Love them or hate them, the feelings you have toward carbs are probably strong and unflinching. But no matter where you fall on the spectrum, theres one thing that unites us our desire to consume carbs in a way that benefits our health and nutrition goals.

Along with protein and fat, carbohydrates are macronutrients (nutrients the body requires in larger quantities) and your main source of energy, according to the Mayo Clinic . During digestion, carbs get converted into sugar (glucose) and shuttled to your bodys cells for energy. Extra glucose is then saved to your liver and muscles as fuel for later (street name: glycogen) or stored as fat.

Between carb loading (stocking up on carbs before a high-endurance event), carb cycling (oscillating between lower- and higher-carb days) and carb backloading (shifting the majority of your intake to the end of the day), theres no shortage of carb-themed dietary strategies to try to best use this fuel.

Its thought that timing your carb intake in these ways can spur health goals, like losing weight or fat, building muscle and endurance, and stabilizing blood sugar but how effective are they, really?

Because the research on carb timing so far has been, well, sketchy, we went to the experts for dirt on how, exactly, to use the available intel to your advantage.

Why Carb Timing Has Become So Popular

The idea behind timing carb intake is to fuel your body at the best possible times in order to hit specific health, fitness and nutrition milestones (say, body composition goals or athletic achievements).

Those who practice partitioning of their meals theorize that by timing their nutrients, they can guide the way the body uses these resources, said Niket Sonpal , New York-based gastroenterologist and professor at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine. In other words, when you eat carbs may influence whether theyre used as energy or stored as fat.

The two carb-timing practices that have gained traction in recent years are carb cycling and carb backloading.

Cycling involves eating more carbs on days you do longer, more intense workouts (to optimize energy and improve results), then going lower-carb on less active days (in the hopes that fat instead of glycogen will be used as the bodys primary fuel source).

Backloading requires you to shift most of your carb intake, as well as your workout, to the end of the day. Fans of this timing strategy believe the benefits are twofold: lowering your carb intake during the day means your body will have to use fat stores for energy (a la keto), while replenishing carbs following your nighttime workout increases the likelihood your body will restock them in the energy aisle instead of the fat department.

The Problem? Research On Carb Timing Is All Over The Map

The timing of macronutrients can influence what the body does with them, but not all experts agree on the exact timing and pathways.

While research shows significant purpose in timing protein before and after a workout, the body of scientific studies on the topic is divided when it comes to carbs, Sonpal told HuffPost.

Much of this has to do with the fact that studies so far have been based on shaky variables, such as small sample sizes , short-term experiments and self-reported carb intakes . These variables decrease the power of the studies by leading to more biases and increasing the margin of error, said L.J. Amaral , clinical and research dietitian at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.