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Subject: need to carb load
Submitted by: Alex Borisov, San Francisco, CA
Rob I'm sorry to say this
but I completely disagree with your notion that we need to carb load. Carb loading will
not turn the body into an efficient fat burner. After 3 months of no carbs and high fat my
muscles get filled up with fat and every time I carb load I crash. We don't need
carbs or glycogen the muscles fill up with fat after 3 months of carbs being 10 percent of
the diet. It fills out the muscles and ketones become the number 1 fuel. I just disagree
that we need carb loads.
I completely disagree with your notion that we need to carb load.
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| Feeling energetic is vital to adhering to a
workout program day-in and day-out . . . but feeling energetic and performance in terms of
inches and fractions of a second . . . will always be better . . . where the athlete has
access to glycogen. |
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Depending on your definition of “need” I might agree with you. As NHE explains,
protein is an essential nutrient – deficiency of which is fatal. Fatty acids are
essential nutrients – deficiency of which is fatal. Carbohydrate is not an essential
nutrient.
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Carb loading
will not turn the body into an efficient fat burner. |
Correct. Nor will infrequent carb-loading prevent the body from burning fat efficiently.
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| . . . every time I carb load I crash. |
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Make sure you are not loading up on sugar. The
carb-load should consist of mainly of pasta,
potatoes, bread or other starches. Also, eat as much
fruit as you desire during this phase. You should
have no problem with such meals, especially if you
split the carb-load into two. Desserts are
permissible, but as an accompaniment to the
carb-load not the central component.
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After 3 months
of no carbs and high fat my muscles get filled up with fat. |
That's an excellent point that few people, even in the athletic community, fully
appreciate. The general view takes account of two main fuel sources: glycogen/glucose or
“SUGAR” and long chain fatty acids (LCT) stored as triglyceride in adipose
tissue or “FAT.” But there’s another fuel source of particular relevance to
exercise: medium chain intramuscular triglyceride (MCT). Because it’s stored inside
the muscle it does not adversely affect muscular definition, unlike the interstitial water
retention promoted by many popular high-carb bodybuilding diets. Also because it’s
stored in the muscle, MCT does not have to be transported through the bloodstream, which
means it can be converted more quickly to energy. Conversion rate to energy is
increasingly important the more intense the exercise – which brings us to the reason
why, although one doesn’t “need” carbohydrate nor is it energetically
advantageous for most activities, carb-loading affords a performance advantage to those
who engage in high-intensity exercise like weightlifting or sports requiring
explosive-type muscular output. MCT can be converted to energy more rapidly than can LCT,
but glycogen stored in the muscle can be converted to energy more rapidly than MCT. (The
"quickest" fuel source is ATP stored in the muscle, but it is also the first
depleted during intense exercise.) MCT is stored in the muscles in limited supply. What
happens when MCT runs-out if there’s no glycogen? Feeling energetic is vital to
adhering to a workout program day-in and day-out and one can feel perfectly energetic
without consuming any carbohydrate. But feeling energetic and performance in terms of
inches and fractions of a second when performing peak-effort exercise will always be
better, where all other variables are constant, where the athlete has access to glycogen.
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