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Interesting article

Ironman2010

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One of my FB freinds posted a link to this article this morning

Think its quite an interesting read, what are your thoughts?


Default High protein, low carb diets a poor fit for the natural bodybuilder (Part 1)

My latest article guys and questions feel free to post, otherwise enjoy.

High protein, low carb diets a poor fit for the natural bodybuilder Part 1

By MSc BSc (honours) Andrew Chappell

With the contest season fast approaching many bodybuilders will be discussing contest prep with their peers, training partners, friends searching message boards, websites and phoning guru’s for the latest insights into contest preparation. For many the long road to physical perfection and the first bodybuilding shows in spring might have already started. Or perhaps you’ve stumbled upon this article after a overindulgent Christmas and thought it was about time to get back in shape New Years resolutions and all. Which leads us to the question, what should I eat to lose fat, or get contest ready?

Should I go with high protein and low fat? Or take a high carbohydrate (carb) and low fat approach? Should I simply cut my calories and focus on eating more fruit and vegetables? What about the G.I index, should I do cardio before breakfast or will the latest fat burning supplement be worth the money? For a novice it can be a minefield, full of confusion and pitfalls. For the seasoned dieter it can be even more confusing, with often contradictory advice from different sources, pseudo science and complex dieting strategies. Familiar cliché’s “There are many roads from Lands End to John ‘O Groats” and “everybody reacts differently” are often used as excuses short comings or lack of knowledge about diet and nutrition.

The ketogenic, or high protein low carb diet combined with long bouts of low intensity cardio is a often touted favourite of the chemically enhanced bodybuilder. The use of androgenic anabolic steroids (AAS) as well as various other peptides, growth factors and hormones, places the body in an unnatural physiological state. This allows for the retention of a superior amount of muscle mass that could not be achieved through nutritional strategies and training alone. As a result of AAS and the catabolic effect induced by such a diet, this author would argue that the end point of such an approach will inevitably yield a shredded but flat looking physique provided the duration is long enough and the contest successfully sticks to the plan. A similar approach is a poor fit for the natural bodybuilder who’s main aim should be to focus on preserving as much muscle mass as possible by providing ample amounts of carb to compensate for the lack of superphysiological anabolics used while prepping for a show. I would therefore argue that not only is such an approach superior for the natural bodybuilder but also the assisted.

Should the bodybuilder avoid any slip ups during the carb loading phase, I would always argue had the bodybuilder focused on eating more carb during his offseason and contest preparation how much bigger, fuller and better could he have been? The recent teaming up of George Farah and Kai Greene showcases an excellent case and point with a 7th place at the Olympia in 2010 to a 3rd place in 2011 switching from a high protein to a high carb diet. Closer to home Lawrence King made a similar switch and walked away with this years coveted BNBF British title, similarly following my advice British heavyweight champion Gordie Adam and Scottish Jnr champion Gordon Hunter made similar adjustments to take their respective classes, while this year’s Pro Grand Prix Champion Dave Kaye followed a similar diet. Following those examples it should become apparent that the high protein low carb should be a no go area for the natural bodybuilder looking to hold onto that precious muscle, go carbs indeed. The reasons and the mechanisms why such a diet is more effective will become apparent later.

So what approach would I suggest when trying to tackle the difficult question of high to manipulate your macronutrients? Well it all comes down to it and if you want to lose weight or drop fat the simple facts are this:

Energy expenditure> greater than energy intake

I.e the amount of energy you expend by exercising, working and living from day to day must be greater than the amount of energy consume in the form of calories. So It actually doesn’t even matter which way you split the macro nutrients this still holds true. I’m not suggesting you then follow the “ if it fits” mantra but it’s worth noting that what ever way you slice it the amount of weight loss will inevitably be the same. Sacks and colleagues in 2009 published a paper in the New England Medical Journal involving over 800 subjects (they actually excluded a further 800 individuals) with macros split between 20 – 40% fat, 15- 25% protein, and 35 – 65% carb and found that after two years there was no significant difference between any of the weight loss strategies. This was a well-designed, highly diverse, well-funded study published in a high impact journal.

Now before you start thinking that your dieting strategy is as good as any and there is actually “more than one way to skin a cat” it’s important to realise that this study only looked at weight loss. It does not distinguish between fat mass (FM) and fat free mass (FFM) i.e muscle mass and this is where high protein, low carb diets and Ketogenic diets fall down. The study also only focused on a reduction in calories rather than several complex strategies of further calorie reductions or cycles. A study by Johnston et al. 2008 however showed the disadvantage however of a ketogenic or low carb high protein approach perfectly when they took obese subjects and exercised them for 3 months. Subjects were placed on either a Ketogenic diet or a diet comprised of 30% protein, 35% CHO and 35% fat, matched energy intakes. Initial weight loss was greater in the Ketogenic group 6.88kg compared to 4.41 kg however unsurprisingly almost 1 kg of that weight was contributed to water mass, while the keto group had lost almost more than a kilo more of FFM compare to minimal losses in the other group. It should be noted though that during this study satiety was measured and the Ketogenic diet suppressed appetite to a greater extent, probably owing somewhat to their popularity. This is but one example but trust me there are plenty of examples out there and I’ve seen many examples of this first hand.

This mimics almost exactly what we see when bodybuilders who go on Ketogenic and high protein low carb diets compared to a higher carb, moderate fat and protein diet. Large initial spikes in weight loss brought on by the bodies use of the stored carb and inevitable loss of water, followed by steadier weight loss which is a combination of fat and muscle mass. In an attempt to retain muscle mass and maintain fat loss such diets are often compensate by including binge eating of massive cheatmeals sessions or days between 1- 3 times a week. Now training, and supplements can only help retain so much muscle on such a diet, natural bodybuilders don’t have the luxury of using AAS that can help to preserve muscle to such an extent. This is one of the reasons why such an approach is flawed in bodybuilding. So why is a high protein diet such a poor fit for the bodybuilder wanting to hold onto as much muscle as possible when prepping for a show?

Physiologically and metabolically it just doesn’t make sense. Now you could argue the point of diet induced thermogenesis that protein is poorly broken down and converted to energy thus meaning it actually helps burn fat, but I think this serves only to highlight the limitations of such a diet.
The facts are simply your body doesn’t need all that protein and it can’t use all that protein. Yanny recently posted an excellent link with an article outlining protein intakes that was similar to a thesis I submitted on the same subject. I then posted the same question to Lewis “why all the protein”. Believe it or not there may actually be a need for even less protein in the strength trained athlete or bodybuilder because of an improved ability to retain nitrogen compared to a sedentary individual (Phillips 1999). The ball park figures however state that requires are within the region of 1.2 – 1.7g kg bodyweight per day (Tarnopolsky et al. 1988), would be enough to maintain and build tissue (even on AAS). Now that doesn’t even come close to the 1g per 1lb of bodyweight often cited by many as a minimal intake, of course but when dieting intake should be higher to maintain muscle mass surely? Actually this is also untrue when we go back to the previous cited paper by Johnston 2008 where intake was higher subjects ended up losing more muscle mass. A great study by Paddon-Jones et al. (2003) show this brilliantly with a bed rest study conducted over 28days they found that simply supplementing with amino acids on a normal diet maintained greater FFM than compared to those on a placebo. This highlight the powerful muscle sparing nature of protein but shows that a extremely high protein intake isn’t needed to maintain muscle mass and that timing and choice of aminos should be a far more important factor than the absolute amounts.

So why don’t high protein diets work? It’s simple your body can’t store all that protein and if it can’t store it or use it then it will simply excrete that protein as nitrogen in your urine (figure 1).

Figure 1 the free amino acid pool
Amino Acid Model.jpg
Figure 1. the nature of metabolism dictates that a certain amount of tissues will always be broken down and synthesised from a small pool of amino acids. This pool is in constant flux with new aminos coming in and being excreted out and thus very little is stored.

What you have to understand is that the body is a carb machine, it loves carb and will always use carb as its main energy source. Even in the presence of some nice yummy glutamine to help spare muscle for morning cardio it’s still going to use the carb stored in the muscle if it can and the immune cells and your gut cells can use the glutamine though. A quick look at something like the TCA cycle and the importance of carb is obvious, your body effectively converts aminos and fats to products it can utilise in this central carb cycle to use as energy (see appendix 1). When your body is in a carb deprived state and you go on a high protein low carb diet all your effectively doing is consistently toping up a leaky car engine with low grade fuel. It won’t run as well and you have to keep filling it up every day with more and more fuel which is expensive and inefficient. A Ketogenic diet in that respect however isn’t quite as bad since fat can provide ample fuel however ketosis is an unhealthy state as ketone bodies are highly acidic not to mention a great way to kill the good bacteria living in your gut. So if you want your breath to stink of acetone, lose a lot of muscle, melt your kidney’s and set yourself up for some food intolerances then that’s probably the way I would go, that’s without considering the bias towards fast twitch muscle fibres in bodybuilders.

A bodybuilders myoctyes (muscle cells) have a massive bias to being predominately fast twitch fibres compared to the slow twitch fibre of say a marathon runner or maybe cross country skier. Fast twitch fibres can generate more force but slow twitch fibres are better at utilising oxygen and fats because of a higher mitochondrial density. While fast twitch fibres need to carry out quick processes this requires immediate energy in the form of glucose, ATP, and creatinephosphate. Someone on a low carb diet could never hope to train as hard as someone consuming a high carb diet, physiologically it doen’t make sense. The conversion of proteins and fats to products that can be readily utilised as a energy source is simply not as quick as glycolysis or glucose. While if you consider a low carb dieter may consume the vast majority of carb prior to training and after to compensate for this sadly the figures just don’t add up. Muscle glycogen stores between 200 – 400g the liver between 40 – 90g A high carb meal around 40- 80g wouldn’t even make a dent in those numbers and would never guarantee the muscle of choice would be topped up.

Equally I believe that even cardio should be metabolic specific since bodybuilders are predominately fast twitched, so that means using high intensity interval training rather than long duration cardio to prevent a switch in muscle fibre type to the smaller slow twitch fibre. The same could also be said of training, rather than reducing a weight and focusing on higher reps, training should be kept heavier and within the bodybuilding rep ranges 12- 8 80% 1RM to maintain stimulation of the fast twitch fibre.

Based on the evidence presented the importance of maintaining a high carb content while dieting should be apparent while the importance of maintaining a high carb content in the offseason has been explained in a previous article.

I’ll focus on an example of a dieting strategy for the next part on pre contest dieting.
 

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