In this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I sit down with strength coach and educator Jon Heck to explore the intricacies of carb cycling. We discuss everything from Jon's personal journey with different dietary approaches, including ketogenic diets and carb cycling, to specific strategies tailored for athletes and general fitness enthusiasts. Highlights include the timing and distribution of carb intake, the role of hydration and electrolytes, and the benefits of structured nutritional planning for optimizing performance and body composition. Whether you're an athlete, coach, or someone looking to improve your nutrition game, you won't want to miss this insightful conversation. Tune in and learn how to make carb cycling work for you.
In this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I sit down with strength coach and educator Jon Heck to explore the intricacies of carb cycling. We discuss everything from Jon's personal journey with different dietary approaches, including ketogenic diets and carb cycling, to specific strategies tailored for athletes and general fitness enthusiasts.
Highlights include the timing and distribution of carb intake, the role of hydration and electrolytes, and the benefits of structured nutritional planning for optimizing performance and body composition. Whether you're an athlete, coach, or someone looking to improve your nutrition game, you won't want to miss this insightful conversation.
Tune in and learn how to make carb cycling work for you.
For part 1 of our discussion is on Jon's Hammer and Chisel Podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xnVr9_rGMo
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. On this podcast, we talk about all things to increase muscle, increase performance, improve body composition, do all of it in a flexible framework without destroying your health. Today we've got John Heck, and we're talking about carbo cycling.
We did a part one of this. I was on John's podcast, the Hammer and Chisel Performance podcast. And then this is sort of like a part two, although we're talking about a little bit of, uh, different things. So, um, each of these episodes are independent, so you can definitely listen to this one. But if you want to get the most out of it, I would highly recommend you go over to, we'll put a link down below to the Hammer and Chisel Performance podcast you'll find.
My name there, and you can listen to kind of the part one, uh, of this. As I mentioned, we're talking all about [00:01:00] carb cycling. So John is a strength coach educator, and as I said, host of the Hammer and Chisel performance podcast. He is working at the intersection of performance, nutrition, good training, and trying to make it.
Sustainable over the long term. He is known for his practical, non-dogmatic approach to carb cycling, fueling strategies. Uh, he is worked with all sorts of athletes from his time, even in the NFL coaching, uh, to working with NFL athletes now, strong men, competitors, and. Uh, even just people looking to gain muscle and improve body composition.
So I think you'll enjoy this podcast. I was able to meet John in person at, uh, shout out to my buddy Coach Cav at his mastermind meeting, which was amazing. And we got chatting about all nerdy things and we're like, Hey, we should do a podcast on this. We're like, yes, that would be great. So, here we are [00:02:00] and on this podcast.
As I mentioned, uh, we do a deep dive into carb cycling. So on this one I get to pick John's brain, um, on it and everything from just his experiments with diets and working with bodybuilding coaches, high carb days versus fat loss, some of the details of electrolytes and hydration, carb cycling per performance, carb loading for NFL players, game day strategies, post-game recovery.
When should you do high carb versus low carb days? We even get into specifics of, in our workout, nutrition, pre-workout meals, managing micronutrients, and even a little bit on the psychological aspects, um, of dieting, should you do reverse dieting versus getting back to maintenance. Tons of really great stuff.
Uh, super fun talking to John. I really appreciate. All of his knowledge, and especially just the [00:03:00] expertise he has of working with a wide range of individuals for many, many years. So I think he'll really enjoy this one. Uh, make sure to check out the part one on his show. Um, also, and I have used carb cycling with a fair amount of, uh, clients and athletes over the years.
Um, I probably should talk a little more about it in public, but, um. Yeah, so this is kind of one of those opportunities to to do that. So I've also realized recently that this is a strategy I thought a lot more people were using and there wasn't really anything new to add. And I realized I think there's probably a lot of stuff people aren't aware of yet and can get some really good benefit from it.
So enjoy this podcast with John Heck. And if you want more from me, check out my Fitness Insider newsletter where we've got great stuff going out on a daily basis. Go down to the link below. We'll put a link directly here in your favorite [00:04:00] podcast, the viewer. You can hop on. It's completely free. We send you cool stuff.
Try to make them as entertaining as possible. Also with solid information too. Add more muscle, improve body composition, and improve performance. So check that out below. Enjoy this podcast here with the man, John Heck,
I.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Welcome to the product. I'm John. How are you doing?
John Heck: I'm doing great. How about you? Appreciate you having me on.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah, thank you so much.
We recorded, another one, a similar continuation of this on your podcast, so I'll make sure to refer everyone to that. And now you're back on my podcast, so this'll be great.
John Heck: Yes, sir. Fitting. I just as finished a large bowl of chicken and rice in preparation for a discussion on carbohydrates.
So,
Dr Mike T Nelson : yeah. And it was great to meet you at coach Cavs meeting. And we were in a little group together and I was like, this guy looks familiar and it was bugging me. [00:05:00] I'm like, I recognize his voice. Okay, his name, this is a big dude, what he is eating outta containers. And I said, oh, what was that? And it was some.
Apple sauce, something or another you had prepared in this like massive container.
John Heck: I think it was Cream of Rice and I had some fruit and honey in there. That's right. Sourdough and Jelly. But yeah, it was, I'm always a little bit of a spectacle with my Tupperware meals, but I had a training session shortly thereafter, so had to carve up.
But yeah, it was great meeting you in person. It's always cool to face-to-face, meet with people who I've always respected from afar. Whether it's, reading articles, social media, podcasts, whatever. It is always great to connect with great people in the industry in real life.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And it was great to meet you there and followed a bunch of your stuff.
I, I finally figured it out. It was like, oh, it was the Dave Dates podcast. I heard you on. I was like, oh. Exactly. That's all making sense. 'cause you recognize like a lot of people now. I recognize the name but I recognize the voice more from listening to [00:06:00] podcasts than anything else, which is this weird thing.
And you, it's probably happened to you too. I remember a couple years ago, I was in a airport in Chicago. I was just stand in line. I was talking to someone and this guy comes up and he goes, Hey, you're Mike T. Nelson, aren't you? And I'm like. Yeah. He's like, I recognized your voice from your podcast.
I'm on your newsletter. And I was like, oh, wow. This is surreal.
John Heck: Yeah. It is surreal. You, whatever podcast you listen to, you spend so many hours with that person in your ear.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
John Heck: And then you hear them in real life. And it's surreal. It's like you're all of a sudden implanted into your favorite TV show.
It's like I'm actually talking to the person I've spent so many hours listening to. So it's always cool to, do a podcast with someone whose podcast you, you've listened to. Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson : And so today we're talking about carb cycling, and the first question I had is, how did you get into carb cycling?
Was it. Yourself as an athlete? Were you reading the research? Was it just something you wanted to try? Like what [00:07:00] was the first time you just started playing around with it?
John Heck: Yeah, so my journey into carbohydrates has been all over the map. My my actual first ever. Real diet that I followed was a ketogenic diet of all things.
Oh, wow. Yeah, it was immediately post football. I, I'd been an offensive lineman. I was never truly fat, but I, I wanted abs. I'd always been a fan of bodybuilders and powerlifters and the fitness industry. And when I finally finished playing football I was going into strength and conditioning and I wanted to compete in powerlifting and, I wanted to have abs. I wanted to have a great physique. And at that time, keto had really exploded onto the scene in popularity. And what year
Dr Mike T Nelson : was this about, do you know?
John Heck: This was 2016.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Okay, got it. Got it.
John Heck: So it's not like keto was new or anything at that. Yeah. But
Dr Mike T Nelson : it was up on the popularity scale for sure.
John Heck: For sure. It was in Vogue and I had read
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah,
John Heck: you mentioned him on my podcast. I'd read Jeff Ick, the Art and Science of Low [00:08:00] Carbohydrate Performance.
Dr Mike T Nelson : I got that somewhere around here still.
John Heck: Yeah. And I was an avid listener of Mark Bell's podcast and he was
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
John Heck: War on carbs.
Yeah. Keto guy. So I did a ketogenic diet and I lost a lot of weight and I lost a lot of muscle too. So I dropped from about, three 20 down to 2 65 emaciated. I now granted I dieted down too fast and I'm sure if I were to do a ketogenic diet now, I could have done it better. But, I got really lean, I got really weak and I didn't like how weak I'd gotten. So I bulked back up. I started competing in power lifting and as I got into strength sports I just started eating everything in sight. I wanted to be as big and strong as possible. And then next thing you know, I was 355 pounds and a fat mess.
And I was, that's a big swing. I was, okay. Yeah. Huge swing. I got really strong great leverages that I [00:09:00] built for my bench and my squat couldn't deadlift anymore. I was so thick in the midsection. Mm-hmm. I couldn't even get into a starting position. I was at a breath walking up the stairs and hated the way I looked.
So I was like, okay. I wanna diet back down again, but I wanna do this right. I want to have somebody, a professional guide me through this. So I hired a bodybuilding coach. I figured, Hey, who does body composition based diets better than anyone else in the world? It's the bodybuilders
Dr Mike T Nelson : for sure.
John Heck: So I hired a bodybuilding coach.
His name is Cornelius Park. He was one of my early mentors with this. Now he put me on a diet that was, you could call it a carb cycling diet of sorts. It was basically a training day, non-training day split, where on my training days my carbohydrates were a bit higher, specifically around the training window.
I had great success with that diet. And then over the course of the next few years, I worked with a few different bodybuilding coaches and I was picking up different methodologies, things that I liked, things that I didn't like. [00:10:00] And then finally I worked with a guy named Justin Harris, who I hired him back in 2018, was there 2018 or 19, and he put me on a, traditional.
High, medium and low day carbo carb cycling diet. And we started off in a fat loss phase. So I was doing one high carb day per week. I was doing medium carb days on all of my training days other than the high day. And then I was doing low carb days on my non-training days. And I had great success with that.
And after that I, I really stuck with carb cycling approaches moving forward for myself. And I started using it with a lot of clients that I work with.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Very cool. Completely. Side note off topic. Have you heard Justin tell his story about testing out the different waxy maze? Yes.
Supplement line?
John Heck: I have. You tried one of them? It was like a industrial
Dr Mike T Nelson : industrial [00:11:00] wood glue or something. He is like, that one worked the best. I was like, oh my God.
John Heck: Yeah. It's crazy. Some of these different concoctions that have like random, industrial applications that, that also have some sort of a bodybuilding, like I'm sure you've heard of DNP the
Dr Mike T Nelson : Oh yeah.
John Heck: Infamous Mitochondrial on Coler. Yeah. Just a what a, a RA used in insecticides and explosives.
Dr Mike T Nelson : TT
John Heck: yeah. TT
Dr Mike T Nelson : workers actually were getting too lean and they couldn't figure out why, and then some of 'em were dying and getting cataracts and it turns out that the two four TRO Fenal, DNP can be basically transdermal, it gets in the air and it was being absorbed through their skin.
And it basically, because even though it flips a mitochondria into just spinning off too much heat. Not enough a TP production. And yeah, if you take too much, there's no drug that will reverse that [00:12:00] action. It just starts and just keeps going. So yeah. The side effect of death not so good.
John Heck: Yeah. An incredibly potent fat loss agent, if you're willing to roll the dice on literally cooking yourself from the inside out with no known antidote.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. I've known people who have done it and all of them said the same thing of. They felt just absolutely horrible. And all of them said they sweat like yellow. One guy was like, I stained all the sheets. 'cause I would just sweat all the time 'cause I was so hot and I would sweat like this yellow colored like fluid.
Mm-hmm. And I felt horrible. But he is like, man, I lost a lot of weight. I was like, holy shit.
John Heck: Yeah. I am. I'm embarrassed to admit I actually did try DNP once and how'd it go? It was in a very experimental phase of my life. Experimental
Dr Mike T Nelson : phase of your life.
John Heck: Yeah. Which of all the things I've ever done that's the one I'm really not proud of even attempting.
It, I would never do it again. I would never recommend it to anyone. I felt like pure [00:13:00] death. Mm-hmm. Just working up the energy to form a sentence became incredibly difficult. Getting to the gym and training was borderline impossible. You're just hot, you're sweaty you're not sleeping.
Now I got, I lost a lot of body fat. I've gotten just as lean, if not leaner, using traditional approaches.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. So we're not recommending this to people, but we've both been around long enough to know that all these things have a finite life and they're gonna show up again and someone's gonna be promoting it, and there's gonna be a new group of people who don't know all the negative side effects and don't know what could happen.
And they think that it's new. And the latest thing, and the last part on that too, is that the therapeutic window, so the amount of where it's efficacious versus the amount that'll kill you is relatively close, and it's not a compound that's easy to get. And I [00:14:00] would not trust anyone dosing it with a raw chemical, just because there's very little safety margin there, especially when you're dealing with a chemical of God knows where it came from on top of.
John Heck: It has a very long half life, also
Dr Mike T Nelson : very long half life,
John Heck: which it s in the system.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yep.
John Heck: So a lot of dangers with DNP, with a very some very attractive upsides that can mask the incredibly dangerous downsides.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And I, in my, a little weird head, I'm thinking it's probably good that most people feel like crap because if they didn't feel that bad, it would unfortunately probably be more popular.
John Heck: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point.
Dr Mike T Nelson : But back to carb cycling, didn't
John Heck: expect to start the conversation off on DNP.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah, that's all right.
John Heck: A good detour.
Dr Mike T Nelson : And so what did you learn working with Justin overall, and where did you start at and where are you at now? Because I think it's an interesting progression because a lot of times when people hear carb [00:15:00] cycling, they think, oh, well, I'm just on this set amount of carbs.
I have my high carb, my medium, my low a, or however it's blood out. That just never changes. And I think I know what you're gonna say is that it did change over time.
John Heck: Yeah. I think I gained an appreciation for the value of the high carb day in a fat loss setting. I think having that day outta the week where I replenish glycogen stores, where I was able to get a boost in performance at the bare minimum, I think it had some very positive performance benefits which allowed me to, retain, if not maybe build some muscle over the course of a diet.
Having that day where I was eating more food, I found it helped, it regulated my appetite a bit better throughout the week. I always had this day to look forward to. Whether it's psychological or not, you feel like superman on that high carb day, and suddenly you're full again.
And the pumps are great. [00:16:00] And u using the high, medium, low approach versus just the simple training day versus non-training day split that I had previously used. I found that I stayed fuller. I found that I was able to maintain if not make progress in the gym longer over the course of the diet.
And yeah, my philosophies have, evolved on my own since then. And I think at that time it was really a purely a macro based focus. Whereas now I put a tremendous amount of value on. Micronutrient intake on electrolyte intake, on fiber intake and food sources in and of themselves.
Putting more focus on where I'm getting my fat sources from. I think and by the way I had phenomenal results with Justin. He's a tremendous coach. So I, if I'm talking about some of where our philosophies have maybe diverged, that's not a knock on him.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah, but if anyone who's met [00:17:00] Justin, he's also very much on the spectrum, very intelligent in certain areas, and very linear, like straight ahead.
Like, here's where we're going, here's what we're gonna do. And that's definitely a plus because if you can predict what's gonna happen for a client, like for client buy-in, like goes through the roof. So I get it. And bodybuilding is all about body composition and so it. I would say a wrong approach, but I think it's also limited in the fact that it was missing some of the components you're talking about also.
John Heck: Yeah. And then, on, on that high carb day, we would go really rock bottom with fats. And this is something that you mentioned on how low would you go
Dr Mike T Nelson : fats on that day?
John Heck: So we would have no direct fat sources in any meal. Ooh. Now we would get fat from, if I'm eating, you get some
Dr Mike T Nelson : indirect, but Yeah.
John Heck: Right. If I'm eating chicken breast or, but I would easily have below 30 grams of fat total on the day. [00:18:00] And I'm eating lots of zero fat carbohydrate sources, cream of rice, honey fruit, sourdough bread, and, things like that. And then very lean protein sources and we would reduce the protein as well.
So protein was just moderate on the day. Carbs, oh, highs. Now this changed as I got bigger. My, my carb intake became a lot larger. I think at the time, a high day for me probably was around 750 grams of carbs. Somewhere in that ballpark. That's a lot. Yeah. Whereas now, a regular day of training for me is 1100 grams of carbs.
So we do the once a week it, I believe that first diet was about 750 grams of carbs. And on my low days, the carbs would be about half of that. Okay.
Dr Mike T Nelson : So that's still not too bad, really. And sometimes when people say low, they're thinking 50, 70 grams. It's you're still in the hundreds.
John Heck: Yeah.
No, when we got, [00:19:00] when I got rock bottom leaned to the very end of the diet, I think on my low days, my, my carbs were probably down to, I don't know. Maybe 150 grams of carbs or so.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Okay. Yeah.
John Heck: Yeah. So I, I've been pretty low calorie. Now these days my at the lowest I think I got down to seven or 8% body fat.
My, in my most recent diet and the lowest my carbs got on a low day where probably 300.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Oh, nice.
John Heck: Yeah, so my capacity to handle a lot of carbohydrates has increased over the years as I've just gone through many diet phases as I've added more and more lean mass to my frame. And then just creating a new leaner set point, a, just a leaner homeostatic body composition set point over time.
I, I've found that just my my body wants to stay leaner. It's a lot easier to stay lean even during periods of the [00:20:00] year where, food intake becomes a lot more flexible.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Do you think part of that is obviously the training and nutrition and stuff you've done, but do you think part of that is also, it sounds like prioritizing just health overall?
The one thing I've noticed is if people generally, and this is a general term, are healthier, if they do it in an intelligent manner and they have enough time to get down to a lower body fat percentage, it seems like they can stay there even if someone else did the same approach. But their blood markers are a disaster.
Their glucose is all over the place, like their health metrics are just a poo show.
John Heck: Yeah, for sure. I think when the system is functioning well top to bottom, your, all of your various health markers are in check. Your blood pressure's good. Your mitochondrial health is good.
Your lipid panel is good. All those different things, I think [00:21:00] your body's a lot more comfortable. Remaining there, obviously in very unscientific terms, but
Dr Mike T Nelson : yeah.
John Heck: Yeah I think just really being well-rounded with the approach to nutrition and nutrient density, a focus on micronutrients, a focus on just being generally physically active and putting a premium on sleep.
That's something that I've really always focused on. And and my size right now, I'm sleeping with a CP Pap, which I've had to Yeah,
Dr Mike T Nelson : that's very common.
John Heck: Yeah. I get used to my it's crazy when I'm dieted down versus when I'm bulked up the neck and trapped girth is just immensely different.
I'm a pencil neck when I'm at my leanest, but
Dr Mike T Nelson : really,
John Heck: yeah, it's like interesting. All of my, I gained so much weight and girth just in my upper back and neck and traps in my face and. That seems to be where I store blues and store, like all of my muscle mass. So yeah, as, as soon [00:22:00] as I get bigger, I start, my wife starts as soon as my wife tells me I'm snoring, then the C pap comes back into the rotation and then I hit a certain point in the fat loss phase where I can put it back into the storage closet for a few months.
But yeah, to your point, I think just being healthy, being active, sleeping well, eating really well, hydrating really well just staying on top of all the various components of health has definitely allowed this to become a more sustainable normal.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Real quickly on a side note on hydration, because obviously that plays a role into glycogen storage, oh yeah.
The carbs are gonna pull a whole bunch of fluid in. Do you, I would assume, use some type of fluid and do you use electrolytes also? 'cause that's, in my experience, I feel like. Probably one of the bigger mistakes I've made previous to five or six years ago was just telling people to drink plain water and then switching their diet out to mostly real food, which was a [00:23:00] positive, but I didn't realize until talking to Rob Wolf that, oh my gosh, like I drastically just crushed their sodium levels unintentionally.
I was like, oh, sorry.
John Heck: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I am right now I am on a daily basis eating 17,000 milligram or consuming 17,000 milligrams of potassium and about, 13 to 14,000 milligrams of sodium. So my, oh, wow. Sodium and potassium intake is off the charts, and that's by design, that's intentional.
And that's because I'm eating so many carbohydrates and I'm consuming about two gallons of fluid on top of that daily. So yeah, I first thing in the morning, I'll drink 32 ounces of room temperature water with an Element T packet.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Mm-hmm.
John Heck: That's about a gram of sodium, 200 milligrams potassium. I salt all my meals pretty substantially with a Himalayan pink salt.
I'll add some supplemental potassium [00:24:00] citrate to a few of my meals. But I'm getting a ton of just natural potassium. I drink a lot of coconut water intra workout. Eat a ru potato daily, a huge amount of spinach, daily Greek yogurt. I, I use tomato paste, which is actually a really dense source of potassium.
And you take interesting one dollop of and tomato paste, not sauce. You get in the canned goods aisle. And it's a really dense source of potassium and it tastes like a very potent marinara. You put on your eggs, you mix it into your chicken and rice and really dense with potassium and other nutrients.
But yeah, I've noticed ever since I really started putting an emphasis on electrolyte and fluid intake, that I'm fuller. My, my pumps are significantly better. My blood glucose readings are improved, my blood pressure is improved. So I think that is a crucial and often overlooked [00:25:00] component to a high carbohydrate diet.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Have you found energy levels are just more consistent? That's Oh yeah. That was like the big thing I found that kind of shocked me. And I was like, and even now sometimes I'm like, oh man, this, after I feel a little, off this afternoon and I'm like, oh yeah, I didn't have as much. And granted I use Element T I usually have one in the morning and then, around noon before training, I try to have another one.
And sometimes life gets busy. Whatever, you forget it's three o'clock, I'm not gonna be able to train till five. And I'm like, oh. And then I drink like half of it and, within literally a few minutes, which is crazy. Oh, okay. I feel better now. It's like, oh my God, this is so simple.
John Heck: Yeah.
I always tell people the most potent acute performance enhancer is optimal hydration and electrolyte intake. The,
Dr Mike T Nelson : yeah.
John Heck: The difference in performance and how you feel in training or just day to day is so drastically affected by your hydration and electrolyte intake status. And when it's off, [00:26:00] you will feel that.
And when you're on top of it, you will feel that. And it's the most unsexy thing to talk about. It does not sell. It doesn't get clicks. Yeah. Talk about hydration and everyone rolls their eyes. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I need to drink more. And I've found that it's one of the hardest things to get people to do.
Oftentimes I can get people to adhere to a, a rigid diet structure, but getting them to stay on top of their fluid intake and their electrolyte intake, sometimes it's harder. So I treat my fluid and electrolyte intake with the same kind of rigidity as I do my diet. I've got, my kind of set meal times and then I've got my set 32 ounces of fluid times.
And I usually, yeah, I drink one of these kind of right at the midpoint between every meal. I start my day with one. And then, during training I'm drinking two liters of coconut water. So yeah, I, I put a [00:27:00] huge emphasis on it and it makes a world of difference
Dr Mike T Nelson : for sodium. And then I'll ask you about potassium too, because I think these are.
When people are increasing carbohydrates, I think one of the complaints of why air quotes the carbs are not working a lot of times, it's not necessarily the carbohydrates, it's their electrolytes are off. They're not consuming enough fluid for glycogen storage and all this other stuff. Which for the listeners, even though we're talking about carb cycling, that's why we're going on, on and on about electrolytes.
But have you found that the sodium intake with athletes tends to vary a lot? So if I exclude athletes I've worked with who are very large mammals, so let's say like two 50 and under, I've noticed three to maybe nine grams of sodium per day. Like I've had some, three to four grams are okay. And I've, I could give you a list now of people that are on 8, 9, 10 grams a day and feel better.
And sometimes they're the same body size, they're, they look [00:28:00] very, again, very similar on paper. And I don't, yeah, I don't know why that is. I talked to Andy Galpin about this too, and he was like. Two to eight grams per day that there seems to be a big range for some reason if, yeah. I dunno if you've seen that.
John Heck: There does. And little things can play a role in it, like the climate. If you're in a hotter temperature that's gonna play a role. And just, I, some people sweat more. Some people Yeah. Tend to be heavy sweaters. Some don't. Yeah. Some people lose a lot
Dr Mike T Nelson : of sodium in their sweat, some people don't.
John Heck: Yeah. I was always a guy who I always cramped no matter what, really what I did in a hot football practice, I was gonna cramp,
Dr Mike T Nelson : huh?
John Heck: I could consume all the fluids and electrolytes in the world. I was cramping and it was so frustrating to me. And, it cut chalked up to I was a, a quote unquote salt sweater.
And but yeah, you do see that a lot. And I'll be honest. I don't have a ton of what I would consider reliable hard data across a large number of athletes with that, because I find they tend to be so unreliable with [00:29:00] their sodium intake and, getting them to follow a diet is, can be tough.
And then it's like you want them to start measuring milligrams of sodium. It's like, oh boy. So, I don't have a lot of just really good, reliable data from clients on it, but just anecdotally, you're a hundred percent right. I think it does vary in different factors. Play a role in that and temperature, sweat levels, level of activity if you're training outside, inside, things like that.
So there is a range.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And I just tell people, just play with going up higher, like you said, if you're. A healthy individual. I haven't seen many negatives. And of course, at some point is there gonna be a negative yes. But I think more people would, if they're eating an actual real food based diet, they're not, their fingers aren't orange from cheese, doodle dust, like all day.
I just find that in general they'll do better with more sodium and more electrolytes and more fluid.
John Heck: Yeah, for sure. And I think that increase in sodium, [00:30:00] you need to scale your, in your fluids and potassium with it.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. My next question was potassium, like how do you, I think you said your ratio of potassium is even higher than sodium, is that correct?
John Heck: Yeah, so I'll shoot for 80, 80 milligrams per kilogram when it comes to potassium intake. So I've really honed in on this pretty specifically more in, in the last year or so. Right now I'm shooting for myself between a hundred to 120 milligrams per kilogram of potassium intake daily. But the, I think the daily recommendation is like 4,700 milligrams daily of potassium intake, which
Dr Mike T Nelson : sounds about right.
John Heck: If you're a large train, hard training individual and you're eating a lot of carbohydrates, that's gonna be probably painfully low. With 80 milligrams per kilogram, that, that number, oftentimes doubles for normal sized in, like a 200 pound male. And, and I've found that's, that's been a game changer.
[00:31:00] And, you know, I think sodium has often been demonized and oh, it's gonna result in high blood pressure and, you know, cardiovascular disease and this and that and the other. And, you know, I often point out that it's not necessarily a sodium issue. It's, it's a dehydration and lack of potassium issue. When you are, you know, I kind of, I call the holy trinity, the fluids, uh, sodium and potassium, they all need to be, uh, working together.
If you're consuming a ton of sodium but not drinking a lot of fluid under consuming potassium, yes, your blood pressure is gonna go up and there's gonna be negative health implications. If your potassium is sky high and your sodium is super low, you know, your blood pressure might drop too low. If you're consuming all the electrolytes, but very little fluid, we're gonna run into issues.
So they should all be working in sync and when they are magic happens and it's a potent performance enhancer and drastically improves your ability to [00:32:00] effectively utilize carbohydrates.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And like you said, there's a, I use chronometer for software. There's great software you can get to try to figure out your amounts and plan it out.
And it gives some great suggestions of food there. And it's also cheap. Like it doesn't really cost you a lot, much like if people wanna do their own back of the envelope calculations, they can, sit down and do that too. And my prediction is that now we're everybody has their own high sodium electrolytes that we're actually gonna see the next round, I think is actually gonna be higher in potassium, is my guess, but we'll see.
John Heck: Yeah. Yeah. Traditional electrolytes supplements they're always very sodium laden. And they always tend to be pretty low in potassium, which I, to your point, I think if they could start making products that, that were higher in potassium as well, I think that'd be great.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Awesome. So back to carbohydrate cycling. Do you consider like a, what is carbohydrate cycling in your head? Is it high, low? Is it high, medium, low? And [00:33:00] then is that kind of a weekly kind of daily alteration, or how do you. I conceptually think of carbohydrate cycling.
John Heck: Yeah. I guess in my mind, I've always thought of, a true traditional carb cycling model as the three layered approach with a high, medium and low.
I think, technically you could say a, if you're making a significant distinction between carb intake on training day versus non-training day, and that's, it's just that AB split. That's technically carb cycling as well. And if I'm doing the high, medium, and low. Depending on the goal and the phase, for example, a fat loss diet versus a gain phase versus somebody who is really performance oriented and not concerned about body composition that will change.
So usually if it's a fat loss diet, that high carb day, it might be a once every seven day thing. It might be more of a once every 10 day thing. And that will vary [00:34:00] with individuals. If I'm starting off with somebody who they've got quite a bit of body fat to lose we probably won't even have a high carb day.
We'll probably just start with that simple training day, non-training day. And as they get leaner and more depleted, we start working in a high carb day for kind of that, refeed type of thing. But for a bigger guy carrying a lot of muscle mass higher metabolism, we'll definitely do the high carb day once every seven days in a fat loss diet.
In, in a gain phase, that might be more like two high carb days a week. If calories get high enough, I think the high carb day disappears and it just becomes, the calories are so high on training days, they're all high days, right? Yeah. So it just goes to the training day, non-training day split.
Now if it's an athlete who, it's not so much a body composition focus, but it's just performance, well then, we might do the high, [00:35:00] medium, and low split where we have that high day. The day before the game, for example. So, football players, it may not make a whole lot of sense to put their high carb day on game day itself, just from a logistical standpoint.
And, if they're playing a night game, then we'll make that the high carb day. Sure, we'll feed them throughout the day. But if it's a noon game, they're with the team. They don't have a ton of control over how much food they can eat on that day. We'll do their high carb day, the day before the game, or if it's a, a distance runner we'll put their high carb day, the day before their big run or their biggest output day.
Oftentimes with athletes. I've found that, like with football sometimes doing a low carb day, like a really low carb day, the day after the game, I like because there's some anti-inflammatory, properties to it. I think sometimes the guys they feel a little bit better physically the next day with a lower carb emphasis.
And [00:36:00] so yeah. When it comes to the more performance oriented stuff, we'll play around with it a little bit depending on the sport and the athlete.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And for a listener's perspective, even if you did like a NFL football Saturday, you do your carb load, your games noon on Sunday, you're not really losing anything because we know glycogen is gonna be depleted by muscular work.
They're not doing much Saturday night, you're just getting ready for the game on Sunday. Exactly. So your glycogens, it's not gonna disappear, it's still gonna be there. Liver glycogen is a little bit low, but that's easy to replete in the morning and you're good to go.
John Heck: Yeah, exactly. So, like I said, if it's a noon game, we'll feed 'em high carb day.
The day before, like you said, they're sitting on an airplane, they're in a hotel room they're barely moving at all. And then on game day itself, we'll have a big breakfast. We'll go with a big high core breakfast for sure. And then they're on the field and they're playing. If it's an 8:00 PM game that's different, then we're gonna try to have that high carb day on, [00:37:00] on the day of.
And then post-game we'll try to feed 'em back up and get a bunch of carbs in them. And then if we're able to do that, then, like I said, sometimes the next day where it's a they're just beat up. They're highly inflamed. Oftentimes they find they, they don't sleep very well, they're their appetite's kinda low.
I didn't use to do this. You've been in like
Dr Mike T Nelson : three car wrecks.
John Heck: Yeah, exactly. Going with that, that lower carb day, the next day I found some success with guys doing that. And then, if they play Sunday, low carb Monday and then we start feeding them back up on, on Tuesday.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And typically, at least in the NFL, correct me if I'm wrong, like. They're not doing a whole lot on Monday anyway. You're not gonna go out and have a huge practice. There's no reason to, have a ton of carbohydrates, like yes. Try to recover from the game, et cetera. But in terms of practice and training, like, Mondays, don't worry about [00:38:00] it.
John Heck: Yeah, exactly. And sometimes, sometimes this comes down to evaluating who it is you're working with. Sure. Some of the guys post game they binge eat, they go out and they, they're up late and they drink and they, or they're eating the extra large pizza and then they're just blood.
You mean athletes
Dr Mike T Nelson : are humans too? What?
John Heck: Yeah. So, sometimes there's a little bit of kind of damage we're undoing Sure. The next day. So yeah, it it varies with who you're working with and what their behavior and eating habits are like. Especially, if they're stress eaters that can be a variable to take into account
Dr Mike T Nelson : in timing of carbohydrates.
I know once you get to a. Very high carb. It's timing goes out the window 'cause you're just eating carbs all day anyway. But when you're in those kind of medium ranges where you have a little bit more liberty to move carbohydrates [00:39:00] around, do you like doing a certain amount before, during, or after?
One thing I've played with more lately is just very high. Well, at least for me, very high amounts of carbohydrates post training, especially on a higher volume intensity day. So I've gone a hundred, 150, I did 176 the other day. And it seems like my heart rate variability and my markers of stress are actually a little bit better.
I don't know what your thoughts are on that or how do you prioritize it when you've got kind of room to move them around.
John Heck: Yeah, for sure. So I definitely do consolidate a lot of the carbohydrates around the training window, pre post and intra. So I'll typically have about 50% of the carbs for the day in that peri workout window.
So I'm eating 1100 grams of carbs in the day right now, and I'll have about 550 of those between the, between pre and [00:40:00] post-workout. So I've really gotten more into a lot of intra-workout carbohydrates and this of course scales with the size of the individual Sure. And the level of activity.
I'm consuming upwards of a hundred grams of carbs intra workout right now. And I'm doing that with a combination of coconut water and highly branched cyclic dextrin. And then I'll have some essential amino acids additional sodium and some creatine monohydrate in there. But yeah, I'll, I like a high carb pre-workout meal.
To your point, looking at the pre and post-workout meal, I'll probably have more of the carbs post. Post-workout, your insulin sensitivity is gonna be particularly high. Your muscles are like that sponge ready to soak up carbohydrates. Your I'm usually pretty hungry post-workout.
So pre-workout I'll do, I actually do a liquid meal right now. So [00:41:00] I'll get in about, I'll do a, this is actually a very non-traditional pre-workout meal I'm doing right now. It's a it's a clean gainer powder. It's a hundred grams of carbs, five grams of fat, 30 grams of protein, and I'm mixing that with 500 milliliters of skim milk.
And then I'll actually put in some skim milk powder into it. I'm really the old school. Another thing that I'm really trying to max is calcium intake. And I think dairy is something that's really been unpopular in anything bodybuilding, physique, fat loss. Think just because all's
Dr Mike T Nelson : I think calcium thickens your skin, bro.
You gotta eat tilapia and
John Heck: broccoli. Yeah, exactly. For kidding. It turns out calcium plays a pretty significant role in muscle contractions and force production. Oh, sure. So I've really put a big emphasis on calcium intake and I'm getting about [00:42:00] 6,500 milligrams of calcium daily. Oh wow.
That's a lot. That's a lot. Now granted, that's a lot. Again all of this scales with the fact that I'm 6 7, 3 30, I'm, all this.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
John Heck: But yeah, so pre-workout, I'm getting a lot of liquid calcium. So I'll do the gainer with the skim milk. I was using honey in that shake. Now actually using molasses which it's like honey, except it's rich in potassium and it's rich in calcium.
Interesting. So it's kinda like a nutrient dense honey substitute. And then I'll have a good portion of banana with that, a blend it all up and drink it. So all in all, it's about 200 grams of carbs, 50 grams of protein, five grams of fat. Then intra-workout, two liters of coconut water, scoop of highly branched cyclic dextran with amino creatine sodium, and then post-workout, getting in about another 225 grams of carbs or so from cream of rice.[00:43:00]
Whey isolate Greek yogurt honey. So all easily digestible. Quick carbohydrates, easy digesting protein sources. I keep the fat pretty low around the training window. But yeah I try to consolidate a lot of those carbs, peri workout. And that intra workout nutrition has been something that's, been a revelation for me in recent years.
Dr Mike T Nelson : And how high are your carbohydrates on the intra workout?
John Heck: About 105 grams of carbs intra right
Dr Mike T Nelson : now. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Have you found, and how much do you use for essential amino acids for the intra,
John Heck: I've got 30 grams of essential amino acids in there.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Okay. So that's pretty high. Have you
John Heck: It is
Dr Mike T Nelson : noticed the beneficial effect.
I remember talking to, and I missed him so much John Meadows years ago about this and Scott Stevenson and those guys, and they were all big that. Essential amino acids around the time of training and with [00:44:00] carbohydrates seem to decrease soreness and just speed recovery. And I was like, ah, I doesn't have much research on any of this.
And then it's one of those things where you ever do something that works so well, you just, for whatever reason, just stop doing it and, have no idea why.
John Heck: Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson : And so I did that and then recently I was talking to some people about essential amino acids. Again, I'm like, well, I should try, bracketing a little bit more of this around my training, at least, before, especially if I'm just running to the gym.
And then during it, I don't know, it seems to help, like, it feels like my performance is more even and my recovery feels like I get back to baseline better again. Maybe it's a placebo, who knows? But I'm curious on what you've noticed on that.
John Heck: Yeah, I, it's hard for me to say on the soreness front.
I mm-hmm. It's
GMT20260115-211214_Recording_640x360: probably,
Dr Mike T Nelson : I'm still sore, but I just don't feel like it's as bad, but
John Heck: Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. It's all subjective.
John Heck: It is. I, the way I've just always looked at it is I've got this highly, this [00:45:00] very high insulin environment around training. I'm consuming all these carbohydrates. There's a lot of insulin in the system right now.
So having some essential amino acids that can get, shuttled into the muscle alongside all those carbs it's something that I think I think there's benefit to it. There's merit to doing it. I definitely fuel an acute benefit to the carbs and to the just electrolytes from the intra-workout drinks.
The EEA a's you know, I can't say I felt a whole lot of, felt, a whole lot of subjective difference. But again, I think the the reasoning behind it is sound.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And that's one of those things where if you look at the literature, it's really split. And a lot of the timing studies were, only really carbohydrates and were mostly done on endurance athletes and things of that nature.
And I had Dr. Andrew Knick on the podcast here, and he was saying that it may [00:46:00] even just be the carbohydrates are preventing a drop in blood glucose and it's debatable how much are being used for fuel or et cetera. So I still think it's one of those things that's. It's been around for a long time, but yet we still, it's crazy to me, we still have all these questions about carbohydrates.
Athletes have been using carbohydrates for how many hundreds of years. Like we've been sticking muscle biopsies since what the Bergstrom Needle in 1964. So we've literally been poking people and pulling out tissue and muscle and glycogen and looking at it, and we're still like, yeah. I think this might help.
John Heck: Yeah. And, one, one other kind of subjective thing I can say is I have absolutely observed that when I'm consuming a lot of intra-workout carbohydrates that the pumps are better and bigger and fuller. Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Vasodilator that people forget too.
John Heck: Yeah. Yeah, true. So again I've found a lot of benefit to it.
Now, it can be a little tedious putting [00:47:00] together all, the concoctions and the carbs and the creatine and the aminos and all that. But I've stuck with it and I believe in it and it's also just a convenient place to stick a bunch of my daily carbs into.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. Because at that level, do you find A lot of it is also when your carbohydrate intake is so high, it's like, how do you physically get these things into the system?
Right. And I think one of the. The criticisms is, oh, we are using this, prepackaged nutrition and supplements and all this stuff. But when you're at a level you're at, where you're at a thousand plus grams of carbohydrates, if you look at, oh, let me try to eat this in fruit or pineapple or vegetables, it's like, good luck.
Like you, it's almost, I, it's not impossible, but it is very hard. And then you add digestion and time and everything else to it. It's more difficult than, I think people realize if they've never tried to even eat four or 500 [00:48:00] grams of real food carbohydrates per day.
John Heck: Yeah, exactly. Digestion and appetite are gonna be significant rate limiting factors in your ability to sustain that kind of intake.
If I was trying to get 1100 grams of carbs daily from white rice and potatoes and oatmeal and berries, I would be destroyed by, halfway in. So I'll I've got a little bit of a. I start my day with a pretty dense whole food meal. I'll get, a decent bit of my fiber intake in the morning.
So it's sirloin, eggs, oatmeal, almond butter, ground flaxseed, a triple berry mix. So that, that's a heavier meal. And then my next meal is pre-workout, which is liquid. So I'm and then, post-workout, it's easy to consume. And then the next meal is another, pretty substantial whole food meal.
So that's gonna be a lot of white rice and chicken breast and guacamole and things like that. And then I'll finish the day off with kind of a [00:49:00] half and half of some easy to eat foods and some, more, more dense sources. So rotating between, the heavier meal, light, liquid, heavier meal.
It makes it a little easier to consume throughout the day. But, yeah a chunk of my carbs are coming from juices. I drink a good bit of orange juice, which is contributing to my potassium intake. Getting in the a hundred grams of carbs via liquids, intro workout I mean that, that takes off, a significant chunk of the daily load.
And then using things like honey and some maple syrup just some of these simple sugars really takes the, digestive load off. And people always freak out. They see all the sugars, all, and it's like, well, yeah, this is not the diet I'm writing for the average person.
I'm just, I'm such a huge human. I'm 6 7, 330 pounds and a lean body composition. I've had to develop [00:50:00] this. Oh, I wasn't eating this much food or these, this much carbohydrates. Four years ago I've built up to this. And at this point I have to utilize some of those processed sugars to to make it manageable and my blood glucose is fine.
I stay on top of it. Utilizing significantly lower calories on my non-training days, my low carb days helps me stay insulin sensitive, helps keep my blood glucose levels in check. I'll use, I'll supplement with berberine on a daily basis and, try to use take a 10 minute walk or so after, after most meals, the Stan Efforting, like you mentioned in my podcast.
Yeah,
Dr Mike T Nelson : shout out to Stan.
John Heck: Yeah. I definitely take some measures to keep blood glucose in check and monitor it every morning. But even in spite of all the sugar I'm consuming it blood glucose levels that remain pretty damn stable.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Nice. And you said you're training five days a week. So right now that would be the high carb [00:51:00] days, all five.
And then how low are your low carb days?
John Heck: Yeah, so, 1100 gram carb days, 7,300 calories five days a week. And then on my non-training days carbs are at five 50. So, exactly half. And then I'll bring my fats up on my non-training days. So I'm eating 140 grams of fat on training days. I'm eating 200 grams of fat on non-training days, and then protein stay static at 350 grams for me daily.
Dr Mike T Nelson : And the reason for bringing the fat up is just to try to get more essential fats, or is there some micronutrients or other things you're trying to accomplish with that?
John Heck: Just, I don't want my calories too low.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Got it.
John Heck: I'm putting a, I'm putting an emphasis on bringing the carbs down on those couple days.
Again, just helping stay insulin sensitive and, I've looked at it almost as a little bit more of a and p PK days.
Dr Mike T Nelson : [00:52:00] Okay, sure.
John Heck: Versus mTOR, heavy days. So
Dr Mike T Nelson : out to our friend Anthony Cast, I know he is a big fan of that too.
John Heck: Yeah. Yeah. And actually he was one of the ones who really put that yin and yang thought process on my radar.
And I think there's some truth to that. I'm in very much a hypertrophy phase right now, so I am trying to maximize muscle hypertrophy. So five days outta the week, every little thing I do that day is geared towards. Just hacking hypertrophy in every way. So I've got the foot slammed down on the mTOR gas pedal and then on my non-training days, carbs are a lot lower.
I'll utilize a little bit of I'll, go a couple hours longer in the morning without eating meal one. I try to get more walking in. So try to get a little bit more a MPK, a little bit less mTOR in those days so I can remain sensitive to that signaling when I need it. [00:53:00]
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. Lemme talk about this on your show too, but that was one of the reasons I also initially did fasting for longer periods.
The 19 to 24 hours was the cell to the kinda longevity crowd who also wanted hypertrophy, who were scared of protein and essential amino acids was yeah, let's push this six days a week and then we're gonna take one day. You're not gonna use any essential amino acids, you're not gonna use leucine.
You're basically just gonna do a fast, have some electrolytes, have some black coffee. So if we are, running mTOR a little bit too much, which who knows if that's really true or not, a lot of that is just hypothetical right now.
John Heck: Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson : But, we'll have a day that it's kinda the opposite of that.
We're not triggering it as much. You're not lifting, you're just doing some like cardio, increasing fat use, et cetera.
John Heck: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I've toyed around with the idea of doing some real fasting, even am amidst a gain phase. I haven't pulled the trigger on it, to [00:54:00] be honest, but I think there could be some merit to doing that.
Whether, even if it was, once a month during this period of time doing a 24 hour fast I think there could be some benefits to it. Just, it, it's taxing on the digestive system. It's taxing in a lot of ways, just eating this much food that often. And this is a long phase too.
It's 16 weeks, so,
Dr Mike T Nelson : Ooh.
John Heck: Yeah. Yeah. So I've I've still got a ways to go with this.
Dr Mike T Nelson : So how would you set up like a carb cycling for, we'll say, typical smaller mammal client? Like what are things that you want to take in consideration to try to set up like their starting points?
John Heck: Yeah, for sure. So, we'll obviously first identify what's the goal? Are we looking at fat loss? Are we looking at an individual who wants to go into a gain phase? This is performance. So just assuming we're talking body composition right now. One thing I'll look at [00:55:00] before even determining, hey, should we go into a gain or a loss phase, is what's your current body composition?
I'm always very hesitant to even attempt to go into a gain phase if the individual's not already pretty lean. So what do
GMT20260115-211214_Recording_640x360: you
Dr Mike T Nelson : consider pretty lean? I know everyone has their own definition, which I'm always curious about.
John Heck: Usually if I cannot see the lateral outline of your abs I'm weary about going into a game phase now.
Got it. If we're dealing with a, an open class strongman competitor or an offensive lineman or someone like that where it's really they need to gain weight.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Mm-hmm.
John Heck: That's different. Yeah. But if it's somebody who says, Hey, I want to look like a Greek god, I wanna put on a ton of muscle tissue.
I'm hesitant to go into a gain phase if we cannot see any abdominal definition at all.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Sure.
John Heck: So that's my just proxy for it. And I've just got developed a little bit of an eye for just looking at physique photos and [00:56:00] so oftentimes people will come to me and they ultimately long-term wanna gain muscle, will start in a fat loss phase.
And usually I'll diet them down for a few weeks on just the binary training day, non-training day split. And I'll look at what their current diet is. I like to have them before I have their diet written, do a food journal and map it all out in chronometer. So just looking at what their intake really currently is.
And it's some people it's crazy how little food they're eating and Yeah. How much
Dr Mike T Nelson : they make up for it on Friday night too.
John Heck: Yeah, exactly. A lot of people they want to go into a fat loss phase. I'm like, I think we gotta try to get you eating more food here before we Yeah.
Before we reduce your food. We gotta build some muscle and get you training better and recovering better and
Dr Mike T Nelson : you gotta cut from something.
John Heck: Yeah, for sure. It'd be great if, we [00:57:00] can get people to about, maintaining a good body composition, maintaining weight around 40 calories per per kilogram of body weight.
That's a number. That's not perfect by any means, but
Dr Mike T Nelson : yeah, a big good starting point. And that's higher than I think most people would realize, right? If you're,
John Heck: yeah,
Dr Mike T Nelson : 220 pound mammal, that's a hundred kgs, that's like 4,000, right?
John Heck: Yeah, for sure. So I would love for someone to be at maintenance around there.
And if, I'm at maintenance at about 47 47 calories per kilo right now. And you'll see some freaks who are, their maintenance is like 60 calories per kilogram. That's so, yeah. So, and as we talked about, it seems to be a trainable trait to some degree. But anyway, for, let's say it's an individual who, they're their, their maintenance calories are adequate, or their training is in place.
They food journaled for a little bit. So we're gonna start in there. [00:58:00] Start on that simple training day, non-training day split. And usually we will set protein at kind of the generic gram of protein per pound of body weight. I like to keep protein a little bit higher in a fat loss phase and bring it a little bit lower when we're in a surplus.
And then we'll set their calorie intake to be at a, a modest, a slight deficit on their training days and a little bit of a bigger deficit on their on their non-training days. Usually getting about, 60% of their calorie intake from carbohydrates.
And then I'll usually have that non-training day, their carbs at roughly half, half that of their, of their training days. And then usually their fats will come up a little bit just to, so the calories aren't too low. And then eventually we'll bring in that [00:59:00] high carb day where we're using it as a way to replenish glycogen stores, a way to just give them a boost and performance on that day.
And, whether or not there's, I'd be curious to get your thoughts on this. If if the high carb day quote unquote, keeps metabolism from downregulating versus is it just a matter of it helps preserve muscle mass? It, it helps performance output on that day. But regardless, we'll bring in, we'll bring in the high carb day and I'll usually start that on the lower end and we'll see how they respond and then titrate that high carb day up as high as we can while still seeing fat loss progress.
And we'll try to get some data after that high carb day. Okay. Usually we'll see a spike up in body weight. And then we'll look at how many days does it take to reach come back down to baseline? Do you hit a new body weight low [01:00:00] that week? But then we're also looking at photos, looking at body composition photos, looking at metrics in the gym and evaluating, okay, are we still making progress here?
And I'd love to get that high carb day as high as we can while still making progress.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah I guess if you would've asked me five years ago on the high carb day, I would've given you some answer around insulin and leptin sensitivity and resetting this or that. And then now I'm like, ah, I don't know.
I have my doubts. I just, and that's from some of the data, which is not the same, but on the, some of the diet breaks, like the studies like Dr. Bill Campbell has done, and the short version on some of those was that. If you could just keep going, you probably for metabolic reasons, didn't really need a diet break, but for psychological reasons it could be very beneficial.
So I think if you're dealing with generally healthy [01:01:00] people, they're probably more robust than what we realize, and that high carb day might be replenishing glycogen stores to increase better performance, which also gives them a psychological boost. A lot of times that's the day they get to have a little bit more fun foods, which is motivating for them.
So I think there's a lot of reasons to include it, but I have my doubts that there's really big, effects on leptin or resetting all these hormones and stuff like that. I am I doubt that it's having as big a long-term effect from that as what we used to think.
John Heck: Yeah, it, one thing I'll say is I think we, I think it was on my podcast that we talked about, it was sometimes the body does sorcery.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Oh, for sure.
John Heck: You'll see, it seems, you'll see
Dr Mike T Nelson : weird shit.
John Heck: It seems like the more muscle and leaner the individual is. So if we're talking about bodybuilders you see this kind of sorcery where we're dealing with guys who are carrying just exceptional amounts of muscle [01:02:00] mass. They're very lean guys like that do seem to need that high carb day.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yes.
John Heck: When they're dieting down they get overly flat. They're just vaporizing through carbohydrates and, I've seen diets just guys get over dieted and soft and when they don't have the high carb day, and it seems like the bigger and more advanced and leaner the individual is, the more it necessitates the high carb day.
Whereas on the flip side. The fatter, the individual is the less muscle mass they carry, the less and less relevant that high carb day is on a physiological level. And to your point, it becomes borderline, purely psychological at that point. Which there's merit to that. Like if you're,
Dr Mike T Nelson : oh, for sure.
John Heck: If you're, you've got that high carb day every week, it's that light at the end of the tunnel. It allows you to adhere to your diet. For all the other days outta the week, then we get to finally enjoy some more food. And you, you subjectively at least feel [01:03:00] better in training that day.
And maybe you are getting more output and training that day, then those are all beneficial things. And even if that uptick in calories for the week wasn't, on paper helpful to the net calorie balance, we're still in a deficit for the week. We're still losing weight.
It all, it plays out in our favor. But yes, some of those the big freaks, they seem to just deflate like a balloon if they don't have the high day.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And in some females I've seen, especially as they get really far into a diet phase, my little hallmark is. If we give them a fair amount of carbohydrates and their weight actually drops the next day, which one, they're like, what the hell happened?
Mm-hmm. And then two in the back of my head I'm thinking, okay, I've got their HRV, I got their respiratory rate, I've got their body temp, I got all their metrics, but I still think I'm pushing stress harder than what I think because I dunno what your thoughts [01:04:00] are, but my thoughts are the carbohydrates are having more of an anti catabolic, anti-stress effect.
They're losing fluid actually when they should be having more of the reverse effect. So that makes me think, okay, we put the bandaid over it for now, but in my head I'm like, it makes me a little bit more cautious of how aggressive I'm gonna be going forward,
John Heck: oh yeah, for sure. I think there's a, I think there's a lot of truth to that.
I think you'll see you give someone that high day and their cortisol levels drop, they sleep better finally. Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Sleep usually almost drastically improves.
John Heck: Yeah. If you've ever been really dieted down, you're staring awake at the ceiling, your body's screaming that you need to go hunt a wooly mammoth to survive the long fan you're clearly in.
So yeah, I, I think from a stress regulation standpoint, that high carb day can, yeah, I think it does have real benefit for some people. And yeah I think with females a lot, especially in, like. Bikini [01:05:00] competitors and the female side of bodybuilding, you see these women just getting horribly over dieted.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Oh, yeah.
John Heck: Where their calories are abysmally low. They're, it's tilapia and broccoli.
Dr Mike T Nelson : And broccoli. That's all it is, man. We just adjust the amount of tilapia. I'm like, oh my God what year is this? 1981?
John Heck: Not to mention, two hours of cardio a day. Yep. And and then they're a wreck.
And then you've got no cards to play. You can't take their calories any lower, you can't take their physical activity any higher, and they're looking worse on a weekly basis. And then they're in a bad position. They're in a really bad position. So I, another thing that I've really, we talked about how my philosophies have evolved a bit since Justin.
Yeah. We would always do a big rebound phase called it a rebound phase at the end of a diet where we would have this four to six week period where we would really bring carbs up post diet. The thought [01:06:00] process being, we have all these factors in play right now that make us hyper anabolic and hyper receptive to this big influx of nutrients or insulin sensitivity.
Sky high or appetite sky high rate of gastric emptying is sky high and we're super lean. We've got all this room to grow and you start feeding a ton and then next thing you know you're just. Your pumps are enormous. You're storing all this glycogen and just these increases in intramuscular water and blood volume.
And, he would put a lot of stock into kind of the quote unquote sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
John Heck: I've really gotten away from that. I've really gotten away from the rebound approach and I've gone much more into a structured reverse diet approach. Which I, I thought of that when I was thinking about the females getting down to rock bottom calories.
So yeah, I, I guess it took a little bit of a tangent there, but [01:07:00] that's another area I've evolved is really taking a careful reverse diet coming out of that fat loss phase.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. In general, I would ag, I would agree. And it's kinda the Eric Helm's approach is, try to get back to maintenance as soon as possible.
Just because you're in such a horrible caloric catabolic, type state, your performance sucks, everything's bad. More of the Elaine Norton School of Thought is you should do more of a methodical reverse diet. And I guess where I'm at is if I could wave my wand magically and have no psychological effects, I would give people back to maintenance as soon as possible.
The hard part, as is that the reality is that's just not always possible. And there's people where they start eating more and that it's just very hard for 'em to control their appetite. They don't have another show, they don't have another goal. It becomes much harder, I think, on the.
Psychological side to regulate. Also going from a state of being very lean to not being [01:08:00] as lean over a short period of time. So I think there's a whole, so now I just go more on the psychological factors and I want to go back to maintenance as fast as possible, but I don't wanna overshoot. I don't want to have a lot of other events and everything else happen.
So in reality, for some people that looks like a very long, methodical reverse diet then.
John Heck: Yeah, and I think it varies depending on. How deep did we have to go with a diet? Oh, for sure. How far did we have to dig? Some
Dr Mike T Nelson : people, some people, how many competitions did you have to get ready for in a short period of time?
And
John Heck: Yeah, some people, they're ready, we're talking bodybuilding. Some people are ready like three weeks out. They're cruising along, they feel great. And other people, it's like they're, they're knocking on death's door at the end of the diet. They've been just grinding for 20 weeks and they're a zombie at that point.
So it's different depending on how the diet ends. But I've really found that, that post-workout, or excuse me, that post diet month is where hunger tends to be the [01:09:00] highest.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Oh, it's by far the worst. Yeah. It's worse a lot of times than pre competition.
John Heck: Oh, yeah. At the end of a day you're like numb to it.
You've accepted your fate. It's just this background, your hunger's like background noise. At this point you're hyperfocused and then you reintroduce a little bit of food and then next thing you know, it's like the hunger just, oh, all of it. Gimme
Dr Mike T Nelson : all of it.
John Heck: Yeah. Yeah. So, I don't know. I think there's psychologically the, some people, it's like if I preemptively say, okay, this is the reverse diet.
It's careful, it's methodical. This is fourth quarter of the diet.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yep.
John Heck: Staying within that mindset helps us get back to maintenance safely. And we probably take longer to do it. Whereas some of those people, if I give them an inch, they take a mile, and as soon as we start feeding them more, it's like, oh, we're gonna quickly get you back up to maintenance.
Next thing you know they're not eating at maintenance. They're eating at 2000 calories surplus. Whereas some people psychologically [01:10:00] it's different. They can, control themselves a lot more and it's not as big of an issue. So I think people underestimate the psychological side of all this when it comes to dieting.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. My quick thing and we'll wrap up is that I often call this like rubber band physiology. Like you can only pull the rubber band back so far and when you let go, good thing's gonna snap back to where it was. Like you said, like, how hard did you have to struggle and everyone's gonna have a hard time.
Like, how bad was it? How far did we really have to dig and really yank that rubber band back really far? And if you just let that thing go, it's like, ooh.
John Heck: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It's a good analogy.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Awesome. Well, thank you so much for this. This is super interesting. I really appreciate it. Where can people find more about you?
John Heck: For sure. Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram just search John, hack. There's no H in John. I've got my podcast, which will be putting out your [01:11:00] episode that you were on around, I'm sure the same time as this. Yep. The Hammer Chisel Performance Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, apple I've got a YouTube channel, which I put videos out every week and you can find my website, hammer chisel performance.com for my coaching services, ebook training programs, all that good stuff.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And I recommend people check out all the great stuff you put out. All your interviews have been super fascinating. I've been going back through all the podcast stuff again and yeah, it's been great. It's a real wide variety of people and lots of good educational content on YouTube that is also accurate, but it's also very much applied from, learning and working with athletes, which is great 'cause I think.
Now there's a lot of people who are pretty good with the research stuff, but you're like, man, that person's never coached a single individual in their life. 'cause that recommendation's the stupidest thing ever.
John Heck: Right.
Dr Mike T Nelson : And you've got all the kind of dying away, bro science, people who are like, I did this three by 10 forever.
And it's nice to have a good hybrid of someone like yourself that's applying stuff and thinking a little bit out of the box too, which is great.
John Heck: Oh, thank [01:12:00] you. That means a lot. Yeah, I think there's gotta be an art and a science to coaching, so I try to try to be somewhere in the middle with all that.
But yeah, I appreciate you having me on your show and thank you for coming on mine and awesome. That I really glad that I got to meet you and connect with you. So I'll I'll be looking forward to talking with you more, picking your brain, reading your newsletter, all that good stuff.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to the Flex Diet podcast. Really, really appreciate it. Uh, huge thanks to John Heck for coming on here and having such a wonderful discussion about carb cycling and him being so open and sharing all of his explicit tactics and techniques and everything with everyone. Uh, make sure to check out all of his great stuff on Instagram.
We'll put a link to it down below, and we'll put a link to the podcast I did with him. And you can check, uh, that out. And he is got a ton of great guests on [01:13:00] his podcast also. So I'd highly recommend you check that out. And if you want more stuff from me, you can hop on to the Free Insider newsletter.
We'll put a link down below. It's free to join. We'll send you daily cool stuff, all related to these topics. How to add more muscle, improved performance. And a better body composition. So thank you so much for listening. We really, really appreciate it. If you could do us a big favor, give us a thumbs up or whatever stars or freaking emojis or I don't know, what all the platform podcasts are using these days, uh, leave us a short review.
All that stuff goes a really long way to helping us with distribution of the podcast. Forward it to a friend. Please tag either one of us online so we can say thank you. Thank you so much as always for listening. Really, really appreciate it. We'll talk to all of you next week.
Speaker 3: There's something wrong [01:14:00] with his hearing aid. Yeah. What's wrong? I can't hear with it.
Speaker 4: Oh, no wonder. It's too far away.
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