Yes, high GI meals after a work out do restore muscle glycogen, but the insulin surge they cause interacts with the growth hormone released by the work out to do bad things.  First, the GH makes you slightly insulin resistant after a work out (this temporary resistance is the price you pay for high insulin sensitivity for the following 18 hours after a high intensity workout).  Putting a high glycemic meal into the blood stream at that time causes insulin to be released which compounds the insulin resistance induced by the high GH and may cause some loss of insulin receptors over a long period of doing this repeatedly.

Second, the GH keeps the fatty acids released by the stress hormones during the work out from re-esterfying, which means the body can metabolize fat efficiently in the post work out period.  That is why I walk or shoot baskets after a work out and why one should do cardio after, not before a workout.  That is the max period of fat burning.

Third, take elevated free fatty acids in the blood stream and add insulin along with a high glycemic meal and you have a classic situation that affects adult onset diabetics: poor fatty acid metabolism, high blood concentration of fatty acids and triglycerides, high circulating insulin, and high blood glucose.  Why would you want to mimic diabetes?  Nothing good comes of it and much damage over time.

Fourth,  you want to drain the glycogen from your muscle.  Muscle that is full of glycogen is not a good glucose sink.  Filled  up muscle makes you insulin resistant and the whole cascade of events I described above unfolds over a long period of time.  Emptying and filling the muscle through power law variation creates the hormonal cascades that maintain insulin sensitivity and high GH pulses.  That is where metabolic fitness comes from.

By coincidence, I am doing a 5 day per week routine with no more than two exercises, done hierarchically for three sets, followed by a few alactics.




Arthur De Vany
Professor
Economics and Mathematical Behavioral Sciences
University of California
Irvine, CA 92697-5100
949-824-5269
http://aris.ss.uci.edu/econ/personnel/devany/devany.html