Question on carb timing

[OUfan]

You may not like what I'm about to say, but I will be honest. You should wait to hear what more experienced people say as well though:

The reason you plateued appears to be you weren't eating enough (I don't know your age but I assumed your 25. Unless your much older its not going to change very much).



Your BMR is 2200.17. This is how many calories you need to survive if you are in a coma.

Given you are following the 5x5, even if you are doing no cardio, you qualify as at least moderately active, implying that you need just over 3000 calories to maintain weight . In fact, your maintenance could be quite a bit more, depending on your exercise intensity

I think what's happened is your metabolism has slowed because of prolonged dieting. Also, it looks like you were consuming just 131 grams of protein, far too little for your body weight (200 is a minimum). If your going to consume just 2000 calores, make sure more than 25% is protein. The lower the calorie diet, the higher the amount of protein required, as your body will start using it for glucose. As Tat says though, whey is not always the best choice because it elicits a lot of insulin (although I have a question for Tat: why the popularity of the whey + ANPB response then? This diet seems silly to me, this being one of the many reasons as the point of a low carb diet is to reduce insulin, so why choose the one protein source that spikes it the most - chicken/tuna would make more sense)

A low calorie diet, particularly without any calorie cycling, coupled with a low protein intake, is a recipie for metabolic slowdown and muscle loss.

The good news is these problems are both reversible.

The course of action you suggest is desirable, but I would take it a step further. You perhaps should (gradually) increase calories to maintenance for a while, I'd say 3000. You will need to ask someone more experienced how long to stay there if you want to reconsider a cut (i.e., how long for your metabolism to be restored so you can lose weight again. This time when you cut consider a smaller deficit, or at least calorie cycling.

Yes I think that's exactly what has happened, not eating enough. I do have enough protein intake though, it looks like this:

2200 calories, 261g protein, 181g carbs, 40g fat so it was actually about 49/34/17

I think your advice is really good as far as gradually creeping toward 3000/day rather than jumping all at once.

 

[Sim882]

Just to add to one of your earlier questions, there is one advantage of consuming a decent size number of carbs after evening workouts.

At moment I'm doing Weights Mon, Weds, Fri evenings, and Cardio alternative mornings on a cut.

By having a decent quantity of carbs (40-70 grams depending on duration, intensity, and muscle groups) PWO I'm ensuring that I'm not completely glycogen deprived in the morning for my morning cardio. Morning cardio I do carb fasted, but following a protein snack.

Why would I not want to be glycogen deprived? Well the reason is that the benefit of morning cardio relates to lower insulin levels increasing fat oxidation, not lower glycogen levels as muscle glycogen in particularly is hardly effected by sleep, which mainly uses fat as an energy. Because my morning cardio is of high intensity (heart rate 150-170 for 30-40 minutes) regardless of my insulin levels, I know I can't rely on fat oxidation completely for energy. Therefore, some muscle glycogen is useful to prevent my body converting muscle to glucose.

THIS is just my opinion - many will disagree. If your only going to do low intensity cardio the following morning, this advantage of more carbs PWO doesn't apply to you of course.