Newbie Question???

[puddinpie]

What's a safe caloric deficit and is it necessary to spike your insulin?

Hey All

I've gotten conflicting answers about this, so any experts out there, please help me with this! It took me over 3 years to do it, but I lost 175 pounds doing a whole lot of cardio training and cutting calories and kept it off for 2.5 years. I had a personal trainer during 1 year of that and got my body fat % down to 20%, but that was at its all-time low. I recently had a baby and I'm trying to cut 20 pounds (I swear it's ALL in my legs!) and get to 18% bf. I'm currently doing strength training, but I would still like to lose fat! How many calories can I realistically cut while trying to maintain my current muscle (and possibly gain muscle). Should I continue to follow the 2:1 carb/protein ratio post-workout? My strength training instructor says I don't need more than 5 carbs in a post-workout shake, but everything I read says otherwise. I'm loving this new strength training routine and I get pretty excited about the results. I workout mostly in hypertrophy, but doing a bit of cycling.

Thanks!

 

[_cato_]

Very impressive.

You don't NEED any carbs in your postworkout meal. It's usually recommended for glycogen replenishment in your muscles and increased protein synthesis, though there's conflicting studies on the latter.

Various low carb/carb cycling type diets don't use high post workout carb intake.

It's possible you could notice some kind of energy dropoff in the gym, but I've never noticed anything like that myself after skipping carbs in the PWO meal.

As to caloric deficits, you probably don't want to go beyond a 300-500 calorie deficit for any substantial length of time--generally better to lose the fat slowly over time. That said, you technically could go further than that if it was only for a week or so.

 

[puddinpie]

From what I've read, the PWO meal should spike your insulin, as to transport the protein for better protein synthesis. Are you saying that's not necessarily the case? It's okay to have a lower-glycemic, lower-calorie PWO meal and still be as effective?

 

[_cato_]

From what I've read, the PWO meal should spike your insulin, as to transport the protein for better protein synthesis.

Yes, many sources support this.

Are you saying that's not necessarily the case?

There are also sources which conflict with the above and state that PWO carb intake doesn't necessarily increase protein synthesis. Another point of conflict is whether high-glycemic carbs are required or whether low-glycemic carbs are ok--sources go both ways on this also.

It's okay to have a lower-glycemic, lower-calorie PWO meal and still be as effective?

The most important point in response to your questions is: what do you mean by "be as effective." In short, it depends on your goals. If you are most concerned with weightloss/fatloss then taking no carbs PWO will probably be MORE effective. If you are more concerned with performance/strength/energy, then it will probably be less effective.

Another good point here is that if you are ingesting any amount of carbs at all throughout the day, then PWO specifically, and around your workout generally, are probably the best times to be ingesting the carbs. In other words, if you are trying to cut carbs from your diet, its probably best to cut them out from meals which are not surrounding your workouts.

If weightloss is your primary goal here (I think you said it was above) then try eliminating the carbs in the post workout meal and see what happens. It's not as if such a simple change will completely reverse all the amazing progress you've made. If you do it for 2 weeks (or something like that) and feel like you are lacking energy in your workouts or if your muscle growth has halted (unlikely) or slowed, and you don't like the results, put them back in.

 

[_cato_]

Also, make sure you keep your protein intake high enough to preserve your muscle while youre doing this. ie. 1.8-2g per kg bodyweight or more.

And, heres a short excerpt from a book called "Power Eating," which will help illustrate my point from the previous post (though I realize its talking about aerobic vs weightlifting):

"Want to maximize fat-burning during aerobic exercise? Then don't eat a high-carb meal (especially one that contains high-glycemic foods) within three to four hours of exercising. This recommendation is the exact opposite of what I'd tell an endurance athlete, or a strength trainer during the regular training period."

Anyways, hopefully this is helpful. Let me know if I'm not being clear given that my replies have tended to be a bit wishy-washy (reflective of the complexity of your question).