Carbs and Fat

[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...