Diggy_Dat_Niggy
04-14-09, 01:36 PM
Here is one of many well written articles on carb cycling
http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=811783
The Carb Cycling Codex
Gain muscle and lose fat optimally!
by Christian Thibaudeau
Life is funny sometimes. Over the course of my T-Nation career I went from a fat but strong guy to a lean and muscular one, despite having the worst "fat loss genetics" in the world. In the past, I made most of my transformations via a low-carb dietary approach, and as a result I became somewhat carb-phobic and truly believed that ingesting carbs would turn me into a fat slob.
What's humorous is that, as a strength coach, I have access to the top sports nutritionists in the world. I've read everything by everyone. Drs. Berardi and Lowery's work weren't able to convince me of reintroducing carbs to my diet. Even the work of bodybuilding coach Chris Aceto (who uses relatively high carbs even during the pre-contest period) didn't help. When it came to carbs, I lost all rational thought capacity!
But as of now, carbs are back in my own diet and the diets of my athletes and bodybuilders. What happened? A 135 pound girl made me change my outlook on building muscle and losing fat. She succeeded where all the best experts failed!
That girl is my girlfriend, Christiane, who happens to be an excellent natural bodybuilder and a trainer herself. She's always kept carbs in her diet; we even had several arguments over that. Since I was sure that carbs equalled fatness, I wouldn't listen to anything she said. That is, until I saw her get ripped, strong, and more muscular simultaneously, week by week.
That's when I realized that she must be doing something right! So together we developed a dieting template that would become the one I use with all my bodybuilders and the one I use myself. This approach allows the athlete to either gain maximum muscle mass without gaining too much fat (sometimes a slight fat loss is even possible) or to get into contest shape while maintaining (or even gaining) muscle mass. The strategy is actually not complicated and it's the most effective way to diet I've ever used... and I've used every diet imaginable! The approach is called carb cycling.
Another "product" of carb cycling is Sebastien "Da Freak" Cossette, a young bodybuilder I'm training for his first bodybuilding competition ("Before" pics on bottom; "after" pics on top).
The Logic Behind the System
There are two inevitable truths when it comes to building muscle or losing fat:
1) To increase body mass you need to consume more calories than you use.
2) To lose body fat you need to consume fewer calories than you use.
Obviously, the type of food you ingest will have an important impact on the end result. If the bulk of your calories come from junk food, chances are you'll end up gaining more fat than muscle. Similarly, if the quality of your food intake is low while dieting, chances are you'll end up losing more muscle tissue.
So, it's true that whatyou eat is just as important as how much you eat. However, total food intake still remains of paramount importance when trying to either gain muscle or lose fat.
Another thing to consider is the effect of nutrients on hormones and the effect of hormones on muscle gain and fat loss. For example, insulin is one of the most important anabolic hormones in the body. It directly influences the amount of amino acids and glucose transported into the muscle cells. This is the good stuff, and the more of it you have, the more you grow.
Basically, insulin is responsible for transporting the bricks to the construction site. Insulin also prevents the mobilization of the nutrients stored in the muscle either as intramuscular glycogen or muscle tissue. So in that regard, insulin favors muscle gain and diminishes muscle wasting. This is why insulin is widely used by professional bodybuilders.
However, since using exogenous insulin is out of the question for any natural individual remotely interested in avoiding diabetes and premature death, we must stimulate our body to produce its own insulin. Insulin is released from the pancreas in response to an increase in blood glucose level (which occurs when consuming carbs and certain amino acids). So if we want to increase endogenous insulin production, it becomes necessary to consume a mix of carbs and amino acids.
On the other hand, glucagon, which is insulin's antagonistic hormone, promotes the mobilization and utilization of stored nutrients, including glycogen and amino acids. When your diet is low in carbs, your glucagon levels skyrocket, putting you into mobilization/breakdown mode instead of building/anabolic mode.
We also have to mention that without ingesting carbs, it's harder to have intense strength training sessions. It's true that some amino acids can be "turned into" glucose via gluconeogenesis, and that ketone bodies can be used for fuel after proper adaptation has set in. But truth be told, a low/no carb diet makes you lose your capacity to train hard in the gym.
You also risk losing muscle mass because your body might very well decide to break up muscle tissue into amino acids to create new glucose! You could literally burn down the walls to heat the house!
Lastly, the conversion of T4/thyroxine (the relatively inactive thyroid hormone) to T3/triiodothyronine (the active thyroid hormone) is greatly impaired when insufficient carbs are consumed. A lower level of T3 leads to a drop in metabolism and this makes losing fat much harder.
For these reasons we can see that consuming carbohydrates is necessary if we want to develop a muscular body. However, insulin also has an ugly side: it can promote fat storage as well as reduce fat mobilization and usage.
A chronically elevated insulin level has a profound effect on the body's capacity to increase body fat. On a related subject, excess carbs can also be stored in fat cells. So always consuming large amounts of carbohydrates can lead to a physique reminiscent of the Michelin Man!
So What Can We Do?
To stimulate maximum muscle growth you need carbs, and a relatively high amount to boot. Without ample calories and carbohydrates, it'll be hard to gain heaps of muscle tissue, even with a high protein intake. However, eating too much too often can also make you fat. Head-splitting, isn't it?
The first method used by bodybuilders was to divide their training year into bulking and cutting phases: consuming tons of calories and carbohydrates during their bulking phase, then dropping their calories and carbs to sub-maintenance levels when entering a cutting phase. This worked...somewhat.
It did allow many people to gain a lot of size, but most of them lost quite a bit of their new muscle during the intense dieting period. Not to mention that those who were cursed with bad insulin sensitivity tended to gain a lot more fat than muscle during "bulking season." Also, gaining and then losing 20-30 pounds isn't exactly healthy. It puts a lot of stress on the body and can lead to some health problems.
Finally, from an aesthetic perspective, ballooning up by gaining 15-20 pounds of fat for the sake of gaining 10 pounds of muscle isn't the best thing to do. Ideally, we want to look good naked most of the time, not on a few selected months out of the year. "Sorry babe, not with the lights on this month. I'm bulking."
Then the cyclical ketogenic diets began to appear. These were based on a relatively long period of carb deprivation (normally five straight days) where less than 50 grams of carbohydrates were allowed, followed by one or two days of carbohydrate loading.
While very effective at stimulating fat loss, the long period without carbs isn't conducive to maximum muscle accumulation. In fact, by the second or third day you're pretty much in a severe catabolic state. Sure, there's an anabolic rebound during the loading days. But I'm not sure if this can be enough to compensate for the rest of the week. I do believe that it's enough to prevent muscle loss on a weekly basis, but not enough to promote maximum muscle gain.
To be fair, I've used this type of dieting several times in my life and did get great results as far as fat loss is concerned. I was even able to add a small amount of muscle, but I was never able to gain a lot of it on this type of diet.
Finally, a third approach championed by guys like Dr. John Berardi started to gain popularity. This dietary approach was based on not consuming many carbs and fats togetherand on consuming carbs mainly during periods of increased insulin sensitivity (in the morning and post-workout). So you basically had three meals with carbs and three meals without them every day.
This approach is darn near perfect for gaining mass with minimal fat accumulation. However, I found that it could still be improved to get the best body composition results.
The Solution
The solution that I'll (finally) explain to you is called carb cycling, but it could also be called calorie cycling. It sticks to the basic theory of ingesting carbs only in the morning and after workouts. The only difference is that the amount of calories and carbs consumed will vary each day. What will this accomplish?
• It'll allow you to include maximum fat burning days and maximum muscle accumulation days in each week.
• It'll prevent metabolic slowdown by providing frequent caloric spikes.
• It'll favor long term success because it's relatively easy to follow, especially compared to the more restrictive ketogenic diets.
Carb Cycling: The Basic Structure
Carb cycling is based on having three different carbohydrate intake levels during the week: high(er) carbs, moderate carbs, and low(er) carbs. Ideally these days are split according to your training schedule.
If you train 4 times per week:
• Select your two "priority workouts." These are the workouts where you're training the muscle groups you need to improve the most. On these days, you have a high(er) carbohydrate day.
• On the two other workout days, you consume a moderate amount of carbs.
• On the three "off days" you have a low(er) carb intake.
If you train 3 times per week:
• Select your two "priority workouts." On these days, you have a high(er) carbohydrate day.
• The other workout day has a moderate carbohydrate intake level.
• Among the four remaining days of the week, you have one more moderate carb day along with three low carb days.
If you train 5 times per week:
• Select your two "priority workouts" where you're training the muscle groups you want to improve the most. On these days, you have a higher(er) carbohydrate day.
• Select two "secondary workouts." On these days you have a moderate carb intake.
• On the remaining workout day and during your "off" days you consume a low(er) amount of carbohydrates.
Basically, one sentence could summarize the carb cycling philosophy: "Eat for what you did and have to do."
Calories and Carbohydrate Levels
When you've established your basic structure, you need to set the food intake appropriately. The first thing to do is calculate your daily energy expenditure: the amount of energy (in calories) you use each day. This baseline figure will be used to set caloric and nutrient intake during the various types of days.
First Step: Calculating Your Basal Metabolic Rate
Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) simply means the amount of energy used by your body during a 24-hour period if no activity is performed. In other words, if you're inactive for 24-hours straight, you'd still "burn" the amount of calories equivalent to your BMR.
Your BMR is a function of your size, sex, and age. It's also influenced by your metabolic status (hypo or hyperthyroid state for example). We can calculate BMR with the following formulas (by Harris-Benedict):
For Men
BMR = 66 + (13.7 x weight in kg) + (5 x height in cm) - (6.8 x age)
So for a 30 year old bodybuilder of 220lbs (100kg) at 5'11" (178cm) it comes up to:
BMR = 66 + (13.7 x 100kg) + (5 x 178cm) – (6.8 x 30)
BMR = 2122 calories per day
For Women
BMR = 655 + (9.6 x weight in kg) + (1.7 x height in cm) - (4.7 x age)
So for a 28 year old figure girl of 132lbs (60kg) at 5'6" (165cm) it comes up to:
BMR = 655 + (9.6 x 60kg) + (1.7 x 165cm) – (4.7 x 28)
BMR = 1380 calories per day
Second Step: Factoring in activity level
The amount of calories found using the Harris-Benedict formula is what your body burns every day, even if you do nothing all day. Obviously, the more active you are the more you'll burn fuel. So, energy expenditure will be increased when your activity level goes up.
To get an adequate estimation you need to multiply your BMR by an activity level factor:
Activity level factor
Activity level
1.0
Sedentary
1.2
Very light activity
1.4
Light activity
1.6
Moderate activity
1.8
High activity
2.0
Extreme activity
By sedentary we mean doing nothing all day (sleeping and watching TV).
By very light activity we mean doing nothing physical. Working a desk job or on a computer and not performing any type of physical activity during your day.
By light activity we mean having a non-physical job (desk, computer, etc.) but performing some sort of physical activity during the day (e.g. above average walking) but no hard training.
By moderate activity we mean having a non-physical job, performing some sort of physical activity during the day, and including a daily workout session in your routine. This is where most of you are at.
By high activity we mean either training plus a physical job or non-physical job and twice-a-day training sessions.
By extreme activity we mean a very physical job and daily hard training.
So if our 220 pound bodybuilder with a BMR of 2122 calories/day is moderately active, his daily energy expenditure is bumped up to 2122 x 1.6 = 3395 calories per day. This is the amount of food to consume to maintain present body weight.
http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=811783
The Carb Cycling Codex
Gain muscle and lose fat optimally!
by Christian Thibaudeau
Life is funny sometimes. Over the course of my T-Nation career I went from a fat but strong guy to a lean and muscular one, despite having the worst "fat loss genetics" in the world. In the past, I made most of my transformations via a low-carb dietary approach, and as a result I became somewhat carb-phobic and truly believed that ingesting carbs would turn me into a fat slob.
What's humorous is that, as a strength coach, I have access to the top sports nutritionists in the world. I've read everything by everyone. Drs. Berardi and Lowery's work weren't able to convince me of reintroducing carbs to my diet. Even the work of bodybuilding coach Chris Aceto (who uses relatively high carbs even during the pre-contest period) didn't help. When it came to carbs, I lost all rational thought capacity!
But as of now, carbs are back in my own diet and the diets of my athletes and bodybuilders. What happened? A 135 pound girl made me change my outlook on building muscle and losing fat. She succeeded where all the best experts failed!
That girl is my girlfriend, Christiane, who happens to be an excellent natural bodybuilder and a trainer herself. She's always kept carbs in her diet; we even had several arguments over that. Since I was sure that carbs equalled fatness, I wouldn't listen to anything she said. That is, until I saw her get ripped, strong, and more muscular simultaneously, week by week.
That's when I realized that she must be doing something right! So together we developed a dieting template that would become the one I use with all my bodybuilders and the one I use myself. This approach allows the athlete to either gain maximum muscle mass without gaining too much fat (sometimes a slight fat loss is even possible) or to get into contest shape while maintaining (or even gaining) muscle mass. The strategy is actually not complicated and it's the most effective way to diet I've ever used... and I've used every diet imaginable! The approach is called carb cycling.
Another "product" of carb cycling is Sebastien "Da Freak" Cossette, a young bodybuilder I'm training for his first bodybuilding competition ("Before" pics on bottom; "after" pics on top).
The Logic Behind the System
There are two inevitable truths when it comes to building muscle or losing fat:
1) To increase body mass you need to consume more calories than you use.
2) To lose body fat you need to consume fewer calories than you use.
Obviously, the type of food you ingest will have an important impact on the end result. If the bulk of your calories come from junk food, chances are you'll end up gaining more fat than muscle. Similarly, if the quality of your food intake is low while dieting, chances are you'll end up losing more muscle tissue.
So, it's true that whatyou eat is just as important as how much you eat. However, total food intake still remains of paramount importance when trying to either gain muscle or lose fat.
Another thing to consider is the effect of nutrients on hormones and the effect of hormones on muscle gain and fat loss. For example, insulin is one of the most important anabolic hormones in the body. It directly influences the amount of amino acids and glucose transported into the muscle cells. This is the good stuff, and the more of it you have, the more you grow.
Basically, insulin is responsible for transporting the bricks to the construction site. Insulin also prevents the mobilization of the nutrients stored in the muscle either as intramuscular glycogen or muscle tissue. So in that regard, insulin favors muscle gain and diminishes muscle wasting. This is why insulin is widely used by professional bodybuilders.
However, since using exogenous insulin is out of the question for any natural individual remotely interested in avoiding diabetes and premature death, we must stimulate our body to produce its own insulin. Insulin is released from the pancreas in response to an increase in blood glucose level (which occurs when consuming carbs and certain amino acids). So if we want to increase endogenous insulin production, it becomes necessary to consume a mix of carbs and amino acids.
On the other hand, glucagon, which is insulin's antagonistic hormone, promotes the mobilization and utilization of stored nutrients, including glycogen and amino acids. When your diet is low in carbs, your glucagon levels skyrocket, putting you into mobilization/breakdown mode instead of building/anabolic mode.
We also have to mention that without ingesting carbs, it's harder to have intense strength training sessions. It's true that some amino acids can be "turned into" glucose via gluconeogenesis, and that ketone bodies can be used for fuel after proper adaptation has set in. But truth be told, a low/no carb diet makes you lose your capacity to train hard in the gym.
You also risk losing muscle mass because your body might very well decide to break up muscle tissue into amino acids to create new glucose! You could literally burn down the walls to heat the house!
Lastly, the conversion of T4/thyroxine (the relatively inactive thyroid hormone) to T3/triiodothyronine (the active thyroid hormone) is greatly impaired when insufficient carbs are consumed. A lower level of T3 leads to a drop in metabolism and this makes losing fat much harder.
For these reasons we can see that consuming carbohydrates is necessary if we want to develop a muscular body. However, insulin also has an ugly side: it can promote fat storage as well as reduce fat mobilization and usage.
A chronically elevated insulin level has a profound effect on the body's capacity to increase body fat. On a related subject, excess carbs can also be stored in fat cells. So always consuming large amounts of carbohydrates can lead to a physique reminiscent of the Michelin Man!
So What Can We Do?
To stimulate maximum muscle growth you need carbs, and a relatively high amount to boot. Without ample calories and carbohydrates, it'll be hard to gain heaps of muscle tissue, even with a high protein intake. However, eating too much too often can also make you fat. Head-splitting, isn't it?
The first method used by bodybuilders was to divide their training year into bulking and cutting phases: consuming tons of calories and carbohydrates during their bulking phase, then dropping their calories and carbs to sub-maintenance levels when entering a cutting phase. This worked...somewhat.
It did allow many people to gain a lot of size, but most of them lost quite a bit of their new muscle during the intense dieting period. Not to mention that those who were cursed with bad insulin sensitivity tended to gain a lot more fat than muscle during "bulking season." Also, gaining and then losing 20-30 pounds isn't exactly healthy. It puts a lot of stress on the body and can lead to some health problems.
Finally, from an aesthetic perspective, ballooning up by gaining 15-20 pounds of fat for the sake of gaining 10 pounds of muscle isn't the best thing to do. Ideally, we want to look good naked most of the time, not on a few selected months out of the year. "Sorry babe, not with the lights on this month. I'm bulking."
Then the cyclical ketogenic diets began to appear. These were based on a relatively long period of carb deprivation (normally five straight days) where less than 50 grams of carbohydrates were allowed, followed by one or two days of carbohydrate loading.
While very effective at stimulating fat loss, the long period without carbs isn't conducive to maximum muscle accumulation. In fact, by the second or third day you're pretty much in a severe catabolic state. Sure, there's an anabolic rebound during the loading days. But I'm not sure if this can be enough to compensate for the rest of the week. I do believe that it's enough to prevent muscle loss on a weekly basis, but not enough to promote maximum muscle gain.
To be fair, I've used this type of dieting several times in my life and did get great results as far as fat loss is concerned. I was even able to add a small amount of muscle, but I was never able to gain a lot of it on this type of diet.
Finally, a third approach championed by guys like Dr. John Berardi started to gain popularity. This dietary approach was based on not consuming many carbs and fats togetherand on consuming carbs mainly during periods of increased insulin sensitivity (in the morning and post-workout). So you basically had three meals with carbs and three meals without them every day.
This approach is darn near perfect for gaining mass with minimal fat accumulation. However, I found that it could still be improved to get the best body composition results.
The Solution
The solution that I'll (finally) explain to you is called carb cycling, but it could also be called calorie cycling. It sticks to the basic theory of ingesting carbs only in the morning and after workouts. The only difference is that the amount of calories and carbs consumed will vary each day. What will this accomplish?
• It'll allow you to include maximum fat burning days and maximum muscle accumulation days in each week.
• It'll prevent metabolic slowdown by providing frequent caloric spikes.
• It'll favor long term success because it's relatively easy to follow, especially compared to the more restrictive ketogenic diets.
Carb Cycling: The Basic Structure
Carb cycling is based on having three different carbohydrate intake levels during the week: high(er) carbs, moderate carbs, and low(er) carbs. Ideally these days are split according to your training schedule.
If you train 4 times per week:
• Select your two "priority workouts." These are the workouts where you're training the muscle groups you need to improve the most. On these days, you have a high(er) carbohydrate day.
• On the two other workout days, you consume a moderate amount of carbs.
• On the three "off days" you have a low(er) carb intake.
If you train 3 times per week:
• Select your two "priority workouts." On these days, you have a high(er) carbohydrate day.
• The other workout day has a moderate carbohydrate intake level.
• Among the four remaining days of the week, you have one more moderate carb day along with three low carb days.
If you train 5 times per week:
• Select your two "priority workouts" where you're training the muscle groups you want to improve the most. On these days, you have a higher(er) carbohydrate day.
• Select two "secondary workouts." On these days you have a moderate carb intake.
• On the remaining workout day and during your "off" days you consume a low(er) amount of carbohydrates.
Basically, one sentence could summarize the carb cycling philosophy: "Eat for what you did and have to do."
Calories and Carbohydrate Levels
When you've established your basic structure, you need to set the food intake appropriately. The first thing to do is calculate your daily energy expenditure: the amount of energy (in calories) you use each day. This baseline figure will be used to set caloric and nutrient intake during the various types of days.
First Step: Calculating Your Basal Metabolic Rate
Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) simply means the amount of energy used by your body during a 24-hour period if no activity is performed. In other words, if you're inactive for 24-hours straight, you'd still "burn" the amount of calories equivalent to your BMR.
Your BMR is a function of your size, sex, and age. It's also influenced by your metabolic status (hypo or hyperthyroid state for example). We can calculate BMR with the following formulas (by Harris-Benedict):
For Men
BMR = 66 + (13.7 x weight in kg) + (5 x height in cm) - (6.8 x age)
So for a 30 year old bodybuilder of 220lbs (100kg) at 5'11" (178cm) it comes up to:
BMR = 66 + (13.7 x 100kg) + (5 x 178cm) – (6.8 x 30)
BMR = 2122 calories per day
For Women
BMR = 655 + (9.6 x weight in kg) + (1.7 x height in cm) - (4.7 x age)
So for a 28 year old figure girl of 132lbs (60kg) at 5'6" (165cm) it comes up to:
BMR = 655 + (9.6 x 60kg) + (1.7 x 165cm) – (4.7 x 28)
BMR = 1380 calories per day
Second Step: Factoring in activity level
The amount of calories found using the Harris-Benedict formula is what your body burns every day, even if you do nothing all day. Obviously, the more active you are the more you'll burn fuel. So, energy expenditure will be increased when your activity level goes up.
To get an adequate estimation you need to multiply your BMR by an activity level factor:
Activity level factor
Activity level
1.0
Sedentary
1.2
Very light activity
1.4
Light activity
1.6
Moderate activity
1.8
High activity
2.0
Extreme activity
By sedentary we mean doing nothing all day (sleeping and watching TV).
By very light activity we mean doing nothing physical. Working a desk job or on a computer and not performing any type of physical activity during your day.
By light activity we mean having a non-physical job (desk, computer, etc.) but performing some sort of physical activity during the day (e.g. above average walking) but no hard training.
By moderate activity we mean having a non-physical job, performing some sort of physical activity during the day, and including a daily workout session in your routine. This is where most of you are at.
By high activity we mean either training plus a physical job or non-physical job and twice-a-day training sessions.
By extreme activity we mean a very physical job and daily hard training.
So if our 220 pound bodybuilder with a BMR of 2122 calories/day is moderately active, his daily energy expenditure is bumped up to 2122 x 1.6 = 3395 calories per day. This is the amount of food to consume to maintain present body weight.