CARBS

Man, I am energy crashing. Totally dragging today. I'm starting to rethink this mega-low carbs diet I'm on. I'm averaging about 100-150g of carbs/day, high enough to easily avoid ketosis, but not nearly as high as the recommended levels of carb intake. As a result, major energy loss.

So, need to rethink my carb approach. I'm pasting here key parts from the Carb section of Genralissimo McDonald's Baseline Diet 2.0. I'm going to try jumping up to 45% of my calorie intake from carbs, which should put me at about 1500 calories/day (about 400g or so). Let's see how I feel during the next week. Gonna go experimenting.

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are surrounded by controversy in the world of sports nutrition for lifters (and in the general public). Well meaning dietitians give the same carb recommendations to lifters as they do for endurance athletes. Others argue that there is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate (true) and prefer to use ludicrous protein intakes to produce glucose.

As with so many topics, I tend to come in more or less right in the middle. While I think that lifters generally don’t need massive carbohydrate intakes (well, maybe if you’re training 2 hours/day every day), I consider excess protein intake an expensive (metabolically and financially) way to produce glucose.

Carbs taste better anyhow and produce more insulin (which is important for overall growth). How many carbs is needed depends on a lot of factors, which I discuss in the article How Many Carbohydrates Do You Need?

A lot of general equations have been thrown around for lifters in terms of carbohydrate intakes for optimal results. I’m no fan of percentage based diets but, assuming calories are adequate, an intake of 45-55% of total calories seems about right as a starting point for carbohydrate intake.

In practice, this might yield a carbohydrate intake of 2-3 g per pound body weight. So a 180 pound lifter might be consuming 360-480 grams of carbs per day or 1440-1920 calories per day. Assuming he was consuming 18 cal/lb (3240 calories), this would yield 45-60% of the total. Math is fun.