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Cutting carbs from a diet often results in almost immediate changes in appearance. A low-carb diet tends to flush away excess retained water. The result: within a couple of days, you will look tighter, even if only from water loss. Low-carb diets also speed the fat-burning process by promoting an increase in hormones that help burn bodyfat while simultaneously inhibiting hormones that can add to fat deposition. It seems like a low-carb diet is the perfect recipe for tightening up a physique. So why not go for broke and drive fat burning into the stratosphere by dropping carbs altogether? Because often, there is a point of diminishing returns.
Many bodybuilders like to keep things simple--they detest calculating and recording calories or grams of carbs, protein and fat. I'm right there with you. Without becoming too much of a slave to numbers, let's establish what I consider a lower-carb diet--one that effectively promotes fat burning.
I suggest starting with six meals a day, with seven to 10 ounces of protein at each meal or the equivalent of 40-60 grams of protein from protein powder. Next, ingest carbs at only three of those meals: the first meal of the day, preworkout and postworkout. A reasonable amount of carbs would be two slices of whole-wheat toast, 1-2 cups of cooked oatmeal or a large piece of fruit, such as a banana, for breakfast; a medium piece of fruit, 1 cup of cooked oatmeal or a medium sweet potato about 30 minutes before workouts; and 20-32 ounces of a sports drink (such as Gatorade), a large plain bagel, or a large slice of angel food cake immediately after workouts, which is one of the few times of day when you want fast-digesting carbs to spike insulin for driving recovery and growth.
In general, most bodybuilders will be able to drop fat by limiting carbs to three meals. Assess your physique each week to see if this approach is working. If you look leaner or weigh less, you're on track. If you fail to look leaner or the scale doesn't budge, make small adjustments: decrease the portion sizes of your carb sources so you are eating less at each of the three meals. If that doesn't work, consider having only a protein shake for your preworkout meal (no carbs).
RELATED ARTICLE: THE THRESHOLD
The goal is to figure out the point at which your body will give up fat as energy, allowing you to become leaner. I call it the carb threshold. For most bodybuilders, three meals with a moderate amount of carbs will do the trick. For others, a modified approach may be necessary--reducing portion sizes. Others may have to cut carbs from their preworkout meal. In a nutshell, you have to determine how much carbohydrate you can consume and still decrease bodyfat.
