The thing that turns dreams into reality is effort (gym!)

[AstonMartyn88]

Circuit training is excellent, I go twice a week and cut out bread from my diet (replacing it with tortilla wraps) and lost 2.5 stone in 5 months

[regular_john]

Circuit training is excellent, I go twice a week and cut out bread from my diet (replacing it with tortilla wraps) and lost 2.5 stone in 5 months

I agree. I went for my first session a few weeks back and it utterly destroyed me, easily one of the best (and toughest) workouts I've ever done. Unfortunately I have so many niggling recurring injuries (thank you skateboarding) that there's no real way for me to do it on any regular basis without spending the following fortnight recuperating.

If anyone is looking to drop a load of weight really quickly though, circuit training is as good a method as you're likely to find.

[Wainy316]

So as this all seems to be about weight loss so far, if you want to add bulk, should you gorge on carbs? (obviously as well as protein).

[TheDon]

So as this all seems to be about weight loss so far, if you want to be bulk, should you gorge on carbs? (obviously as well as protein).

Not gorge no.

But you want to target carbs around workouts. Insulin increases protein synthesis, so you want to spike insulin post workout so you get a greater benefit from your workout.

[tonyh29]

Everyone knows cakes make you fat. Everyone knows crisps make you fat. Everyone knows chips make you fat. You know what they all have in common? Carbohydrates.

it would also depends on metabolism and on the amount you eat of course ...

the easiest way to look at any diet in simple terms is that if you eat more calories than you burn you will put on weight and if you burn more calories than you eat you will lose weight

This is also one of the biggest problems with the nutrition industry. Surely on a basic level calories in - calories out = change in weight, but it's not at all as simple as people make it out to be. For a start if calories in drop, your body is more likely to use less of them, it'll slow down to account for the reduction in intake. If you've still got insulin spiking you're not going to lose much weight because insulin prevents you from burning fat.

Calories out also never accounts for unused calories. On a low carb ketogenic diet you end up literally pissing out large quantities of acetone. Are people going to claim acetone has no energy? It's something that has to be accounted for in calories in vs calories out never is.

That's without saying that calories have no bearing on what our body actually uses for energy, the amount of energy needed to heat water by 1c means nothing to our bodies.

"A calorie is a calorie" is the biggest myth going, it takes our body different amounts of energy to process different energy sources, proteins have to be broken down into many different components, which means it takes more energy for our body to digest protein than carbs, yet 1 calorie of protein is the same as 1 calorie of carbs? I don't think so.

A basic grasp of chemistry is enough to see that the whole concept of calories is deeply flawed and their irrelevant to what our bodies actually need. Calories would have you believe our bodies can break things down with zero energy loss. Which anyone with even a gcse understanding in chemistry can say is complete rubbish, there's always energy lost in transformations, but calories don't account for them.

but taking your initial statement that carbs make you fat ....salad is carbohydrate , does it make you fat ? ...that would be a no really wouldn't it ... so I suspect what you really mean is Processed carbs ( and stuff like trans fats , salt and hidden extras )

i.e even your average glass of Tropicana despite being pure OJ is made in such a way that it is dense calories and over twice the calories of the equivalent amount of OJ should you press one yourself )

If you ate enough salad in a short enough time frame to spike insulin, then yes it would. The problem being it's pretty damn hard to eat enough salad to do that, seeing as it's pretty much 95% water.

low carb diets will make you hungry , probably restless and essentially you will mainly lose weight through water and muscle loss .. they should be avoided at all cost ..unless you are obese and then maybe as a drastic kick start short term measure

Rubbish.

Carbs trigger hunger cravings due to their spiking insulin. You eat them, you feel full, your body goes "eek, glucose on the blood stream!" produces insulin which gets rid of it all, and then your body goes "damn, where did all that glucose go? Must have used it already, best get them to eat some more!" and the hunger cravings start up again.

Fats and protein satiate you FAR better than carbs due to not having this effect and due to them being harder for your bodies to break down.

Sure on the first few days of low carb you'll go through a bit of hell trying to avoid eating carbs, your body will crave them, but after the initial period you'll feel far fuller on a higher fat and protein diet than a high carb one.

As for muscle loss, low carb diets are higher in protein that low fat, you'll be breaking down the protein in your diet before your body even thinks about touching your muscles. Sure if you eat low carb, low protein, high fat, you'll quickly burn through your muscles, but the goal of low carb is higher protein so that doesn't happen. If it does, you're doing it wrong.

weights with cardo is a good balance but it also depends on your goals .. a lot of your average body-builders may look great , big muscles and no fat but they can't run 100m in 11 seconds .. read up about Beckham when he had a slight loss of form when he first joined Madrid ..they put him on a weights program and his fantastic engine suffered as a result of it ..he ditched the weights and regained his form .. I used to run the 100m, 200m and 400m ..the problem with that was that for the 100m I needed more explosive training for fast twitch muscle , where as the 400m ( and my football) required a program more around slow twitch .... i was a decent at all 3 events but my coaches kept advising me to drop the football and also focus on one event if I wanted to move onto the next level ..in the end some clogger at football took that decision out of my hands :-(

Cardio is opposed to muscle gain (and so the opposite is also true). Cardio burns muscle. It's an unavoidable side effect. It's why marathon runners are skinny as hell despite spending a hell of a long time training.

If you want to build muscle mass then you need to keep cardio down to a maximum of 30 minutes, and spaced as far away from your weight training as possible.

low carb diets have been proven to be the most beneficial to health over and over again

have to disagree ... apart from the stuff i mentioned above , they cause other issues with the body ... ITV ran a show called worlds best diet recently ..the low carb diet lost the most weight but her LDL levels and Triglyceride went through the roof whilst her HDL levels dropped and her overall health suffered lack of energy ,restlessness ,and made her irritable .

Darren Gough lost 2lb less on the Mediterranean diet and his LDL levels dropped , he felt fantastic and his overall health levels improved .. he had more energy , slept better and so on

Sorry, I find that really hard to believe.

Low carb has been shown time and time again to improve the profile of cholesterol.

I'd put money on them not doing a full VAP test and instead doing a basic one that estimates LDL, which has been shown to provide consistently wrong results.

Google low carb cholesterol, you'll find a huge amount of studies (scientific lab based ones, not ones on ITV) that show the exact opposite of what you've just said.

There's plenty of studies showing high carb diets have detrimental effects on cholesterol and increase the risks of heart disease.

well this is the crux of it isn't it ..whose "expert" opinion do you take ..

btw I've not been advocating "high carb" diets , unless by high carbs you mean a "normal carbs " intake ??

I've even said that I function better on a higher protein mix , but that mix still includes a decent amount of carbs ... What I'm arguing against is those diets that appear to be advocating zero to obscene low carbs ...Low carb diets put the body into a state of ketosis .. known to cause all manor of health problems ..mainly to the kidney if i recall but not exclusive

frankly you'd have to be bonkers to follow such a diet

the studies your google search refer to that i saw are still eating 26% carbs ..and appeared to be suggesting "reduced carbs " they didn't say cut out carbs altogether which is what the ITV show was testing and has been put forward by Atkins who was talking about 20g a day (v around 300g your average human currently eats ) ...

the scientific study put forward by the likes of Michael R Eades ..surprise surprise come with a nice handy book available on Amazon ... what makes his "scientific study book" and different form the next Dr's scientific study book ??

[TheDon]

well this is the crux of it isn't it ..whose "expert" opinion do you take ..

btw I've not been advocating "high carb" diets , unless by high carbs you mean a "normal carbs " intake ??

I've even said that I function better on a higher protein mix , but that mix still includes a decent amount of carbs ... What I'm arguing against is those diets that appear to be advocating zero to obscene low carbs ...Low carb diets put the body into a state of ketosis .. known to cause all manor of health problems ..mainly to the kidney if i recall but not exclusive

frankly you'd have to be bonkers to follow such a diet

the studies your google search refer to that i saw are still eating 26% carbs ..and appeared to be suggesting "reduced carbs " they didn't say cut out carbs altogether which is what the ITV show was testing and has been put forward by Atkins who was talking about 20g a day (v around 300g your average human currently eats ) ...

the scientific study put forward by the likes of Michael R Eades ..surprise surprise come with a nice handy book available on Amazon ... what makes his "scientific study book" and different form the next Dr's scientific study book ??

"Normal" carbs is high. The recommendations for carbs are frankly ridiculous and fly in the face of near enough every study out there.

Kidney issues are due to high protein, not low carb. The amount of protein you need to eat to cause kidney issues is far higher than what most people will. Even eating 2g for every lb of LBM won't give you kidney issues (which is more than you'd eat if you were bulking).

Ketosis is fine, it's got a bad press because people confuse it with ketoacidosis. Who exactly is it known to cause all manner of health issues by?

Atkins only has <20g a day for induction, short periods of time to kick start the body into ketosis, and then when you're in ketosis you add back small amounts of carbs, and for maintenance it generally hovers around 100g.

There is also the health benefits of being in a state of ketosis, both the brain and the heart function with up to 25% greater efficiency when ran on ketones rather than blood sugars.

Ketogenic diets have long been used to treat epileptic seizures, and long term studies of patients on them have shown no long term side effects.

You can say you'd be foolish to follow such a diet, I say you'd be foolish to eat anywhere near the "recommended" amounts of carbs. There's just too much evidence that they cause long term health issues.

[Wainy316]

Wow, this stuff is far more complicated than I thought. Can I not just curl a dumbell and wake up like Arnie?

[Stevo985]

Change your diet. There's no point hammering it at the gym if you're eating crap. You need to do both diet and exercise to shift a decent amount of weight.

Don't rush it. best way to lose weight and keep it off, is to just do a good old fashioned basic diet. None of these fad diets. Atkins does work, but you'll lose muscle mass as well as fat and you'll put the wieght back on very easily. That's speaking from experience. I've lost weight through Atkins and I've suffered the post diet putting back on of the weight.

Go here and invest some time in reading about nutrition and building your own diet.

You can't build muscle and lose fat at the same time (more or less). GEt yourself a nice full body weights routine, but your aim with that while losing weight is to keep as much muscle as you can whilst losing fat.

Cardio is key if you want to lose fat.

In my opinion, the best way to shift your fat is High Intensity Interval Training. Essentially it's much shorter cardio sessions, but much more intense.

Research it. Might not be for everyone, but for me it's really effective, and good because you don't have to spend hours pounding away on a treadmill, you can spend 15-20 minutes on an exercise bike and you're done.

I won't bother explaining it in full, but essentially it's a cycle of short, intense sprints followed by moderate pace (eg 30 seconds sprinting followed by 30 seconds moderate), as opposed to one constant pace for ages

Here is a good place to start for information about HIIT.

[veloman]

[Not gorge no.

But you want to target carbs around workouts. Insulin increases protein synthesis, so you want to spike insulin post workout so you get a greater benefit from your workout.

This is all good stuff; so what do you mean by "target carbs around workouts"

In bike racing there is a procedure called 'carbo-loading' which you would do (eating pasta, rice pudding etc) before a long event, probably +3 hours . Is that what you mean?

Also, I knew nothing about the insulin involvement; so what do you mean by "spike insulin post workout"

All advice gratefully received.

[b23avfc]

Change your diet. Especially the last few hours before bed.

What on earth is wrong with a Large Takeaway Pizza and a Bottle of Rum for supper? Followed next morning by a full fry up ;-)

Sounds good to me mate

[dont_do_it_doug.]

The Atkins diet went out with Steve Irwin.

I've never read so many self appointed quacks spouting so much bullshit to be honest. Infact, they seem to have talked themselves around in circles. One minute I'm reading Carbs post workout are bad then I'm told to spike my insulin. It can't be both.

Boring.

All I know is I've doubled in strength over the past 6-9 months, I can run further than ever before, I am the proud owner of a 6-pack and the balls to sign up for Alpine mountaineering. I eat shit loads of carbs and if I don't I lack energy and I feel like shit. I am my own medical experiment if you like. Or you could take the advice of doctor don over there, have bad breath, no energy and a perplexed look on your face as he talks and talks and talks and talks. Each to their own I guess.

Good luck anyway, the gym is meant to be fun not a science project. Eat well and exercise. Simples my friend.

[TheDon]

[Not gorge no.

But you want to target carbs around workouts. Insulin increases protein synthesis, so you want to spike insulin post workout so you get a greater benefit from your workout.

This is all good stuff; so what do you mean by "target carbs around workouts"

In bike racing there is a procedure called 'carbo-loading' which you would do (eating pasta, rice pudding etc) before a long event, probably +3 hours . Is that what you mean?

Also, I knew nothing about the insulin involvement; so what do you mean by "spike insulin post workout"

All advice gratefully received.

Just that you should aim to eat carby meals around the time you're working out, as that's when they have obvious benefits.

Spiking insulin just means eating carbs to raise your blood sugar levels, which will trigger insulin production. As insulin aids in building muscle eating carbs post workout has 2 beneficial effects, 1: it replenishes the glycogen you've used up in your muscles, and 2: it increases gains by increasing protein synthesis.

Carb loading is similar, but a bit different.

I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of hitting the wall, the wall is when your body runs out of glycogen in its muscles, your blood sugar is at an all time low, and you are completely depleted of the readily available energy sources. So you feel weak and that's the point your legs give up on you.

Carb loading aims to prolong the period you can go before this occurs, both by ensuring your muscles glycogen reserves are topped up, and by having still digesting carbs in the system feeding glycogen back into them.

It's also why you should constantly drink carb drinks during long distance events.

So carb loading is more to do with prolonging performance where as targeting carbs post workout is to do with recovery and muscle growth. They both relate to glycogen reserves, but in slightly different ways.

[TheDon]

The Atkins diet went out with Steve Irwin.

I've never read so many self appointed quacks spouting so much bullshit to be honest. Infact, they seem to have talked themselves around in circles. One minute I'm reading Carbs post workout are bad then I'm told to spike my insulin. It can't be both.

Boring.

All I know is I've doubled in strength over the past 6-9 months, I can run further than ever before, I am the proud owner of a 6-pack and the balls to sign up for Alpine mountaineering. I eat shit loads of carbs and if I don't I lack energy and I feel like shit. I am my own medical experiment if you like. Or you could take the advice of doctor don over there, have bad breath, no energy and a perplexed look on your face as he talks and talks and talks and talks. Each to their own I guess.

Good luck anyway, the gym is meant to be fun not a science project. Eat well and exercise. Simples my friend.

*yawn*

All my posts on this subject have been consistent. When losing weight you want to avoid carbs as they're detrimental to the very thing you want to achieve.

When working out you want to selectively eat them because your muscles happen to like having glycogen and insulin is great for building muscle.

I told you CARDIO post workout is bad, please learn to read.

Every time there's a thread on this subject I say exactly the same things, and back everything I say up with the science behind it. It's not like I'm just going "herp derp carbs are bad". I've said many a time carbs are a useful tool for people working out, for people aiming to lose weight, they're the enemy due to the fact they suppress the bodies ability to release fat.

Feel free to argue any of my points with actual evidence, if you just want to start throwing your achievements around, then congratulations, you went from benching 40kg to 80kg in SIX MONTHS. You should be adding 10lbs (~5kg) to your bench A WEEK when you first start out, I'd expect a 40kg increase in the first two months, 3 max I'd be disappointed with it taking six. But clearly you know best.

[dont_do_it_doug.]

Feel free to argue any of my points with actual evidence, if you just want to start throwing your achievements around, then congratulations, you went from benching 40kg to 80kg in SIX MONTHS. You should be adding 10lbs (~5kg) to your bench A WEEK when you first start out, I'd expect a 40kg increase in the first two months, 3 max I'd be disappointed with it taking six. But clearly you know best.

Christ mate, I only weight 70kg. I can bench 100kg for what it's worth and I'm happy to plateau right there. To get much stronger I'd have to get much bigger and I'm not in to body building in the slightest.

I was benching 80kg over 2 months ago, for what it's worth. I've not had to do any crazy crash diets or dedicate my life to biology. All the best with your doctorate dude.

[lapal_fan]

'Whining like a couple of little bitches' - ELPRESADOR; circa 2012

[Stevo985]

Eat well and exercise. Simples my friend.

This is the crux of it.

The only time I'd say no/low carbs was appropriate is if you want to lose a lot of weight.

Otherwise, just eat healthily and exercise regularly. You'll lose weight.

[regular_john]

If you want to hear from an actual authority on the subject, Dr Mauro Di Pasquale is both a multi-time champion powerlifter AND a qualified doctor AND a medical review officer. His book, 'The Anabolic Diet', lays out the science regarding carbs, fats and protein quite clearly. If a low carb diet is good enough for him, it's good enough for me!

Also, Tim Ferriss' book 'The 4 hour body' has a good chapter on nutrition.

[dont_do_it_doug.]

Which again as stated above is all fine and dandy if you want to become a bodybuilder or lose a shit ton of weight fast. I don't think anybody is asking for that kind of advice and/or diet.

Great avatar though and Regular John is one of my favourite tunes so....

[veloman]

I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of hitting the wall,

Oh God Yes ! My average training run is only between 50 -60 miles these days and it 's great to be 25 miles from home and start to get 'the knock' as cyclists call it. I tend to carry a banana for that ; what is you opinion of them ?

Also where does protein come in all this ? I use CNP protein bars and was advised by a mate on the British Cycling Performance team to eat one when I get in from a ride. What is your opinion of that ?

Thanks for your previous answer; this has really made me think.

[TheDon]

Eat well and exercise. Simples my friend.

This is the crux of it.

The only time I'd say no/low carbs was appropriate is if you want to lose a lot of weight.

Otherwise, just eat healthily and exercise regularly. You'll lose weight.

Healthily being moderate carb rather than the bollocks that is the "eat well plate" and I'll agree

Which again as stated above is all fine and dandy if you want to become a bodybuilder or lose a shit ton of weight fast. I don't think anybody is asking for that kind of advice and/or diet.

Great avatar though and Regular John is one of my favourite tunes so....

But it's not just if you want to do that.

The way I see life is it's all about maximising what you can do in the time you have. Why would you do something inefficient to achieve something when you can tweak what you do to get the most out of the time spent doing it?

To me if you can do something in half the time and half the effort (and I've seen people with ridiculous gym routines that are completely pointless that take hours to do just for the sake of "muscle confusion" when they haven't even plateaued) then why would you not do it?

It's all about gaining an edge any way you can, if that means cutting back on food groups at certain times of the day, and targeting them around when they'll benefit you, then why not?

Sure you might not want to be a body builder (I doubt anyone here does, most just want the cliché of "Brad Pitt in Fight Club") but you also probably don't want to spend longer in the gym than you have to. I know people that spend hours in the gym, I'm in and out in under 20 minutes, 3 times a week. That's an hour a week, and yet my results are greater than theirs because I know what I'm doing and don't listen to the idiots who spend all day doing curls with a weight a 5 year old could lift because they somehow think reps are all that matters.