much of a setback it can be to mess up a few times before you get back on the pony, ya know? This is two-fold. I'm going to Aruba at the end of the month and I am sure I'll have a few undesirable days in there. I am honestly planning to stick to low carb foods as much as possible because I feel pretty crappy in the tummy when I don't. Anyways..thoughts?
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I've found that 1-2 days of notably increased carbs will stall my weight loss for about 2 weeks. For me, it's likely tied to insulin and blood glucose levels. I'm diabetic (T2) and following 1-2 days of increased carbs my blood glucose is much higher and requires a higher dose of insulin.1
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Interesting! I know if I fall off the wagon somewhat and have a short period of days of higher carb, it takes about 5-7 days for my stomach to flatten back down. It's annoying. You'd think I would have learned by now to just not even go there. The yums don't taste yummy enough to outshine the body suck that happens the next few days after.
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1 day of high carb would be sufficient to reload glycogen stores, knock you out of ketosis, and start retaining sodium again. It's the sodium retention that causes most of the water gain. It usually takes 4 days or so to lose the sodium/water once you deplete glycogen (which takes maybe 2 days), so 6 days would be about right to dump the water weight.
No big deal, but the water gain tends to freak people out about eating carbs, which helps reinforce staying low-carb.
The bigger danger is losing the good eating habits you formed. It's easy to fall into the old high-carb groove again, and sometimes hard to get back into the new low-carb groove you've been working so hard to stay in.1 -
It's not just sodium water retention. I think I've seen that in order to process 1 glucose or glycogen molecule the body needs 3 H2O molecules. Don't remember which one it was. Which basically means eating carbs makes you bloat up. Correct me if I'm wrong!2
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@wabmester - valid point! I am back in the saddle today and I'm hoping it's not terribly difficult. I think I should be pretty good to fall back into my better ways. My stomach is shredded from the 2 days (Mon/Wed) of bad choices and I have no desire to even eat anything that doesn't fit right in to my low carb ways. I feel so poorly now that I don't want to eat anything at all to be honest. It's like my stomach/intestines are carbonated!
Lots of water drinking coming up on the agenda. I haven't weighed myself in weeks so I don't know what the gain is - but I can feel the bloatedness in my pants. By this time next week I'll have flattened back out some, though, so that makes me feel better.
One more question - when you've messed up your groove and you come back to the LC side, how soon does sodium deplete? Like how quickly will I need to supplement that?2 -
Deena_Bean wrote: »@wabmester - valid point! I am back in the saddle today and I'm hoping it's not terribly difficult. I think I should be pretty good to fall back into my better ways. My stomach is shredded from the 2 days (Mon/Wed) of bad choices and I have no desire to even eat anything that doesn't fit right in to my low carb ways. I feel so poorly now that I don't want to eat anything at all to be honest. It's like my stomach/intestines are carbonated!
Lots of water drinking coming up on the agenda. I haven't weighed myself in weeks so I don't know what the gain is - but I can feel the bloatedness in my pants. By this time next week I'll have flattened back out some, though, so that makes me feel better.
One more question - when you've messed up your groove and you come back to the LC side, how soon does sodium deplete? Like how quickly will I need to supplement that?
start supplementing right away, it happens fast for me4 -
Foamroller wrote: »It's not just sodium water retention. I think I've seen that in order to process 1 glucose or glycogen molecule the body needs 3 H2O molecules. Don't remember which one it was. Which basically means eating carbs makes you bloat up. Correct me if I'm wrong!
Not wrong, just not very significant. Liver stores maybe 70-100g of glycogen, so the total water weight due to glycogen loss/gain is about 400g. Less than 1 lb. It's mostly sodium.Deena_Bean wrote: »One more question - when you've messed up your groove and you come back to the LC side, how soon does sodium deplete? Like how quickly will I need to supplement that?
It depends on your level of carb intake, but usually 1-2 days after you start. Starting right away wouldn't hurt.
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Thanks!0
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Foamroller wrote: »It's not just sodium water retention. I think I've seen that in order to process 1 glucose or glycogen molecule the body needs 3 H2O molecules. Don't remember which one it was. Which basically means eating carbs makes you bloat up. Correct me if I'm wrong!
Not wrong, just not very significant. Liver stores maybe 70-100g of glycogen, so the total water weight due to glycogen loss/gain is about 400g. Less than 1 lb. It's mostly sodium.
Out of curiosity, how much water is retained per mg of sodium then?0 -
I once calculated the ratio at around 360:1 (assuming blood volume adjusts to maintain 140 mmol/l). So a loss of 10g (after a week) = 8 lbs.0
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Foamroller wrote: »It's not just sodium water retention. I think I've seen that in order to process 1 glucose or glycogen molecule the body needs 3 H2O molecules. Don't remember which one it was. Which basically means eating carbs makes you bloat up. Correct me if I'm wrong!
Not wrong, just not very significant. Liver stores maybe 70-100g of glycogen, so the total water weight due to glycogen loss/gain is about 400g. Less than 1 lb. It's mostly sodium.Deena_Bean wrote: »One more question - when you've messed up your groove and you come back to the LC side, how soon does sodium deplete? Like how quickly will I need to supplement that?
It depends on your level of carb intake, but usually 1-2 days after you start. Starting right away wouldn't hurt.
Then what about muscle glycogen and water retention ? A male college student can store up to 400 or 500g... Ofc the number varies with muscle mass. The less muscle, the less capacity to store influx of glucose. Which might be why women are more vulnerable to IR than men. (less muscle fibers).0 -
Yup, a male athlete will have a lot of muscle glycogen. But how is that depleted?
It's not available for "general" use. It's localized to the muscle and used for anaerobic metabolism. So it won't be depleted by simply restricting carbs.
And when muscle glycogen is depleted (via anaerobic exercise), it's restored at rest.
Interestingly, Volek found no difference in LC vs HC muscle glycogen levels in the FASTER study:
Despite these marked differences in fuel use between LC and HC athletes, there were no significant differences in resting muscle glycogen and the level of depletion after 180 min of running0
This discussion has been closed.