Carbs and Fat

[Catrin]

In my conversation yesterday with my sports dietician, she made a comment that surprised me. Perhaps my surprise is based on a misunderstanding - or trying to simplify/overthink a complex relationship.

We were discussing my concern about the BodPod results, and I asked her if I could be getting too many carbs. She has recommended 50% carbs in my diet and I've been doing that - focusing on high quality complex carbs that are spread throughout the day. She said that she would never recommend a lower percentage than that for someone as active as I, and that it was more important that the body get enough calories.

We do have proof that my body has been recently using muscle as energy :eek: even though my calorie intake hasn't been much below her targets (say 150-200 calories low on exercise days) - and there has been ample protein in my diet.

I've been thinking that perhaps I need to lower carbs a bit and raise fat a bit - but she said that this doesn't matter in the long term. This isn't intuitive to me and am curious to hear if anyone has experimented with this and what their results were. Of course every "body" is different.

[westtexas]

I couldn't imagine my diet being 50% carbs. I would gain 5 pounds a week. I eat less than 50g of carbs per day most days and generally stay under 80-100 regularly. Even on days I ride. I have not noticed a difference in my performance or recovery from my high carb days versus my low carb days. And I don't gain weight, other than muscle. I've really leaned out on low carb. Instead of stuffing my face with carb products after riding, I usually sleep. If I actually am hungry (rare for me now for usually 6 hours after a ride) I eat en egg or something that protein/fat only. Haven't died from it yet!

[GLC1968]

Catrin - I think your question is a valid one. As you know, I eat paleo and that means that my diet is naturally lower in carbs and higher in fat. I'm not really 'low' carb, as my typical day ends up 30% c, 30% p, and 40% fat. Most paleo people are even lower carb and higher fat/protein, but I allow myself more potatoes and fruit to fuel endurance workouts (all of this was before my injury, of course!).

Here are a couple of interesting blog posts about it from Mark Sisson (former world class endurance athlete turned 'primal'):
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/how-to-maintain-muscle-while-losing-weight/#axzz1tL8jwAps
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/organ-reserve-muscle-mass-aging/#axzz1tL8y4W1y
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/high-fat-diet-no-cardio-washboard-abs/#axzz1tL9NdSWf (this is an example of how high fat can still make you lean but bear in mind, it's easier for men than for women, of course).

[Catrin]

Interesting West Texas, and I suspect part of this is going to different from body to body. Of course she wasn't talking about 50% grains, but all carb sources including vegetable and and fruits. I am certainly not gaining weight, but the loss of muscle and gain of fat indicates one of the following (I am certainly not exercising too little) and I am unsure which:

1. My body still isn't getting enough calories (or at the right time) to properly fuel my activities and is using muscle for energy, or

2. My body needs more time to adjust to the increased calories, or

3. The timing of my meals needs to change, or

4. A small decrease in carbs and a small increase in fat is needed, or...

5. I am over-thinking (very likely).

I am only concerned because of the loss of so much muscle...but I feel better and feel stronger than before so it is confusing.

There IS a test that shows how our bodies metabolize both fat and carbs, and at what point we tend to move from one energy source to the other. Apparently this differs from person to person. It is a $100 test however, and the only way I could justify it would be if I were intending to race. I don't see that happening :)

[goldfinch]

I think there are individual differences, maybe dependent on your own degree of insulin sensitivity, on whether higher or lower carb diets work best for a person. But that aside, maybe you do need to up the calories to the level that she recommends on your exercise days. Then at least you will know whether you have an overtraining issue (too much exercise and not enough calories leading to burning of muscle). What seems odd to me is that you feel better and stronger but the data shows muscle loss. Weird.

There are so many variables as well as individual differences that I wonder how anyone can give good advice. All you can do is play at it, paying attention and giving enough time for each experiment to work.

I have substantially increased my calories, both carbs and protein, but not fat, and suddenly I am getting strength gains from the weight training that I do. My issue is getting the sweet spot in calories. My weight is trending up just a hair so I have cut it back a bit. I think I have been running a 100 to 200 excess. But the excess sure has helped me get stronger. Now it is time for me to back off a bit. I don't have a good way to measure my body fat accurately, but increase in strength has to mean something.

[Catrin]

Thank you for your comments Goldfinch. It is uncertain how the bod pod treats water in the body, it could be that part of the decreased lean mass is no more than my retaining less water yesterday morning than the day I had the first test...

That being said, I did break down and purchase a food scale. I am pretty good at judging portion sizes by sight, but it could be that I've not been eating as much as I thought.

Anyway, I appreciate the patience and advice. Being able to come here and talk it out means I don't get so obsessive over it - amazing how that works.

[ny biker]

I have no idea how to answer your questions. But, two thoughts.

- I was recently discussing body fat measurements with my trainer, including the inaccuracies of all the available methods of measurement, and he told me that bod pods can measure very lean athletes as having negative body fat, which is really possible. And I've read that pod bod measurements can be affected by the amount of gas in your digestive tract. Bottom line being that a bod pod measurement might be more accurate than other methods, but it is still an approximation. So it could be that either (or both) or your measurements were a bit off.

- You say you have decreased weight training but are still exercising a lot. What kind of exercise have you substituted for the weight training? It could be that whatever you are doing now is burning more calories and building less muscle mass than your former routine, and either or both of those things is affecting your weight and body composition.

[goldfinch]

Thank you for your comments Goldfinch. It is uncertain how the bod pod treats water in the body, it could be that part of the decreased lean mass is no more than my retaining less water yesterday morning than the day I had the first test...




I have no idea how to answer your questions. But, two thoughts.

- I was recently discussing body fat measurements with my trainer, including the inaccuracies of all the available methods of measurement, and he told me that bod pods can measure very lean athletes as having negative body fat, which is really possible. And I've read that pod bod measurements can be affected by the amount of gas in your digestive tract. Bottom line being that a bod pod measurement might be more accurate than other methods, but it is still an approximation. So it could be that either (or both) or your measurements were a bit off.



I've been interested in the BodPod but it does look like there can be a fairly high error rate on an individual basis, even though on a population basis it is pretty accurate: http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=175

[Catrin]

I have no idea how to answer your questions. But, two thoughts.....

- You say you have decreased weight training but are still exercising a lot. What kind of exercise have you substituted for the weight training? It could be that whatever you are doing now is burning more calories and building less muscle mass than your former routine, and either or both of those things is affecting your weight and body composition.

I don't think there is a real answer to this - just trying to wrap my brain around it and decide what changes, if any, that I want to make. It really, really helps to talk it out and, as a single person with not many fitness minded friends outside of this forum, I really appreciate the depth of experience found here.

The metabolic training we've been doing focuses on engaging as many large muscle groups as possible for every exercise - and there have been quite a lot of weights involved. So it isn't like I've been backing off on strength - just not doing my traditional strength workout more than once a week as the less traditional training took up two of my usual training days and of course I need to recover properly. I think it would help to illustrate:

This means that instead of, say, 3 sets per arm of 12 dumbell swings using a 25 pound weight - instead I had a 20 pound kettlebell and hit the 200k track:
5 kettlebell swings (one per step), then 5 burpees.
5 more kettlebell swings, 5 burpees - repeat for one complete track circuit. This took some time and not all of us were able to complete - but I did :D I was the last one to complete before he called time and we moved to something else :o

Fill the rest of the hour with equally intense and varied combinations and you can see why I couldn't do my usual workout more than once a week. The ending two exercises at the last class was 2 minutes of standing shoulder presses with a 25 pound plate (41 shoulder presses for me) followed by 2 minutes of jumping jacks (for me that was 125, I am slow at jumping jacks). Our trainer was very strict about proper form.

So with that kind of activity, I don't think that I would have lost any real strength - and indeed I feel like I have far more upper body strength than when we started. No way could I have done 41 shoulder presses with a 25 pound plate in 2 minutes (or one hour) prior to this class.

That leads back to your first thought - how accurate either reading was. Nothing is perfect, and that could well be involved. I will do it again this summer - I've one more free session this year.

[Catrin]

I've been interested in the BodPod but it does look like there can be a fairly high error rate on an individual basis, even though on a population basis it is pretty accurate: http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=175

I don't think there can be a perfect tool, but this is more accurate than the skin-fold test. Thankfully I am not paying for any of these tests - they are/were part of the $15 ten-week class I took at my fitness facility. Awesome deal. The fun part is learning how to process/use the results in a manner that is helpful.

[ny biker]

Well it certainly sounds like you're working hard enough to stay strong (or get stronger).


I've been thinking that perhaps I need to lower carbs a bit and raise fat a bit - but she said that this doesn't matter in the long term. This isn't intuitive to me and am curious to hear if anyone has experimented with this and what their results were. Of course every "body" is different.

Two more thoughts --

- why do you think it would help to lower carbs and increase fat? To get more calories when you need them?

- if her advice doesn't seem to make sense, can you ask her to explain her thinking in more detail? Perhaps you could call or send an email, rather than having to make (and pay for) another appointment?

[Catrin]

Well it certainly sounds like you're working hard enough to stay strong (or get stronger).



Two more thoughts --

- why do you think it would help to lower carbs and increase fat? To get more calories when you need them?

- if her advice doesn't seem to make sense, can you ask her to explain her thinking in more detail? Perhaps you could call or send an email, rather than having to make (and pay for) another appointment?

I do wonder if switching it up between the two would provide me more immediate fuel - I have the idea that fat becomes available more quickly than carbs - but I could be incorrect. I will email her and see what she thinks. I've been keeping a eye on my blood glucose and it is stable so the current mix isn't affecting my insulin resistance that I can tell (the next A1C will tell).

Of course, I haven't been quite hitting her calorie goals for me, so that is my first task. Thank you for helping me think this through!

[OakLeaf]

Just curious why more protein isn't on the table (ha ha)? That would be my first inexpert guess.

[Catrin]

Just curious why more protein isn't on the table (ha ha)? That would be my first inexpert guess.

:) Because I am already getting between 90-130 grams a day... She wanted me to pull it back to 90 and that is also proving to be a challenge but have an easier time getting to this mark. I do understand that too much protein is hard on our kidneys...

This is, however, one of the reasons I finally got the $8 food scale. I eat quite a few chicken breasts in one week and they all differ so much in size. I want to make that I know what 4 ounces of chicken actually looks like :o

[Owlie]

First, how's your protein intake?
biochemistry nerd:
Carbs (especially simple ones) are rapidly burned off; there are a lot more steps needed to convert fat into usable fuel. There's a reason all those gels and things are essentially sugar and flavoring. ;) If you don't have enough when you need them, you start converting amino acids (from muscle) to glucose--muscle and many other tissues can use fat and its breakdown products for fuel, but your brain and red blood cells are pretty much dependent on glucose.

/biochem nerd

[Catrin]

First, how's your protein intake?
biochemistry nerd:
Carbs (especially simple ones) are rapidly burned off; there are a lot more steps needed to convert fat into usable fuel. There's a reason all those gels and things are essentially sugar and flavoring. ;) If you don't have enough when you need them, you start converting amino acids (from muscle) to glucose--muscle and many other tissues can use fat and its breakdown products for fuel, but your brain and red blood cells are pretty much dependent on glucose.

/biochem nerd

I get 90-130 grams a day between chicken breasts, eggs, non-fat dairy, and nuts (for the most part). I do try to spread this out through the day so I am not getting all of it all at once. Now, lunch does tend to be my smallest meal, but I do have a snack with protein (either a bar or something like nuts and raisins) before working out to help my blood sugar levels. It may be that I am eating too close to the workout and it isn't really available until too late...I hadn't thought of that before.

My dinners have become larger since trying to hit those calorie targets, it might be better to have a much larger lunch and have dinner be the small meal of the day as long as it has a reasonable amount of protein...

This may well be more related to timing...

[OakLeaf]

90 to 130 is a big range. 90 wouldn't be enough for me on the training schedule you're keeping. My understanding is it's only hard on your kidneys if you're not using the amino acids to build or repair muscle. But I'll defer to those with more knowledge of the subject.

[Catrin]

90 to 130 is a big range. 90 wouldn't be enough for me on the training schedule you're keeping. My understanding is it's only hard on your kidneys if you're not using the amino acids to build or repair muscle. But I'll defer to those with more knowledge of the subject.

Personally I prefer the 130, the dietician wanted me to pull it back to 90 (some formula related to my weight). I've not been really successful with that so it is more like 110-130. Considering the kind of workouts we've had in class, it may well be that I needed 130 on those days.

The class is over for now, there will be a similar class starting in June that I will likely take - hopefully with the same instructor - he has quite the no-nonsense approach that I like. It ensures I get off the bike at least two days of the week and at $15 it is certainly affordable for a member. They have a couple of high intensity free classes that I will check out between now and then.

Our trainer is helping me change my usual workout to incorporate elements of the metabolic training into my usual fitness library so, for at least the next month, my training will be a combination of the old routine and elements of the new - with increasing riding if it ever should stop raining and warm up.

Added: I've been doing some reading, and there appears to be several studied opinions out there about the best amount of protein if you are working to build muscle. It also appears to be a myth that high protein consumption has any effect on the kidneys other than to make them work harder to remove the excess nitrogen - so not harmless but neither does it cause kidney damage. I may stick to her suggested 90 grams on non-metabolic training days and bump it up to one gram per pound of body weight on days I do metabolic training. That might be a good middle ground...

[Raindrop]

Sometimes, it helps to look at your protein sources too. Quality protein is not always animal sourced and the quality of protein and fiber you can get from vegetables and quality grains can be very, very positive for your workouts and your body.

Carbs are not evil as long as they are from non-processed foods. :) So, increasing quality carbohydrates will also benefit your workouts and help insure that your workouts don't result in losing muscle.

[Catrin]

Sometimes, it helps to look at your protein sources too. Quality protein is not always animal sourced and the quality of protein and fiber you can get from vegetables and quality grains can be very, very positive for your workouts and your body.

Carbs are not evil as long as they are from non-processed foods. :) So, increasing quality carbohydrates will also benefit your workouts and help insure that your workouts don't result in losing muscle.

Thanks Raindrop - I have been working at getting more and a greater variety of veggies in my diet. I DO think that I need to make dinner my smallest meal of the day and have larger lunches/pm snacks to assure my body has the fuel it needs for my late afternoon/very early evening workouts and rides. My carb sources are typically pretty good - but of course there isn't a "perfect" diet, and I do think it is important we mix it up - something that I am better at saying than doing...

[Catrin]

Our coach encouraged me to re-do the Bod Pd session, certainly my Friday results didn't help my team any in the body fat loss challenge :o

So, I re-did it this morning at the same time as the very first one, and wearing the exact same thing. Apparently time of day matters a great deal - or they have re-calibrated the unit. I am not the first one in the group to have had unexpected results or to have re-done the test.

I've still lost a bit of muscle,which has to be nutrition, but my body fat percentage was considerably lower than Friday - almost 8%, and 3.5% lower than the first one. So, I get to actually help my team out instead of hurting it ;)

Thanks to all for helping me think through this entire protein/carb/fat balance over the weekend. That give and take helped me to really think about it in conjunction with my internet research rather than just obsessing over the results. I am staying inside my dietitian's guidelines but tweaking the timing of when I eat - and bumping up the protein for hard days.

[Reesha]

Catrin, my experience has been that I burn muscle when my body isn't saturated with calories during workouts. ONLY during workouts though. If I'm riding, I've got two bottles of Gu Brew or Accelerade and 2 gels. I'll have a snack before. Basically I fuel for the specific ride and eat my normal pseudo paleo diet(keeping wheat in the diet in preparation for abundance of wheat on my ride this summer). My PT suggests 300 calories per hours of riding at least, and more if you're riding harder.

I shall have to check out the bod pod. Was it expensive?

[Catrin]

Catrin, my experience has been that I burn muscle when my body isn't saturated with calories during workouts. ONLY during workouts though. If I'm riding, I've got two bottles of Gu Brew or Accelerade and 2 gels. I'll have a snack before. Basically I fuel for the specific ride and eat my normal pseudo paleo diet(keeping wheat in the diet in preparation for abundance of wheat on my ride this summer). My PT suggests 300 calories per hours of riding at least, and more if you're riding harder.

I shall have to check out the bod pod. Was it expensive?

I think this is the problem - not fueling enough prior to an intensive workout session - for a "normal" weights session I think my usual approach is fine - but I've really kicked up the intensity over the last 2 months in the attempt to build muscle and lose body fat... I know how to fuel for riding, but the increasing intensity of my workouts really has changed things.

Thankfully the bod pod did not cost me anything - it was part of a team body-fat loss challenge at my gym that included 2 group training sessions a week (for 10 weeks), and 2 bod pod sessions - all for the sum of $15 :) My gym charges members $45 for 1 session (we get one free session a year) so depending on the facility it doesn't really seem all that expensive.

They also do VO2? max testing, which would be interesting as it shows at what point we change from burning fat to carbs for fuel - but I can't justify a $100 test just for the sake of curiosity. It isn't like I will ever race!

[Reesha]

I guess the carb thing your dietician said still makes sense for me if I take into account calories over the whole day and not per meal. Surrounding any 2 hour workout aerobic intensity or over, I'm taking in carbs like crazy. 2 gus, 2 bottles accelerade, a PBJ or banana before... That gets my percentage of carbs per day into the 40-50% range, where without those, it's down near 30%. Sometimes even closer to 20-25%. I don't feel good when I get 50% of calories from carbs in a meal. I try to limit my carb intake per meal to under 25g unless it's right before a massive ride.

[Catrin]

I agree - she wants me to get 2 servings of whole grains per meal...and to me that sounds a bit much for someone prone to insulin resistance. I think the new calorie targets are good and I will keep those - and I have lost weight, (though I fear it was from the decrease of muscle combined with the decrease in body fat).

I get my regular A1C test next week, which will provide information as well regarding how well this is actually working for my body.

I have not really tried to consume 2 servings of whole grains per meal as she recommended - just one serving and the rest of my carbs have come from vegetables and fruit. At the end of the day I wind up with an average of 45-50% carbs - but most days I am active and some of that is from workout/ride fueling. Looking back at my log I see that most rest days my carb intake drops to 35-43% on average...

My former trainer once told me that the nutritional aspect of trying to build muscle was an entirely different game - and this certainly proves how right he was!