Glycogen/Carbohydrate and Weight Loss?

Nutrition Discussions
1

I recently borrowed a copy of the ‘Atkins Diet’ from a family member out of sheer curiosity due to the controversy surrounding the diet. I normally wouldn’t read anything that is even remotely associated with ‘women’s weight loss’ and mainstream information, but I thought I’d give it a shot just to glean whatever information I could. I must say that after reading it, it seems like common sense. Today I have just started eating in the style promoted by the book.

I am 5’10" and 203lb (92kg) and fairly defined in all body parts except the abdominals and buttocks. I always seem to be just a little bit too ‘fat’ to be able to see my abdominal structure, no matter how many calories I consume or the amount of exercise I do. I don’t know how accurate my bodyfat calipers are, but everytime I test I seem to get a reading of 12- 13%. I am TIRED of training in a sensible and functional athletic manner, and yet despite being muscularly large (relatively speaking) never having that athletic look that abdominal definition seems to represent the most. Ideally I would like to get down to about 6-7% bodyfat, which would mean shedding about 12- 14lb of bodyfat.

Atkins remarks in the book that many overweight Americans are in that position because they consume more than 300g of carbohydrate per day. To my surprise after analysing my own diet, I consume anywhere between 400- 450g of carbohydrates per day (and that’s without including carbs from vegetables such as Broccoli and Carrots).

Up until today a typical day’s menu for me was:

A) Breakfast (8.00am)

  1. 1 pint skimmed milk 2) 150g natural probiotic yogurt 3) 50g of shredded wheat with a little milk 4) 1 large banana 5) 2 tablespoons of olive oil 6) 1 tablespoon of flaxseeds 7) 2 tablespoons of wheatgerm 8) Half pint of pure orange juice *1 multi vitamin and mineral tablet

B) Lunch (12.30pm)

  1. 3 (2 as a sandwich and 1 slice of toast) slices wholemeal bread 2) 20g olive oil spread 3) 1 can(185g) tuna in springwater 4) 2 tablespoons of olive oil mixed in with tuna sandwich and salad cream added 5) 2 raw carrots 6) 1 apple

C) Dinner (5.30pm)

  1. 227g(half pound) of extra lean (8% fat) minced beef 2) 100g of wholewheat pasta 3) 200g dolmio tomato pasta sauce 4) 100g baby leaf spinach 5) 1 tablespoon of olive oil added 6) 2 satsumas 7) 150g of broccoli

D) Supper (10pm)

  1. 100g oats 2) 1 pint of milk added to oats 3) occasionally 1 banana added to oats 4) 1 kiwi fruit 5) 50g of brazil nuts/walnuts/almonds 6) 2 tomatoes or 1 bell pepper (red or green)

In addition, I drink between 3- 5 litres of water per day.

Was I making any serious errors with my diet (for a 100m sprinter who relys heavily on strength training)?

With the Atkins diet, where will I get the glycogen from to give my muscles the fuel they need to do justice to my training and will this eating style harm my training/performance?

Am I likely to lose my excess bodyfat by almost eliminating carbohydrates in the short term?

Roughly how much carbohydrate should a sprinter of my dimensions be taking in per day e.g under 200g?

2

You don´t get the glycogen to train hard.
Simple as that.

3

Carbs are the main source of fuel when shifting to longer duration and higher intensities. You need the glycogen and this diet will definatly have a significant negative effect on your performance.
THE ADKINS DIET IS NOT FOR ATHLETES!

4

Thanks for the response guys.

With the diet I listed above, was I not consuming far too many carbohydrates though at 450g per day?

Should I follow the advice of others on this board and try to get my carbohydrates from fruit and vegetables, rather than pasta, bread and oats etc?

5

YES DEFINETLY! Get most of your carbs from what you’ve mentioned also known as complex carbs. However simple carbs are good after workouts to trigger an insulin spike which helps in the uptake of post workout nutrients including protein.
If you eliminate carbs from your diet you will be in serious trouble performance wise.

6

Today I have just started eating in the style promoted by the book.

Then you will lose water weight, energy, your bodyfat will pretty much stay with you and your workouts will become tougher. You need oxygen to burn bodyfat and lots of it, not the atkins diet.

I am 5’10" and 203lb (92kg) and fairly defined in all body parts except the abdominals and buttocks. I always seem to be just a little bit too ‘fat’ to be able to see my abdominal structure, no matter how many calories I consume or the amount of exercise I do.

Exercise???.. I do exercise, 4-6 hours strenuous road cycling 3x per week, weights 2/3x per week, core training 3/4x per week, plyo’s 2x per week & play soccer once a week.

You don’t regard doing weights & sprinting down a 100m track a few times exercise do you???.. Unless you lower your caloric intake, this amount of exercise will not see you a reduction in bodyfat.

Atkins remarks in the book that many overweight Americans are in that position because they consume more than 300g of carbohydrate per day.

No, there in that position because they consume endless amounts of doughnuts, burgers, fries and all the junk food that you can throw at them without taking regular exercise. Because they eat 300g of carbohydrate???.. Thats bollox!!!.. Give me an average 250lb american guy that has the determination to lose weight, stop eating junk food and is willing to build up his aerobic capacity by building upto 4 hours per day on the road bike, he could stuff his face with 800g of carbohydrates and not see an increase in weight. Why. Because I could eat over 1000g of carbs, wake up the next morning, take a dump and be the same weight I was the day before.

To my surprise after analysing my own diet, I consume anywhere between 400- 450g of carbohydrates per day (and that’s without including carbs from vegetables such as Broccoli and Carrots).

Broccoli and Carrots. Would that be all 50 calories???..

Up until today a typical day’s menu for me was:

A) Breakfast (8.00am)

  1. 1 pint skimmed milk 2) 150g natural probiotic yogurt 3) 50g of shredded wheat with a little milk 4) 1 large banana 5) 2 tablespoons of olive oil 6) 1 tablespoon of flaxseeds 7) 2 tablespoons of wheatgerm 8) Half pint of pure orange juice *1 multi vitamin and mineral tablet

B) Lunch (12.30pm)

  1. 3 (2 as a sandwich and 1 slice of toast) slices wholemeal bread 2) 20g olive oil spread 3) 1 can(185g) tuna in springwater 4) 2 tablespoons of olive oil mixed in with tuna sandwich and salad cream added 5) 2 raw carrots 6) 1 apple

C) Dinner (5.30pm)

  1. 227g(half pound) of extra lean (8% fat) minced beef 2) 100g of wholewheat pasta 3) 200g dolmio tomato pasta sauce 4) 100g baby leaf spinach 5) 1 tablespoon of olive oil added 6) 2 satsumas 7) 150g of broccoli

D) Supper (10pm)

  1. 100g oats 2) 1 pint of milk added to oats 3) occasionally 1 banana added to oats 4) 1 kiwi fruit 5) 50g of brazil nuts/walnuts/almonds 6) 2 tomatoes or 1 bell pepper (red or green)

In addition, I drink between 3- 5 litres of water per day.

Your not still wandering why your 203lbs are you… Your overeating in a big way. All them oats, nuts & milk before bed. Why is that, because “there good fats” right, lol… Your drinking far, far too much milk which there isn’t much need for.

What your breakfast should look like…

Breakfast… 1 multi vitamin and mineral tablet, 1/2 Bowl/s of muesli (no added sugar or salt) w/soya or skimmed milk, green tea, 1 peice of fruit, 1/2 litres of water

Was I making any serious errors with my diet (for a 100m sprinter who relys heavily on strength training)?

You rely heavily on strength training. Not the best excuse to eat yourself out of house & home.

With the Atkins diet, where will I get the glycogen from to give my muscles the fuel they need to do justice to my training and will this eating style harm my training/performance?

Your not an elite 3 week endurance cyclist. I know you train for some considerable amount of time but at the end of the day weights alone won’t make you lose a considerable amount of weight nor will all the tempo/speed and sprint sessions.

Am I likely to lose my excess bodyfat by almost eliminating carbohydrates in the short term?

No, Lower your caloric intake in general.

Carbs are the main source of fuel when shifting to longer duration and higher intensities.

Ohh, your not referring to sprinting then…

7

The human metabolic response to chronic ketosis without caloric restriction: preservation of submaximal exercise capability with reduced carbohydrate oxidation:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=6865776&dopt=Abstract

8

Note that, in this study, the overall results were skewed by one hyperresponder who drastically increased his enudrance, the other 4-5 cyclists showed no change or a slight loss. As well, most studie examining ketogenic diets and their effects on high intensity exercise (either aerobic activity above lactate threshold or sprinting) find a decrement in performance. Long-duration endurance activity can run almost entirely on fatty acids, high intensity activity requires carbs for optimal performance.

In general, strict ketogenic diets like Atkins are NOT appropriate for high intensity activity.
there are a number of cyclical ketogenic diet approaches (where you alternate periods of low carbs with periods of high carbs, to carb-load) that may be appropriate.

In general, moderating carbs/calories may be the best overall approach. At the end of the day, fat loss comes down to burning more calories than you consume, cutting out high energy density/high calorie foods is a good place to start. For some people, reducing carbohydrates helps them to reduce their total food intake; but there’s nothing more magical to it than that. For the average sedentary American who is over-eating carbs, telling them to eat none makes them eat less; that’s why they lolse weight. MOst of the physiology in Atkins book is total garbage.

Lyle

9

Rock N Roll

Most of the people who post on this site are anaerobic athletes, and the bulk of their training, like mine, will boil down to weights/strength training and track sprints, along with other bits of specific supplementary work like Plyometrics, etc. I still class what I do as exercise, even though I don’t cycle for 4- 6 hours every other day like yourself. Whilst the anerobic exercise I do burns few calories during the exercise itself, I continue to burn calories after I exercise due to the sheer intensity of the work, as the metabolism goes into overdrive. No anaerobic athlete would be seen dead riding a bike for 4 hours at a time and building up a good aerobic capacity, as this seems to be your prescription for losing weight. Of all runners, sprinters carry the lowest bodyfat levels even though they run the shortest distances. Bodyfat should be dropped by tinkering with the diet, not by performing prolonged exercise that doesn’t aid in the sport that we have chosen to compete in.

You’ve looked at my diet and said that I’m overeating in a big way, but like I said in my post, I am not fat by any stretch of the imagination. I have a small amount of fat to lose to be able to see my abdominal muscles clearly, but my stomach is perfectly flat, it’s not like I have a gut or am overweight by any noticeable amount. If I am overeating, it can’t be by a great amount because I am lean as I have ever been in my life. Even as an active child, I was athletic but I was never one of those kids that you could see their abdomen, even though I didn’t appear to be overweight.

You scoff at the food that I eat, which is perfectly healthy in almost anyone’s estimation, but you recommend a breakfast for a man with a lot of muscle mass that wouldn’t keep a 130lb sedentary woman going for long. The protein level in the breakfast you outlined is none existent, and there’s no way I would go near soya foods due to their oestrogen like qualities. Where on earth do you expect I would get enough protein to repair my muscles from?The reason why I drink a lot of milk is because it is a good, easy and cheap source of protein. I’m not interested in powdered protein ‘food’ and other man made junk, I’d rather stick to what mother nature provides.

I think from what I’ve read on this forum and articles by Beradi etc, I will stick to a similar diet BUT decrease my carbohydrates from 450- 500 down to 250- 300g per day, have protein/carb meals earlier in the day (and post workout) and protein/fat meals later in the day, eliminate bread and pasta and stick mainly to fruits and vegetables for my carbs, along with controlled amounts of oats and potatoes. Thoughts anyone?

10

Any info on the percentage value of such hyperresponders in the population?

11

rob ryder,

No matter what fad diet one looks at; Atkins, weight watchers, Jenny Craig, the Zone, even if there was a Charlie Francis diet, I don’t care which; losing body mass all comes down to one simple process: “you must create a cummulative caloric deficit” in other words “Calories In < Calories Out”

As lylemcd said,“moderating carbs/calories may be the best overall approach. At the end of the day, fat loss comes down to burning more calories than you consume”. He is 100% correct.

If you look at most fad diets out there, some say, “you can eat whatever you want and you SHOULD exercise but you will still lose weight even if you don’t”, they stress to people, to hook them, that they dont have to hold back on their favourite foods…go crazy!! However, what you need to be analytical about, is “reading b/w the lines”; all those diets (ALL) will have a reduced caloric intake, ALL OF THEM. Some to the point that would be considered borderline clinically dangerous.

12

None. A few recent studies have examined the impact of 5 days of low-carb dieting (which induces many adaptations at the muscular level involved in fat oxidation) followed by 1 day of carb-loading. The idea being that you can cause adaptations which improve fat utilization while still providing sufficient carbs to sustain high intensity activity. Various performance tests (note, these are all in endurance athletes) have been used.

Although there is no clear trend in performance, what the individual data shows is taht the athletes who do worst on the standard diet (high carbs) tend to do better on the test diet (5 days lowcarb + carbload) and vice versa.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Display&dopt=pubmed_pubmed&from_uid=11408421

The first 3 are the key papers but you have to read the full study to see the individual performance results.

Along with this is data from Blundell suggesting differences in phenotype between high and low dietary fat phenotypes: some people’s biologies seem better at adapting to higher fat intakes and I have to wonder if that’s not involved in the above results.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Display&dopt=pubmed_pubmed&from_uid=11641752

But I know of know way, ahead of time, to know if a given individual/athlete will respond best to one or the other. Trial and error would be about the only way to do it.

Lyle

13

Absolutely. I think the issue is that, for some people, certain diets make calorie control/restriction easier than others. Insulin resistant individuals seem to do poorly on diets high in carbs (esp. refined) with fat intake too low, blood glucose swings make them hungrier. Decreasing carbs and increasing (healthy) fats, protein and fiber goes a long way towards hunger control. For some individuals, reduction of carbs to ketogenic levels may be the only way to adequately control calories. But beyond said calorie control, I don’t think there is any ‘magic’ to any diet. It needs to provide certain essential nutrients (protein and EFA’s being key in the macros, all of the micros), allow calorie/hunger control, be sustainable in the long term and, for athletes of course, sustain training intensity (which is where most strict low-carb diets, not incorporating carb-loads) fall flat.

Lyle

14

I agree with that to an extent. Certainly in terms of loss of mass. But how do you ensure that the weight lost is fat?? I say this because as I have mentioned on a couple of threads, I have reduced my body weight from around 87kg to around 77kg, even touching 75! I was not particularly overweight initially and if I was told I was going to lose 10kg, I would jhave thought I would have been ripped, yet I am not! Is the key to not cut the calories too drastically as it is only possible to lose 1-2lbs per week? By restricting further are you down regulating the metabolism?? I have bought Clarence Bass’ book as recommended by a couple of members here, and he is very keen to promote the consumption of carbohydrates. I find that I cannot eat so much bread as I think I have an intolerance to it, as I get bloated and constipated. I do like the idea of a high fibre intake for satiety, and would the feeling of satisfaction allow the metabolism to run optimally as opposed to feeling hungry? Or is the rate of metabolism down to calories consumed as opposed to the satiety? Obviously, factors like lean mass and exercise play key roles also.

15

Interesting thread everyone. Most impressive.

Rupert
CharlieFrancis.com