Carbohydrate intake is one of the most important factors in losing body fat. Too much will lead to increased body fat, too little can cause muscle atrophy. Once you work out exactly how much you need you will find losing body fat much more simple. The problem is various people respond very differently to carbohydrates. For example – personally I take in around 200g of carbs per day. Whereas my training partner Jackson only consumes about 50g per day and has the same body composition effect. I have tried low carb diets and found myself feeling flat while training with no significant changes in strength, muscle mass or body fat. Adding carbs saw positive results in all three.
Determining your optimal carb intake takes some trial and error, and most importantly – patience. Ideally you want to consume as much carbs as possible while losing body fat. Carb intake stimulates a very important hormone in fat loss and muscle building, however and excess amount will have an adverse effect and cause you to gain fat.
Here’s where you start… Post workout. This is the time when the body is most insulin sensitive (where you utilize carbs the best). Add 25g of carbs from fruit (1 banana, 1/2 punnet of blueberries, 200g pineapple are my favourites) to your post workout shake. In addition to this eat 25g of carbs (1/2 cup cooked rice) 1-1.5 hrs after training. Stick with this for 3 weeks and asses your body fat, if you feel like you are getting leaner (the mirror is good enough assessment) increase your carbs by another 25g. This can be 1-1.5 hrs before you workout (1/2 cup cooked rice) or during your workout (1 scoop of Virago or Glycofuse) if not you may need to drop the post workout meal to 25g carbs. Continue this process until you find you body fat start to plateau, once this happens you can cut 25g and you should have found you ideal carb intake to lose body fat. Ideally the more carbs you metabolise the better, both for your sanity and because they are delicious!