Should I Eat Carbs On Non Lift Days?

Nutrition
21

[quote]paulieserafini wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]paulieserafini wrote:
I dunno man, he is 15 I doubt he knows much about his body at this point.
[/quote]

And neither do most 40 year olds. What better time to start learning than while in the prime of youth.[/quote]

what I mean is he doesn’t know that he doesn’t handle carbs well. Why go low/no carb if he hasn’t deemed it necessary yet?

He is a young 15 year old who is developing more rapidly now than he will for the rest of his life, it makes more sense that he should be more worried about having a well rounded diet that is micro nutrient dense then worrying about cutting out a macronutrient that if from the right sources have no negative effects on the body and plenty of positive ones.

it’s not like after a few years of training and learning how to build a solid diet and maybe even track macros and calories, he can’t try to experiment with other things. I mean really? why would telling him to make such a dramatic change now really impact his future that much? I didn’t even start lifting until almost 19? and I didn’t start eating healthy until 11 months ago.[/quote]

Exactly all of this. It’s not like anyone is saying “Just GOMAD and eat pizza and burgers brah,” here. I agree with the above posters that this seems out of line with your normal legitimate viewpoints LIFTICVS. Having a good balance of P/F dominated days along with high(er) P/C days with sweet potatoes, brown rice, Ezekiel bread or fruit will likely only benefit a freaking 15-year old.

Once again, how could be possibly know what works for him if he doesn’t give it all a shot - especially when he’s young?

FTR, eBomb’s LOW days are like 150-200g carbs, which aside from Skipload days are my ‘highest’ days. So yeah, tinkering and toying should happen especially early on when noob gains will be had.

22

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

Avoiding carbohydrate when I was young would have put me on a different plane of existence compared to where I am now.

[/quote]

Please describe this different plane.

23

[quote]rds63799 wrote:

[quote]BrickHead wrote:

[quote]hurrdurrgomad wrote:
I just don’t want them to be converted into fat. I’m talking about complex carbs here (brown rice, whole wheat, potatoes). [/quote]

  1. Controlling your body composition and weight is dependent on macronutrient content, but staying lean or avoiding fat gain is also dependent upon appropriate caloric amount. As someone said, see what macronutrient amounts you handle the best (more or less fat or more or less carbs in the diet).

  2. I have no clue where the heck this carb phobia came from and why it still exists today! NO hard training bodybuilders have this irrational phobia and all eat carbs, in some cases, LOTS of them! Lee Haney, Jay Cutler, Michael Francois, Dorian Yates, and Shawn Ray at times consumed offseason diets of up to 60% carbs!

  3. People have gotten shredded to the bone with both ketogenic and high carb diets (Chris Aceto and his higher carb approach has been getting people shredded for decades!).

  4. People have controlled their bodyweight eating carbs at EVERY or NEARLY EVERY meal for a long time–so much for getting insane with nutrient timing (although it does have some merit in some cases).

  5. No one but the most advanced or fairly lean who want to get leaner has to fuck around with complicated strategies. (You can give an overly fat guy with shitty eating habits and little experience a high or moderate carb diet and he’ll lose weigh so long as there’s a caloric deficit and a good training regimen).

  6. Your question is alright but there are HUNDREDS of articles on THIS site on nutrition written by experts, some of whom compete or have competed. [/quote]

love. this. post.

carb phobia’ll be listed in the DSM IV in a few years time, mark my words[/quote]

Thanks!

24

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

If conventional wisdom worked (or worked easily) everyone that came to get advice from TNation would look like a bodybuilder in less than a year.[/quote]

Most people, including those on T-Nation, don’t look like bodybuilders because they don’t have what it takes to be successful bodybuilders–plain and simple! They don’t have the lifestyle, discipline, great genetics, or whatever other resources are necessary. They’re not lacking some extraordinary wisdom, although in some cases they may be held back by their own stupidity and ignorance, which seems to be the ever growing cases these days.

Conventional wisdom for bodybuilding isn’t the reason why some don’t look likie successful bodybuilders considering nearly all successful bodybuilders do the same shit, and they especially did similar shit in the beginning.

That is, they did this in the beginning:

  1. Full body workouts or half body splits using basic exercises
  2. A diet of 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound, 20% of the diet fat, and rest carbs.

Can you please provide what esoteric method we’d all benefit or would have benefited from considering conventional wisdom is usually flawed?

I don’t mean to be confrontational, but if you have such wisdom, I’d like to have some of it, and I’m sure others would to.

What does your approach look like-macronutrient breakdown and lifting regimen for beginners and intermediates? You don’t haveto write a book here, but I’m sure you can give us a gist in a paragraph or two.

25

[quote]paulieserafini wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]paulieserafini wrote:
I dunno man, he is 15 I doubt he knows much about his body at this point.
[/quote]

And neither do most 40 year olds. What better time to start learning than while in the prime of youth.[/quote]

what I mean is he doesn’t know that he doesn’t handle carbs well. Why go low/no carb if he hasn’t deemed it necessary yet?

He is a young 15 year old who is developing more rapidly now than he will for the rest of his life, it makes more sense that he should be more worried about having a well rounded diet that is micro nutrient dense then worrying about cutting out a macronutrient that if from the right sources have no negative effects on the body and plenty of positive ones.

it’s not like after a few years of training and learning how to build a solid diet and maybe even track macros and calories, he can’t try to experiment with other things. I mean really? why would telling him to make such a dramatic change now really impact his future that much? I didn’t even start lifting until almost 19? and I didn’t start eating healthy until 11 months ago.[/quote]

Most likely any advice he gets from someone else will not work.

He needs to find his own working plan.

Indeed he should experiment now while he is young and has the time and capacity to recover from his mistakes.

26

[quote]BrickHead wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

If conventional wisdom worked (or worked easily) everyone that came to get advice from TNation would look like a bodybuilder in less than a year.[/quote]

Most people, including those on T-Nation, don’t look like bodybuilders because they don’t have what it takes to be successful bodybuilders–plain and simple! They don’t have the lifestyle, discipline, great genetics, or whatever other resources are necessary. They’re not lacking some extraordinary wisdom, although in some cases they may be held back by their own stupidity and ignorance, which seems to be the ever growing cases these days.

Conventional wisdom for bodybuilding isn’t the reason why some don’t look likie successful bodybuilders considering nearly all successful bodybuilders do the same shit, and they especially did similar shit in the beginning.

That is, they did this in the beginning:

  1. Full body workouts or half body splits using basic exercises
  2. A diet of 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound, 20% of the diet fat, and rest carbs.

Can you please provide what esoteric method we’d all benefit or would have benefited from considering conventional wisdom is usually flawed?

I don’t mean to be confrontational, but if you have such wisdom, I’d like to have some of it, and I’m sure others would to.

What does your approach look like-macronutrient breakdown and lifting regimen for beginners and intermediates? You don’t haveto write a book here, but I’m sure you can give us a gist in a paragraph or two. [/quote]

I can only say what works for me. That is the point I am trying to make. Everyone responds differently to certain foods - that’s why I don’t believe in “fitting in macros” or whatever bullshit people are saying these days. We are in a constant state of flux and we should learn to eat intuitively.

For example, carbohydrates make me fat and not muscular. On the other hand I can gain muscle and strength quite easily on a high fat, moderate protein diet. I let my hunger decide what and when I should eat.

I find the idea that we need to have a post exercise “insulin spike” to be the most specious of arguments especially since we are supposed to be insulin sensitive at this time anyway. No one needs it. Just eat real food and nature takes care of itself.

If I were to do it all over again as a young kid I would concentrate on staying lean via a low carbohydrate diet and lifting really heavy like I am now. I would never bulk again and just let muscle growth happen naturally.

If I really wanted to look like a bodybuilder I would just take steroids since it isn’t going to last anyway.

27

I somewhat agree with LIFTICVSMAXIMVS

Eating carbs all the time made me very fat. In the last 18 months I have only had 1 MEAL each week with a high carb content and i didnt whither away. In fact i never put lean mass on as fast while also loosing fat-mass pretty rapidly at the exact same time.

As long as your training hard/smart, nutrients are good and your getting lots of veggies, proteins and good fats, carbs arnt necessary at all to building muscle

28

[quote]tork94 wrote:
I somewhat agree with LIFTICVSMAXIMVS
[/quote]

x2

29

Really agree with LIFTIC.

I can only imagine what my body composition in my 20’s would have been if I weren’t yo-yo dieting on “Whole Grains” for a decade. Its got fiber, it’s healthy!

note I have a B.S in Food Science Nutrition and gobbled up all that ADA food chart shit

I certainly don’t think a 15 y/o kid needs to go Keto and I don’t think that’s what being suggested, but creating good habits now is the best advice. Keep processed carbs to a minimum. Enjoy them to a degree to not be a tool socially, but make your daily staples “paleo” type carbs.

30

[quote]giograves wrote:
Really agree with LIFTIC.

I can only imagine what my body composition in my 20’s would have been if I weren’t yo-yo dieting on “Whole Grains” for a decade. Its got fiber, it’s healthy!

note I have a B.S in Food Science Nutrition and gobbled up all that ADA food chart shit

I certainly don’t think a 15 y/o kid needs to go Keto and I don’t think that’s what being suggested, but creating good habits now is the best advice. Keep processed carbs to a minimum. Enjoy them to a degree to not be a tool socially, but make your daily staples “paleo” type carbs.

[/quote]

Note: I have a BS undergrad in nutrition and an MS in nutrition and exercise physiology and I’m an RD. For the umpteenth time: NONE of my espoused professors eating a ton of processed carbs or overeating in general and thank god they taught about all sorts of macronutrient combinations, including ketogenic diets. My thesis professor used to write for T-mag and our report was on fat adapted athletes versus those on high carb diets.

Who is espousing bad habits or going ketogenic or overconsuming carbs or anything? No one. Nearly every successful bodybuilder consumes whole grains. Some actually do provide health benefits. Provided one can tolerate them, there’s nothing inherently “bad” about corn, rice, barley, wheat, oatmeal, and so on.

31

[quote]BrickHead wrote:
our report was on fat adapted athletes versus those on high carb diets.

[/quote]

Id like to hear more about this.

32

[quote]BrickHead wrote:

Nearly every successful bodybuilder consumes whole grains. Some actually do provide health benefits. Provided one can tolerate them, there’s nothing inherently “bad” about corn, rice, barley, wheat, oatmeal, and so on. [/quote]

Other than the fact that most successful BBer’s are ALSO juiced… lest not forget that BBers and their genetics are in a extreme minority to begin with. Fantastic these gifted (and ah hem sometimes enhanced) individuals can load up on 300-500g of mostly processed grain carbs (bread, pasta, etc) a day and build an amazing physique. This is NOT the norm. (Hence we have a market for Indigo)

Just about 1 in 4 people are obese and I wouldn’t be surprised if 3 in 4 are out of shape and flabby as hell. And on the extreme other end, living in NYC we should know a good portion of the non fat folks are “starvationist” I eat kale and carrots for lunch right before hot tub yoga…

Point is getting nutrition advice from “gifted” folks can be detrimental to the wrong body type.

And by the way, I never vilified things like corn off the cobb or steel cut oats. But before the new “my plate” replaced the old pyramid, do you remember how ridiculous the bottom was? Full of crackers, extruded cereals, breads and pastas. lol. Basically my 20’s get fat diet.

33

[quote]paulieserafini wrote:

[quote]BrickHead wrote:
our report was on fat adapted athletes versus those on high carb diets.

[/quote]

Id like to hear more about this.[/quote]

me too

34

RDS and Paul: I can email you the report if you PM me email addresses.

35

[quote]giograves wrote:

[quote]BrickHead wrote:

Nearly every successful bodybuilder consumes whole grains. Some actually do provide health benefits. Provided one can tolerate them, there’s nothing inherently “bad” about corn, rice, barley, wheat, oatmeal, and so on. [/quote]

Other than the fact that most successful BBer’s are ALSO juiced… lest not forget that BBers and their genetics are in a extreme minority to begin with. Fantastic these gifted (and ah hem sometimes enhanced) individuals can load up on 300-500g of mostly processed grain carbs (bread, pasta, etc) a day and build an amazing physique. This is NOT the norm. (Hence we have a market for Indigo)

Just about 1 in 4 people are obese and I wouldn’t be surprised if 3 in 4 are out of shape and flabby as hell. And on the extreme other end, living in NYC we should know a good portion of the non fat folks are “starvationist” I eat kale and carrots for lunch right before hot tub yoga…

Point is getting nutrition advice from “gifted” folks can be detrimental to the wrong body type.

And by the way, I never vilified things like corn off the cobb or steel cut oats. But before the new “my plate” replaced the old pyramid, do you remember how ridiculous the bottom was? Full of crackers, extruded cereals, breads and pastas. lol. Basically my 20’s get fat diet.[/quote]

Fair points.

Yes, the pyramid was pretty silly.

36

[quote]BrickHead wrote:
RDS and Paul: I can email you the report if you PM me email addresses. [/quote]

ok, will do that now

37

done, let me know if you didn’t get my pm

38

[quote]paulieserafini wrote:
done, let me know if you didn’t get my pm
[/quote]

x2

39

No PM’s received. :frowning:

40

[quote]giograves wrote:
Point is getting nutrition advice from “gifted” folks can be detrimental to the wrong body type.
[/quote] By “gifted” you mean people who train hard and earn their carbs ?