The Shocking Truth About Carbs: When To Really Eat Them

You probably have a love-hate relationship with carbs.

I know I do. Cheesecake, bread, mashed potatoes, and cookies: it’s all good stuff…for the tongue. Yet, when it comes to having a six pack and building lean, athletic muscle, carbs can be your foe.

In this short article, you’re going to learn the truth about carbs, the best times to eat them, and how to use them to stay lean while simultaneously building muscle. Before this, you’re going to learn about the most anabolic hormone in your body, and how you can completely control it simply by eating carbs and lifting weights.

The Power of Insulin

Muscle is insulin’s bitch. It dictates when it can grow, and when it can’t. To give you an idea of how anabolic insulin is, the biggest pro bodybuilders in history have been known to inject insulin into their butts via huge pointy needles. When you eat carbs, your body secretes insulin to get rid of high blood glucose levels. To get rid of glucose, it either helps shunt the blood glucose into glycogen in muscle or body fat. Sure, insulin is great for building muscle, but it’s also really good at making you fat.

Obese people have chronically high insulin levels. This means they are constantly building fat. If they have adequate muscle glycogen, then the blood glucose will barely be used for the muscles and mainly be used for making them fatter. This obviously sucks.

Now, let’s learn when you should eat carbs, and how much you really need.

Volume and Post Workout

Higher volume training (lots of total reps per workout) depletes more muscle glycogen than lower volume training. As I mentioned above, your body uses carbs to replenish glycogen stores in the muscle. The constant turnover of depleting and replenishing glycogen stores in combination of muscular tension, lots of amino acids (leucine, BCAAs, and whey isolate), muscle damage, and creatine will make your muscles grow like weeds. This is why the post workout shake is the most important meal of the day. Screw breakfast.

With that being said, you need very fast digesting carbs within an hour after the workout, and the amount of carbs you eat within this one hour window is dictated by the number of total reps in your workout. There is a formula for this, and I will reveal it shortly.

Your best post workout carb is either dextrose, maltodextrin, vitargo, or a combination of the three. Try them all out and choose the one that doesn’t give you gas, make you bloated, or cramp up.

The following formula is stolen directly from Charles Poliquin. It’s the one I use and recommend.

Total Reps Per Workout	Post Workout Carbs
~80 reps	1g/kg of bodyweight
~250 reps	1.5g/kg of bodyweight
~400 reps	2g/kg of bodyweight

For example, right now I am training with very high training volume: 10 sets of 10 reps on 2 exercises, and 3 sets of 10-12 reps on 2 more exercises. This equates to approximately 260 total reps per workout. This means that I need 1.5g of carbs per kg of bodyweight. Since I weigh 187lbs (85kg), I need 127g of dextrose in my postworkout shake to help recover from the high volume training and put my muscles into an anabolic state.

Basically, if training volume is high, you need more carbs in your post workout shake.

“If training volume is high, you need more carbs in your post workout shake.” – Tweet This

Night Time Feedings

Thanks to John Kiefer, Carb Backloading (CBL) is a household name. Basically, this means saving the rest of your carbohydrates for the evening. I’m not going into all the science of why this works, but the Coles notes version of CBL is that your body fat isn’t as sensitive to insulin in the evening, so you have a better chance of not storing bodyfat when eating carbs at night as opposed to throughout the day. (Note: If you are training in the morning or mid afternoon, you can still achieve this affect with your post workout shake by taking 200mg of caffeine immediately before and after your workout).

Here’s something you don’t know: the carbs you eat in the evening should be based on your workout for the next day. What most trainers and nutrition gurus teach is counterintuitive to this idea. They recommend eating carbs if you have worked out that day. What you should really do is eat carbs in the evening if you plan on working out the next day. This is the future. Make it your present.

For instance, if I am working out on Wednesday, then I need to eat carbs on Tuesday evening.

This will be a game changer. The reasoning for this is because you want to load up your muscles with muscle glycogen for the next day’s workout. By doing so, you will be stronger. Stronger muscles = bigger muscles. You will be able to create more muscle tension, muscle damage, and metabolic stress. In Decembulk, we used carb backloading to simultaneous build muscle and burn fat.

If you have trained that day, but you are not training the next day, you can still add in a small portion of carbs in the evening to help replenish glycogen from that day. This can be around 50-200 grams depending on how high the volume of your training program is, whether your goal is to build muscle or lose fat, and your body type/genetics.

Food Pairings

For food pairings, I picked up this quick tip from Dr. John Berardi and John Romaniello. In a nut shell, carbs and fat are inversely proportional. (I have an Aerospace Engineering background, so please excuse the mathematics talk). If your meal has lots of carbs, you want as little fat as possible. If your meal has lots of fat, then you want as little carbs as possible. Protein should be kept high in every meal.

If you are carb backloading, this means that your meals throughout the day should be high protein, moderate to high fat, and as close to zero-carb as possible. Conversely, evening meals should be high protein, moderate to high carb, and as close to zero-fat as possible.

The reasoning behind this is that fats will slow down the insulin spike. For optimal body composition, you want super fast insulin spikes in order to get blood glucose into the muscles as fast as possible before it has a chance to be stored as fat.

Wrap Up

If you are lifting weights and want to put on tons of muscle while simultaneously losing fat, then you need to follow the new rules of eating carbs as outlined in this article. In summary, this is what you need to do:

Control insulin, and in turn, control how much muscle you build.
If training volume is high, you need more carbs in your post workout shake.
Eat carbs the evening before a training session.
Carbs and fat in meals should be inversely proportional.

I’ve slowly been incorporating these rules into my clients’ coaching programs, and have been using my online clients as guinea pigs. If you want to get into the best shape of your life via a customized nutrition and training program, then coaching may be for you. If you want to learn more, just send me a quick message here and we’ll arrange a time to jump on Skype.

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