Carb Back-Loading: Guest Poster Alexi

CBL is making waves

This week I had the pleasure of reading a book by a physicist turned iron freak named John Kiefer. He is a self-described physics geek who exercised his chubby kid demons in the most positive way.
He sifted through massive loads of academic studies searching for a better diet and he may very well have come up with one.
He postulates that all lifters can use this diet, eat the stuff we like before bed, and still get shredded without losing size or strength.
It sounds like the utopia of the diet world and I took a break from my hunt for a new deadlift PR in order to purchase, read, digest, research, and evaluate this work.






Kiefer's original diet inspiration was derived from a book recently reviewed on Fitmid-life.com called The Anabolic Solution by Mauro G. Di Pasquale. It wasn't long before Kiefer had come up with a hybrid low carb, intermittent fasting diet with a high carb cheat night once per week. He then wrote a book on it called Carb Nite. He indicated that while this diet worked for losing fat, it didn't allow him to gain much muscle. And Kiefer was after the "alchemy" know as muscle gain with simultaneous fat loss. With the cold precision of a physicist (no offense meant), he began dissecting his diet quandary until he came up with carb back-loading. In a sense, it is a kind of early morning fasting, low carb diet that requires resistance trainees to eat high glycemic carbs like ice cream and pizza from shortly after their evening workouts until bedtime.

The resistance training required for all of this to work is either of strength training or body building type.   It's supposed to be heavy and intense. He was very clear that this diet is NOT for endurance athletes, insanity workout disciples, PX90 disciples, CrossFitters, or anyone NOT doing standard rep/set scheme weightlifting. That alone endeared me to Kiefer as we all have been touting the benefits of strength training with free weights over most other training methods for years.  On the other hand, the fact that Kiefer was or is an advisor for Men's Fitness and Muscle and Fitness made me very skeptical if only because the fluff that usually comes from those sources.  There was a lot to gain and little to lose so I took the plunge.

So for the list price of $57 I got a pdf with infinite updates or something like that.  Whenever Kiefer updates his info, I automatically get it.  His book is step-by-step and it seems pretty easy to follow.  It's only 150 pages or so and his writing style is very easy to read even when he introduces complex topics. The book is more for men as there are very few women who regularly lift he kind of weight necessary for this diet to work.  Needless to say, the book seemed anti-cardio and he had me at "anti-card".  The biggest deal is the shift of most calories to late at night after your workouts.  Kiefer explains how a glucose transport protein family called Tgluts work to feed muscle cells.  He has fairly aggressive, strategic uses for caffeine, whey protein, and creatine.  His theories seem logical based on the references provided, but some conclusions could be considered a stretch.  This is twofold.  Some studies cited were corollary at best and had details that sapped some of their strength like, duration of the study, sample size or sex, and other factors that could have attributed to the outcome of the experiments.  This is normal and valid theories exist despite these details, but the idea of a super easy solution that flaunts convention especially in a biological system seems far-fetched.  Even if this works we may still be incorrect as to why it works.  So I'm a guinea pig and I'm happy to do my part.  If this works, it will be worth every penny, right?

Alexi Luzyviento