A Simple Guide to Building Muscle & Losing Fat: Part 3

In Part 2 of this series, I briefly covered some basic tenants of fat loss and some basic recommendations for protein consumption.  In this post, I'll be covering carbs.

They're the Devil to some and angelic heralds to others.

Some say they cause obesity, and others say they're essential for facilitating muscle growth.

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that carbs are, in one way or another, associated with growth.  Furthermore, this association stems from the fact that carbs spike insulin, which is widely thought of as an anabolic hormone.

Now, anabolic merely refers to growth, be it fat gain, muscle gain, or both.

But here's the trick:  Carbs don't inherently lead to growth just by their very nature as carbs.  Eating to excess, regardless of macronutrient ratios, leads to fat gain.

Time and again, the epidemiological data reveals that it's your net caloric balance that determines your body composition, not the macro-composition per se.

However, a fellow named Jose Antonio, PhD, wrote a very interesting article that might just help us appreciate exactly how macro-composition effects dieting results.  I won't get into the nitty-gritty science that Dr. Antonio covers (you can read his article if are interested).  I will, however, offer you his conclusions:

1. In general, the best diet for promoting fat loss is a very low carbohydrate, ketogenic diet.
2. In general, the best diet for promoting gains in LBM while losing a modicum fat is one higher in carbs and protein.
3. In general, I'd suggest you try a balanced approach at first (for example, a 40:30:30 approach) and then tweak (not twerk) the diet from there.
4. Try a "diet" for 4-8 weeks at most, and then switch it out to another approach.
5. Treat diet the same way you treat training. You don't train the exact same way every week of the year, do you? Of course not.
6. You can't go wrong eating a boatload of protein daily. And you can't go wrong eating many meals throughout the day (3).

Now I've had a good deal of experience with low carb diets and cyclical diets, and they are certainly effective.  However, something important to consider is the fact that low carb diets and cyclical low carb diets are not inherently the best long term solution to fat loss.

Going low carb (especially ketogenic low carb) can lead to a host of issues:  low testosterone, a dysfunctional thyroid, muscle atrophy, poor sleep, just to name a few. 

However, given Dr. Antonio's advice above, it seems as though it would benefit us to, at the very least, limit carbs to a certain extent.  We need to find a balance.

Carbs are incredibly important for ensuring adequate exercise performance and recovery, and for keeping liver glycogen stores sufficiently full (live glycogen is crucial for maintaining blood sugar and energy levels).

Given all of this, I propose a more moderate form of cyclical dieting; one that will allow for efficient fat loss, a healthy hormonal balance, and adequate recovery from your weight training sessions.

So here's the meat of it:

1) On rest days, consume between 100-125g of carbohydrates.  This will be enough to keep liver glycogen restored, and your hormones in check.  If, however, you have a body fat % above 15, stick to a range of 50-100. 

2) For workout days, if you're below 10% body fat, consume 2-3g of carbs per pound of body weight.  If you're between 10-15% body fat, consume .8-1g of carbs per pound of body weight.  If you're above 15% body fat, don't worry about cycling; just stick with 50-100g of carbs everyday, and maybe include a carb reefed once per week.

We're putting things together here people. 

Next time, I'll cover dietary fats, and we'll finally be able to set up a viable dieting program that will allow you to achieve your goals.