Over the years bodybuilding nutrition has divided itself into three fairly distinct categories. They are high-carb/low fat, moderate carb/moderate fat and low carbohydrate.
Low carb can be low or high fat as well as cyclical or non cyclicable.
In theory you can make arguments for or against any of these in terms of superiority.In the real world it’s not that simple. You can always find people have succeeded or failed on any of these diets.
Protein recommendations tend to not vary much since most of the arguments revolve around carb and fat intake.
Experience shows that people who do well on high-carb/low fat diets tend to do poorly on lower-carb/high fat diets. People who don’t respond well to high carb diets do better by lowering carbs and increasing fats.
Carb based diets make some people hungry even if they follow the diet strictly, so they eat more and don’t lose fat. For these people reducing carb intake allows better calorie control in the long term. People who don’t like moderation tend to like cyclical diets; they can handle no carbs during the week and do massive carb ups on the weekends.
So how does this help the less knowledgeable dieter looking to diet down? How can someone know which diet will be optimal for them?
Research has shown that some people are genetically better adapted to increase fat burning in response to higher fat intakes while others are not.
Unfortunately, no practical way of determining which one you might be has ever been discovered. But the fact remains that some people seem better able to increase fat oxidation in response to higher fat intakes than others. This explains the response to high fat ketogenic diets. People who upregulate fat oxidation will tend to thrive on them; people who don’t tend to get bloated and don’t lose fat well.
At this point we should take a brief look at insulin secretion and sensitivity. Insulin is a storage hormone released in response to eating with carbohydrates having the largest impact on insulin secretion, protein having the second largest and fat having little or no impact. Insulin sensitivity refers to how well or how poorly the body responds to the hormone insulin. Individuals who are insulin resistant tend to have higher baseline insulin levels because the body is releasing more in response to try and overcome the resistance.
Insulin resistance is determined in a large part by lifestyle ( training, diet and body fat ) but is also determined by genetics. Individuals differ in how much and how little insulin they release following a standardized meal. Some people release more in response to a meal than others.
Both issues relate to fat/weight gain or loss. Good overall insulin sensitivity tends to correlate with weight/fat gain and insulin resistance is thought to be an adaptation to prevent further fat/weight gain. However, some research suggests that a tendency to release too much insulin in response to feeding may predispose people towards fat/weight gain. A big problem here is that high insulin secretion tends to make people eat more. These are the individuals who will benefit most from a lower carb higher fat diet because the insulin response will be much lower and they won’t tend to be hungry so often. Remember, fat has little or no effect in insulin secretion.
There are a lot of complicated and impractical ways to determine insulin sensitivity and secretion. All involve blood work and looking at either baseline insulin or blood glucose or how insulin changes in response to a meal.
However, in practice there are signs as to whether you have good insulin sensitivity or not or whether you over secrete insulin. Ask yourself two simple questions:
1. On high carbohydrate intakes, do you find yourself getting pumped and full or sloppy and bloated? If the former, you have good insulin sensitivity, if the latter, you don’t.
2. When you eat a large carbohydrate meal, do you find that you have steady and stable energy levels or do you get an energy crash/sleep and get hungry about an hour later? If the former you probably have normal or low levels of insulin secretion. If the latter, you probably tend to over secrete insulin which is causing blood glucose to crash which is making you sleepy and hungry.
It is most likely that superior bodybuilders couple excellent insulin sensitivity with low insulin secretion in response to a meal. This would explain why bodybuilders have often gravitated towards high/carb-low fat diets and been successful on them.
At the same time, mediocre bodybuilders frequently get less than stellar results from the same diet. Lowering carbs and increasing fat seems to be more effective. In this case some of the low carb bulking strategies will work better for those individuals.
So in practice, if you have good insulin sensitivity and low insulin secretion, odds are you will do well with a traditional bodybuilding type diet which means high protein, higher carbs and low fat. If you go 1g/lb of protein at 12 cal/lb. that’s 33% protein. If you go 1.5 g/lb that’s 50% protein. That leaves you with 50-67% of your calories to allocate between fat and carbohydrates. 15-20% dietary fat is about the lower limit as it becomes impossible to get sufficient fatty acids below that intake level. So at 1g/lb your diet will be roughly 33% protein, 47-52% carbs and 15-20% fat. If protein goes to 50% of the total, carbs should come down to 35% of the total with 15% fat.
If you are not insulin sensitive and/ or have high insulin secretion, a diet lower in carbs and higher in fat is a better choice. Assuming 40% protein,20-30% carbs and 20-30% fat is a good starting place. A further shift to a near ketogenic ( or cyclic ketogenic ) diet may be necessary. 40% protein, 10-20% carbs and the remainder fat may be most effective. If protein is set higher, up to 50%, carbs would be set at 10-20% and the remainder dietary fat.
As you can see, diet is a very complex issue. The generally accepted theory of cutting carbohydrates and raising protein intake is not a one size fits all diet. You must be able to listen to feedback from your body to tell you what to do. If this seems to be an overwhelming concept you are not alone. Diet is the hardest part of a bodybuilding regimen to master. This is where most bodybuilders fail. There is help available. We can be contacted at our website www.DrMarilynlajoie.com. Telemedicine is available as an alternative to an office visit. We can help you achieve your goals.
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