and I think more sensibly, and with more flexibility.
For example, if someones been on low carbs for an extended period they have much greater potential for muscle wastage. Your body needs blood glucose to lift weights and do intensive activities such as HIIT training or jogging. If there is none flowing in the blood your body will tap into glycogen store. If their low (most probably during low carb diets) guess what's next. Muscle tissue is broken down to fuel the muscles. Now, this is certainly not ideal as I found out the hard way! I'd complete a successful bulking season, diet down via low carb and I'd only have gained a kg or at best 1.5kgs over 12 to 15mths so it was 2 steps forward and just about the same back. Frustration, pure frustration let me tell you!
So I decided to give carbs a go while dieting and low and behold, with proper timing and application... I lost no muscle while dieting. I've used two approaches, first carb cycling. An awesome method for fat loss. It's much better than staying on low carbs all the time. It helps accelerate fat loss, prevents your metabolism from dropping when done correctly and at the same time gives you much more food variety making the diet much much easier to stick to, oh and carbs are just tasty! Secondly intermittent fasting or IF, this is what I stick to. Just my personal preference. The pros of this diet is you can afford to eat a little dirty and MUCH bigger meals which I think further boosts your metabolism. The only cons of this diet is the fast itself. Over a couple of weeks you adjust and it's pretty easy.
A little more detailed:
Let see what carbs really do and don't do. Thankfully we do not "need" carbs to survive, this was useful in our primal days, but what we do need is glucose (blood sugar) to survive. Let's not confuse the two. Carbs are essentially broken down into sugars and released into the blood stream, the body can also use stored proteins and fats for energy. If the body needs to it can break down muscle (proteins) and stored fats into fuel and glucose for the body to use. Let's take a quick look at how this works:
- The body needs glucose including muscles, organs and not to mention the biggest glucose drainer there is; the brain requiring most of it for use 24/7.
- As carbs are consumed and blood glucose gets too high, more insulin is released. Insulin, think of it as a courier which essentially lowers blood glucose by taking it to the muscle, liver or fat cell door so to speak. As it enters the cell blood glucose is lowered.
- While that is happening the body's blood sugar starts to lower and insulin falls. In the same process another hormone glucagon rises. Glucagon's job is to increase low blood glucose by the use of 2 processes called glycogenolysis; using stored glycogen from the liver and muscles to convert to glucose and gluconeogenesis; using non-carb sources such as muscle (amino acids from proteins) and glycerol from fats.
- This is how we can take stored fatty acids in the form of triglycerides, release them into the bloodstream and break them down in a process known as lipolysis stimulated by hormones such as glucagon, and use them for energy. Triglycerides break down into glycerol and free fatty acids. Glycerol is converted to glucose through the liver while the free fatty acids can be converted through a complicated process into ATP (usable fuel) for use in the mitochrondria (cell’s poweplant).
What's important to remember when dieting is glucose will only be converted to fat if muscle and glycogen store are full. So when dieting and exercising regularly this should never happen, purely muscle and liver glycogen uptake.
Having close to full glycogen stores are extremely important while dieting as they signal the body everything's good, were in a growth state. So muscle wastage is non existent. So your job is to work out that threshold (which is relatively easy) so you're able to diet down, keep the hard earned muscle and get shredded!
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