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You should be aware that the main purpose of carbohydrates is to provide energy and when performing exercise your body begins by burning these carbs, not fat, not protein, it always turns to carbs first. So effectively, the more carbs you eat, the less fat you'll burn. That doesn't mean to say you should completely eliminate carbs, on the contrary, a lack of carbs will leave you feeling very sluggish, especially when working out and you will find it hard to maintain a level of deprivation. It's very much a double edged sword, if you eat lots of carbs you'll keep your muscle size and strength, but won't lose body fat. On the other hand, if you drastically reduce carb intake you'll deplete hard earned muscle, so the answer is to rotate your carb intake, by eating a higher amount of carbs on training days and a lower intake on cardio days or non training days. The benefits of cycling carbs allows you to burn body fat whilst also maintaining and increasing muscle size, so you can have the best of both worlds. On the days you eat a lower amount of carbs your body will tap into your fat stores for energy and on days you intake more carbs you will be refueling your muscles and increasing energy stores for your weights sessions. On low carb days it is essential to increase protein intake by a good 30-50g for the day, but at the same time keeping calorie intake low. Remember you should not intake more calories than you are burning on low carb days. To eliminate body fat effectively you should aim to burn off more from your cardio sessions than you will be consuming in the day. For the Carb Rotation method to be successful you need to be strict, this doesn't mean you need to count carbs, gram for gram, definately not. The idea is to just keep your intake low on non weight training/cardio days and increase consumption on weights days.
So how many carbs should I eat? Low Carb Days - as low as 0.5g - 0.8g per pound of bodyweight |
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