Carbs are Good so Eat Them!!!!
 
It seems throughout the years one time or another all of the macronutrients our body’s need has been demonized for one reason or the other. First it was fats are bad for you, then protein is bad for your kidneys, now you hear carbohydrates are not necessary and they make you fat. Really carbs make you fat, I’m sure it has nothing to do with the ice cream and oreos you eat everyday?!?! So let’s just get this out of the way all macronutrients are great for you and you absolute want them all in your diet whether you are gaining weight or losing weight. Because remember whether you are gaining or losing the biggest thing is calories vs. calories out. But since carbs are the new new bad food I just wanted to take a second to go over some of the important things carbs do for you and why as an athlete you’d be best served not to neglect them.
 
The main purpose to consume carbs is that they give you energy and fuel for your workouts and is your bodies preferred fuel source (1). Have you ever tried working out without eating any carbs all day you feel slow and halfway into the workout its hard to pick up your water bottle because you are completely drained. This is why it is very important to have some type of carb source pre workout roughly 1-1 1/2 hrs before and if your workouts are long and strenuous enough you need some during your workout. These carbs not only will help shuttle nutrients where they need to go it will also help in releasing IGF-1 which is essential for muscle repair. These carbs are essential for you to keep performance at a high level throughout your entire workout and it also is huge on muscle recovery and muscle growth.
 
Carbohydrates are also essential for stopping protein degradation throughout a workout. As you workout whats going on in your muscles is that you are creating a bunch of micro tears, these tears are what can be the cause of soreness, but if your body is replenished with the right amount and kind of nutrients these tears repair faster and your muscles grow bigger. So what helps combat lack of muscle recovery the magical carbohydrate, it does this by spiking insulin in your body which is very anabolic, it inhibits the lipolysis, glycogenolysis, and proteolysis (protein breakdown) and it stimulates the shuttling of nutrients throughout the body and it stimulates glycogen synthesis, protein synthesis, and lipogenesis. (2) So essentially carbs help stimulate the building of muscles all while preventing them from breaking down. So as an athlete this is key to recovering faster from workout to workout so you can train harder and train more frequently which leads to bigger gains.
 
So now that you know the 2 big reasons why you need carbs as an athlete lets talk about the best times to eat them. You’re going to want to consume carbs when your body is most insulin sensitive which is at breakfast, pre, during and post workout. These meals or shakes should be when you consume the majority of your carbs because when your body is at its most sensitive to insulin is when it will best utilize those carbs for the reasons we talked about above. So there is a timing aspect to carbs and when carbs are at their highest its safe to keep fats at their lowest as fats will slow down the absorption process and like I said above carbs help shuttle nutrients so if you eat a crap ton of fat with these higher carb meals guess where that fat is likely to go, thats right straight to your adipose cells or fat cells. Which is why carbs can make you fat but now that you know why and when to utilize carbs it should help you improve performance and body composition.
 
References
1. Brosnan JT. “Comments on metabolic needs for glucose and the role of gluconeogenesis.” Eur J Clin Nutr. 1999
 
2. Gropper S. Sareen, Smith L. Jack, “Advance Nutrition and Human Metabolism 6th Edition” 2013

A very misguided saying has been going around and its been said a few times to me that really needs some explanation to it. It goes something like If the stove is hot keep cooking or something along those lines. It basically means if you feel good that day go for broke in the way’s that I’ve been told. I hear all the time the stove was hot so I hit a PR 1 rep max on squat while sitting at 5 weeks out from a meet.

 
Did you ever stop to think maybe this is a key indicator that your training is going good and headed in the right direction so why fuck it up now. Maybe its your body’s way of telling you ‘Hey things are on course for a big day and we should be ready for the meet in a few weeks, please don’t screw it up again for us’ but still you see people hitting crazy amounts of volume or huge 1 rep maxes leading up to the meets. Whatever happened to peaking for a meet? You know the part in training where you drop the volume, up the intensity, drop the different specialty lifts, and master the competition lifts all so your body can recover from the wear and tear you put it through and be ready to perform on meet day.
 
Every training program should be set up in a way that you have key indicators to know things are going as planned. By hitting certain numbers for reps or moving certain weight at a certain speed, these indicators will show you that you are progressing so you don’t have to go maxing out every week to check.
 
If the plan calls for triples that day and you feel good why not hit a PR triple instead of letting your ego take over and push for that new 1 rep max. You do know that a 1 rm is a display a strength and not so much a way to build it in training. So if your imaginary stove is burning thats a good thing stay the course, following your plan because its working and peak for the meet so that you can have a good showing their and not in your gym.

I blame everything on Mark Bell and Jesse Burdick, back when being big, strong, and somewhat fat was the acceptable norm for powerlifters, these two guys go and decide to flip the script and get shredded. Jesse did it 1st going from super fat to a lean ripped and pasty 220lbs. Mark followed suit, after a serious injury sidelined him he decided to put down the HoHo’s and fight a war on carbs. Now everybody wants to get lean and everybody can, but everybody wants to get lean and stronger at the same time which is quite nearly impossible unless you do it separately meaning you get lean and weaker first than maintain that leanness while regaining strength if done right this will most likely take a year to accomplish. But if you want to do both at the same time it can be done to a certain extent you just have to be really smart about when to call it quits on the diet so you don’t lose strength.
 
What I’m going to tell you is not rocket science but sometimes you just need to hear it in order for it to click. Losing weight is easy, it simply takes eating less calories than you burn in a day approximately 500cal deficit a day to lose a pound a week. You can also lose weight and gain strength but this can only be done for a given period of time before you A. Lose your fat body leverages which makes you weaker, B. Get injured because as you get super lean you’re more likely to get injured if you’re still trying to push heavy weight, or C. Diet and strength train in a calorie deficit for an extended period of time which can be anywhere from 8-12 weeks some maybe sooner most not longer.
 
I’m only talking about this from an anecdotal perspective as I’ve done it myself and have talked to several people who have done t as well. The consensus with most was they got weaker around 8 weeks of serious dieting at about 1-2lbs of weight loss per week. I actually got injured and weaker as I got down to around 8% bf I noticed things like tends and muscles were super tight and everything was achy and at 2 weeks out from my meet I ended up wrecking my bicep deadlifting.
 
The biggest drop off came for me at about week 10 of my diet I was down 30lbs from 250 to 220 and one week I squatted 575lbs for 3 easy singles and the next I got stapled with 515lbs and this is coming from a 650lbs gym squat at my strongest and heaviest. Every week there after just got worst and worst soon everything started to drop, but I was determined to be super lean and super strong and in hindsight I still would have been strong for a 198lbs lifter but I most likely would have lost 150lbs off my best total to do it. So after the injury I decided to end the diet and add calories and about 3 weeks into it my strength was back to were that dramatic drop off was.
 
So the best way to do a diet and get stronger or maintain strength is to do a 1 to 1 ratio of a calorie deficit and calorie surplus and to be safe do it in 6 week spurts. So a 6 week cut followed by a 6 week surplus notice I didn’t say bulk you fat powerlifter, just surplus. Shoot for a surplus of an extra 100 calories a day per week so by the end of week 6 you would have added 600 calories to your daily count. If done properly you should notice that your cutting calories will get higher and you’ll still lose weight and your calorie surplus will go up and you shouldn’t gain to much.
 
So give this a try if your heart is set on being a lean powerlifter just don’t go full retard like me and get busted up. I hope this helps and if you have any questions always feel free to hit me up at tony@tmnutrition.net