Anabolic Diet Research

The Anabolic Diet week 3.  Reading and Research:

I'm still working on the plan that's going to work best for me on the Anabolic Diet.  The thing is, carb ups are dangerous with my B.E.D.   Once the carbs and insulin start flowing, the harder it is to stop.  I think there are probably many people out there who feel the same, so I'll put down some research that I'm finding here.

alaw4516 wrote: How long do you have to be below 50g of carbs a day before your body starts using fats/ketones as a primary source of energy

Christian Thibaudeau: 7 to 21 days depending on your hormonal balance, training volume and previous dietary practices.

alaw4516 wrote: when can you have a carb up day?

Christian Thibaudeau: Never... I do not recommend a full carb-up day unless you are under 10% body fat. When you have a full day of carbing-up (especially if it is excessive) it will take you 2-3 days to get back into ketosis (using primary fat/ketones for fuel)... so that leave you around 3 days for real fat loss. Now, if your main goal is to gain mass this aspect isn't as problematic, but you will have a hard time staying in fat burning mode and that means that you will feel lethargic and lack energy because fat will never stay your primary fuel source.

I recommand anywhere from 1 carb-up meal per week up to half a day (3 meals) depending on the degree of leanness.

BUT when you start this diet you CANNOT have a carb-up until you are clearly fat adapted. That's why my clients cannot have carbs until the end of the second week of dieting. Then they can normally have one carb-up meal every week.

alaw4516 wrote: Also do you need to have large carb up days or can I just have oatmeal in the am, surge PWO and maybe a nice juicy hamburger and some fries for dinner :)?

Christian Thibaudeau: I always recommend carbing-up with clean food. Normally I will allow SURGE post-workout and then a clean carb meal of around 150g of carbs at the last meal of the day. I used to recommend having it at breakfast but changed my mind because of:

- Charles Poliquin who showed me that during a low-carbs diet you are actually more insulin sensitive in the evening AND the carbs will help you sleep better.

- Dave Palumbo who does it for a more practical reason: if you have your carbs at your last meal, you will not be as tempted to eat them again during the day. If you have carbs early, you will often crave them for the rest of the day and end up doing an excessive carb-up.

Interesting right?  Here's more...

Christian Thibaudeau: but most cyclical diets go overboard on the carb-up. Since you are never depleting your glycogen stores completely, 200-250g every 7 days is enough, unless you are training twice a day everyday, in which case you will need more frequent loadings.

Here, here's continuing to talk about only doing 1-3 carb up meals a week (considering a 6-8 meal day), so only one meal to half a day max!  This seems so much better to me, as I still have about 3-5% bodyfat to lose.  Also, I think knowing that my carb up is only allowed to be Saturday afternoon-evening, the more I could control the over-eating that has plagued me the past 2 weeks.

More...

Stop looking for a universal answer! There isn't one. It depends on various factors including insulin sensitivity, training volume, activity levels, metabolic rate, etc.

Me personally, when I train twice a day, I have to have a carb containing meal every 4th day. This meal normally provides 200g of carbs. When I train only once a day I have to eat a carb meal every 7th day.

BUT I'm extremely lean. Individual who are fatter need to space out their carb meals more.

AND it is NOT a carb load. A carb load is ingesting a ton of carbs over a period of 1-2 days. I'm talking about a carb MEAL.  

OK, I get this - finally this makes sense.  But what about the glycogen and loading up.  How much can the body hold at once?  The human body can hold about 400-500g of glycogen maximum.  How quickly are they used up - thus spurring you into ketosis?

It depends on the type of training you use. For example doing a biceps-only session will use less total glycogen than a lower body session. If you do 30 sets per workout you will use more glycogen than if you do 5 sets per workout. If you do sets of 8-15 reps you will use more glycogen than if you do sets of 1-5 reps.

But and ''average non-idiotic'' training session will use around 90-150g of glycogen. So in theory you would deplete your glycogen in 4 weekly workouts. BUT this isn't so because of two reasons:

A) When you are fat adapted and in a ketogenic state, which is glycogen sparing, you might only use up half as much glycogen. So you could, in theory require 8 workouts to deplete glycogen. But even if that is the case, you will never completely deplete glycogen because...

B) Even in the absence of carbs, your body will still replenish the glycogen stores to some extent. It will do so by transforming certain amino acids into glucose(glutamine, alanine, serine, glycine and threonine being the most glucogenic amino acids) which can then be stored as muscle glycogen. Obviously you want to avoid breaking down muscle amino acids to build new glucose, which is why a higher protein intake is important if your carbs intake is low: in that case the body will use the amino acids from the free amino acids pool to produce new glucose. ''Won't this reduce the amount of protein that we can use to build muscle?''. Not really, if you are a natural trainee there is a limited amount of protein that you can use to build muscle tissue. Over 1.0 to 1.25g per pound is about the limit; so if your protein intake is at 1.5 to 1.75g per pound, you will be able to use the excess to form new glucose without interfering with protein synthesis.

 Alright - here's the big one.  This is basically what I've been looking for:

The thing is that you are somewhat misinterpreting my recommendations. The one meal carb-up is for body composition only; or in other words to MAXIMIZE fat loss.

If you read my article ''refined physique transformation'' you will find that my recommendations change depending on the degree of leanness of the individual.

These recommendations are:

For men

Above 20% body fat: carb-up at around 0.75g of carbs per pound every 14 days

15-20% body fat: carb-up at around 0.75g of carbs per pound every 10 days

12-15% body fat: carb-up at around 1.0g of carbs per pound every 7 days

10-12% body fat: carb-up at around 1.25g of carbs per pound every 7 days

Less than 10% body fat: carb-up at around 1.25g of carbs per pound every 4-5 days

I also make recommendations regarding the type of food to use for a carb-up:

For men

Above 20% body fat: carb-up only with clean carbs (yams, non-green veggies, fruits, oatmeal, rice, potatoes, grits, etc.)

15-20% body fat: carb-up only with clean carbs

12-15% body fat: carb-up mostly with clean carbs. One or two ''cheat'' items is acceptable but avoid eating foods that are both high in fat and sugar.

10-12% body fat: Carb-up can include a bit more cheat food, but still stay away from fat/sugar combo foods.

Less than 10% body fat: the refeed can be more lenient. While results will be better with cleaner food, when you get down below 10% it's okay to include some dirtier meals (pizza, burgers, pastries, etc.) in your refeed day.

Finally the recommended amount of carbs for the ''diet days'' are also dependent on body fat levels:

For men

Above 20% body fat: no more than 30g of carbs per day

15-20% body fat: 0.25g of carbs per pound of body weight per day

12-15% body fat: 0.35g of carbs per pound of body weight per day

10-12% body fat: 0.45g of carbs per pound of body weight per day

Less than 10% body fat: 0.55g of carbs per pound of body weight per day

So someone who is relatively lean (10-12% for example) and weighs 200lbs can use 90g per day, preferably around workout time. So you could very well have 40g of carbs pre/during your workout, 40g post-workout and 10g of trace carbs during the day.

Even someone who is slightly less lean (12-15%) at the same 200lbs can go up to 70g per day which stills allows some carbs peri-workout.

Really, my recommendation to go super low carbs is only for fatter individuals.

The point I was making in this thread is that it IS possible to gain size while not ingesting carb. I never said that it was optimal.

******

BTW, just a correction regarding ATP. ATP is the ONLY fuel source that the body can use. When ATP is depleted the body will use different substrates to produce new ATP and replenish the reserves.

Creatine phosphate is the first substrate used to produce ATP and it is the fastest (higher power) but the one with the shortest duration (around 12 seconds).

Glucose used under anaerobic condition is the second way to replenish ATP, it is the second fastest way to produce ATP but is is also of short duration (around 70-120 seconds)

Glucose used under aerobic condition is the third way to replenish ATP. It is not as fast as the previous two systems but can last longer (up to 15 minutes and sometimes more)

Fatty acids via fatty acid oxidation is the fourth way and it is the slowest of the energy production pathways, but last a REALLY long time! When doing intense training this system is used mostly to replenish ATP stores during recovery periods. In fact most of the ATP is replenished between sets via the fat oxydation pathway.

Now what about ketones you say? Very little literature exists on the subject because basically no research studies the energy substrate used during weight training while in a ketogenic state. My educated guess from the available literature which shows no decrease in performance during a low-carbs diet when performing work in the zone that would normally rely on the third energy system (glucose with oxigen) would suggest that ketones are about the same power (speed of energy production) as using glucose + oxygen to produce ATP and it would also last as long as the fatty acid oxydation system.

So this tells us that during ''regular bodybuilding'' training (sets of 6-12 reps lasting 30-60 seconds), glycogen would indeed be the only way to efficiently fuel your workouts. Ketones could also be used, but the lower energy production speed would be too slow to allow the maintenance of the same intensity.

HOWEVER if one is performing work that relies more on the phosphagen system (ATP and creatine) ... sets of 1-5 reps lasting 20 seconds or less ... training intensity should not be affected by a ketogenic diet since glucose is not super important during those sets AND that ATP is replenished between sets either by using ketones or fat. 

This is what I've been feeling for so long now, and it's great to see someone else put it in writing.  I was basically straight ketosis (read: semi-Atkins) for about 30 days instead of the recommended 14-21 day induction period, to make absolutely sure I got it right.  Then finally when I went off for a carb up, I crashed.  Thank God I didn't have a gig that night, because I couldn't peel myself off the couch.  The next week, not only did I energy-crash, but I emotionally-crashed as well and binged out on every carb I could get my chubby fingers wrapped around.  Good stuff here.

Thanks www.T-Nation.com for the tips and I plan on incorporating this stuff during next week's carb up MEAL!