Matching carbohydrate intake to activity levels

February 20, 10:20 AMNutrition ExaminerCarol Bardelli

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Carbohydrates have their place in most diets.

As a nutritionist, I often get asked all sorts of questions on diets, food, cooking healthy, and just exactly what does a particular nutrition approach accomplish.

Recently Katie P from Thin Enough To Go To The Gym asked me:

Carol,

I agree with not viewing carbs as evil. Like you, I don't do very well on 20-30g carbs because of how much I exercise. Could you please remind me how you cycle your carbs and whether you match low/medium/high carb days to particular workouts. I am doing my first Body For Life challenge after following a low carb eating plan for almost a year and I am finding controlling the carbs challenging.

My answer: Katie, I do tend to cycle carbohydrates to match my workout load. A no exercise day is usually low carbohydrate (35 to
60 grams) as I’m not going to need carbs to fuel a workout. Mid-level workouts like playing soccer with my son, swimming, aerobic dance or any aerobic exercise of about one hour requires a medium carb intake (40-75 grams). On days I blast it and do Power 90X combined with an additional aerobics session (a program called Power 90X Doubles I did all summer) I particularly pay attention to eating adequate carbs (75-150 grams) to fuel a grueling workout schedule.

For an example of my workload check out this one hour Power 90X workout that’s typical of my program and includes 24 exercises in all: Power 90X Chest Shoulders Triceps Workout.

At least a few low carb advocates and dieters will argue you do not need carbohydrates at all to fuel your workouts and that your
body will use fat for fuel through a process called gluconeogenesis. But these people are not engaging in the levels of activity
we’re talking about. They usually report workouts of low to moderate aerobics of less than one hour or low impact resistance
training (or none at all). Relying on this mechanism to fuel intense workouts – especially one’s like Power 90X, Body For Life,
endurance running, intense weight training, or long duration aerobics, is unnecessary. It forces the body to work harder to
produce its fuel and lessens energy levels which lowers performance. The less intense your workouts, the less rewarding your results.

I lost scale weight (from 124 down to 114) and body fat (7 percent lost) doing 3 months of Power 90X Doubles (one hour of Power 90X resistance training and one hour of aerobic activity like jogging six days a week) combined with carb cycling. Not to mention quite a few inches off my waist, hips, and thighs (my measurements are listed on my sidebar of my blog). It works for me.

And I enjoyed portion controlled servings of high carb foods like pizza, beer, whole wheat bread, sour dough bread, tortillas,
apples, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, and other healthy but taboo foods to low carb dieters. The key is portion control and timing when carbs are eaten.

Most importantly, I added muscle mass of about 4 pounds which equates to roughly 200 calories burned daily just from having that added muscle. I'll wager those low carbers who don't do resistance training added no muscle to their bodies and might have lost some muscle mass. Remember muscle is a vital component in how fast your metabolim is.

By the way, I did Body For Life in 2000 after the birth of my son and lost fat while building muscle. I still have my Body For
Life t-shirt. You’ll find it quite doable and effective I think.

Thanks for the question, Katie!

Visit Katie's blog.

You can read more on my carbohydrate cycling experiences in coming articles.