Carbs and Fat

[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-t...#axzz1tL8jwAps
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/organ...#axzz1tL8y4W1y
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/high-...#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 I was the last one to complete before he called time and we moved to something else

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.