With the Super Bowl a little more than a week away, you might be wondering if you can save up all of your carbs and eat them during the game.
Maybe, you're trying to make one of your favorite foods fit within a low-carb context and to do that, you need to spend all, or almost all, of your carbs on a single meal.
Perhaps, it's a special day like Valentine's Day and you just want to feel normal, and special, and loved, so spending all of your carbs at once can help you achieve that goal.
Whether you can do that without kicking your self out of ketosis depends on your degree of insulin resistance and the total number of carbs you're eating at any one time.
Eating 20 carbs at a single meal will have a lower effect on weight loss than eating 35. What your body does after eating a lot of carbs is what matters because everyone doesn't react to carbs in the same way.
Plus, how often you do this is also a contributing factor.
If it's just for the Super Bowl or a special occasion, and then you go right back to spreading out your carbs over the course of the day, it won't have long-term consequences.
What you do once in a blue moon doesn't matter much.
It's what you do every single day that contributes to what you weigh right now.
What Happens When you Eat Carbs?
The low-carb community treats carbs like they're a poison. There's a tremendous amount of fear going around. Carbohydrates are not essential to the human diet. That's correct. But, that doesn't mean they are evil.
Carbohydrates are a macronutrient that the body uses for fuel.
In fact, the brain needs a certain amount of glucose every single day. Ketones only supply the majority of calories the brain uses to function. While the body can make glucose out of a variety of things, carbs are high on the list of acceptable energy sources.
The problem comes when you overeat them.
- alcohol
- carbohydrates
- proteins (amino acids)
- fat
It doesn't do that with carbs.
If there's no alcohol around, carbohydrates are used before proteins and fat. Fat is used last! Most low-carb dieters don't know that. Fat is immediately stored, since it doesn't have to be turned into something else, and it's only used after carbohydrates and proteins have been processed.
This is why low-carb food choices encourage the body to use more fatty acids for fuel. It keeps carbs scarce.
The body secretes insulin into the bloodstream every few seconds. This insulin is known as basal insulin and the insulin that falls when you go low carb. The body uses your overall carb intake as a guide for how much basal insulin to make and secrete.
When you start to eat, the body will dump insulin into the bloodstream, the amount of insulin you used to process your prior meal. The body has no way of knowing what you're eating right now until it begins to digest it.
This insulin is called first-phase insulin response and uses your food habits as a guide.
Liver glycogen is essential to keep your blood glucose level steady.
If your blood glucose level is too high, after eating, it triggers a second-phase insulin release. It's this second-phase insulin release that low carbers are afraid of and try to avoid.
The amount of second-phase insulin it takes to bring your blood sugar back down depends on how many carbs you ate at that meal, in addition to how sensitive you are to the insulin that the body makes.
If your basal insulin and first-phase insulin response are strong enough to handle the amount of carbs you ate, then your blood glucose stays down and there's no need for more insulin.
This is the state that many low carbers attempt to achieve, but second-phase insulin isn't something you need to fear. It's a normal response to eating since you don't eat the exact same thing at each meal.
Over time, the body learns how much insulin it needs to keep on hand by the amount of carbs you eat at each meal.
What Happens When You Eat All of Your Carbs at a Single Meal?
If you're on 20-net carbs per day and decide to eat them all at once, you'll likely need a second-phase insulin response to take care of the extra glucose in your bloodstream; but then, insulin will fall and stay low until you eat carbs again.
While protein also triggers an insulin response, it's lower than if you ate both carbs and protein at the same time. This is similar to what happens during Intermittent Fasting and OMAD (One Meal a Day), except that when fasting, you don't have protein at your other meals.
If you're eating 30- to 40-net carbs, that's going to pack a huge glucose punch if you try to eat them all at a single meal. You'll definitely need a second-phase insulin response and if insulin resistant, maybe even a third.
While that won't be a problem long-term, such as when I went out to dinner for my birthday, a lot depends on your degree of insulin resistance. The more resistant to insulin you are, the higher your blood glucose will go after a carby meal and the longer it will take to return to normal.
The Important Thing to Remember
The body strives for balance. It doesn't like your blood sugar getting out of whack. That actually harms your red blood cells and makes you even more resistant to insulin.
The body tries to prepare for glucose coming in, and carbs that you eat consistently help the body do that, but it can only use your day-to-day eating habits as a guide.
If you are insulin resistant, then you have an upper carb limit that you can eat per meal without your blood glucose level going up into the danger zone.
It's not per day.
It's per meal.
Regardless of what you ate earlier in the day, your body can only process so much glucose at one time.
For me, it's 20 to 30 carbs.
For you, it might be higher or lower than that.
Those 20 to 30 carbs are much lower for me than it was the last time I was on Keto, so you need to be aware of that too. Things won't always stay the same.
As time goes on, your carbohydrate tolerance will change.
I'm using my blood sugar as a guide, but also watching my hunger and cravings. The lower in carbs you go, the lower your hunger and discomfort will be.
This means my body can process about 60 carbs per day and maintain my current weight. But only when I spread those 60 carbs out over all of my meals. There's no way I could eat 60 carbs at one time and not have my blood sugar spike.
Since I'm in weight-loss mode again right now, I'm not doing that. I'm eating 20 to 30 carbs per day and eating most of my carbs at dinner and our evening snack.
I am also not limiting myself to low-carb foods. I've decided that no carb-heavy foods are off limits. I just eat smaller portions.
So yes, in my personal experience, you can eat all of your carbs at one meal and still lose weight!
Those doing Intermittent Fasting or OMAD would agree.
You just have to find what works for you!
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