[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
[quote]Marther wrote:
[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
I want to say that I’ve been all over the carbs spectrum during my career. My point of view evolved from my personal experience, studies and work with clients.
I started out as a die hard ‘‘no carbs’’ advocate (heck for 18 months I lived on less than 50g of carbs per day… not even one carb up). That’s because I always was a fat guy and the first time I was able to get lean was when I went low carbs.
Turns out that I was actually ingesting around 1600 calories per day as I was also low fat… not surprising that I lost a lot of fat on such a regimen… but I also go weaker.
Then, I decided to experiment with post-workout carbs. It worked, I gained more size then when no-carbing. I would basically have 100-150g of carbs post-workout with 50g of protein. I progressed and thus believed that POST workout carbs where ideal. In retrospect it works, it’s better than not having anything, but is it optimal?
I worked with a few bodybuilders who responded very badly to low carbs diets… as in they actually gained some fat and lost muscle! When I introduced carbs back in their diet, they started to progress again. That’s when I realized that carbs where not bad for everybody. And that’s when I started to look into carbs cycling.
When I started working on building the IBB program Tim wanted me to try PRE-workout carbs. I gave it a shot, not convinced AT ALL that it would work (since I had results from post-workout carbs I didn’t see any reason for changing that). To my surprise it did give me A LOT better results when it comes to strength and size gains then when using my old approach.
What I am doing now might even change in the future, who knows? For now it’s the best approach that I’ve tried. If something better comes along, great! All I want is to find the best way to build muscle and grow stronger, even if that means changing my beliefs.[/quote]
So what kind of figures would you be looking at for the daily aggregate carb intake of your carb tolerant clients?
[/quote]
I find that this is a trial and error thing. It also depends on the goal of the individual.
I normally start them with roughly 50-100g pre-workout, depending on which protocol they use and also have them start with 50-75g at breakfast. And I go from there. Each week I evaluate how his body is responding. If he is losing weight too fast (during a fat loss phase) or not adding any fat (during a muscle gain phase) I will bump up carbs a bit. I start by only adding carbs on the two occasions mentionned and if I reach a point where the intake is ‘‘too high to be increased again’’ at those two occasions I will start adding a third carb meal roughly 1 hour post-workout.
When the guy’s fat loss halts (during a fat loss phase) or he starts to gain too much fat (muscle gain phase), I take carbs down just a bit or include a few low carb days during the week.
The highest I’ve been with a client recently is 800g of carbs per day (200g of which pre-and-during-workout) during a muscle growth phase, but the guy is a national level bodybuilder who at the time was 265 on 5’9’’ and still fairly lean.[/quote]
coach,
if you are on a mass gaining phase following these guidelines, what would the nutrition look like for a low carb off day? i am currently training 5 times a week with two carb meals (morning and peri workout) on these days and its going well. i am sure i will be able to regulate my carbs on these days depending on how my body is reacting. my only question is off days: how much protein and fat would one consume on these days? how much fat would be too much fat?
