With the recent publicity I have received form my debut on Eat to Perform, I have been receiving a ton of emails, phone calls, and facebook messages from friends, clients, and even some instructors asking me how it is possible that i can now eat around 250-300 grams of carbs while maintaining healthy body fat percentages. I come from a fairly low carb background but with RKC II in October and the fact that my job is physically demanding, I decided to seek out some help form the brains of the people behind the book Metflex (and if you haven’t read this manual yet, please do so right now). Today, I want to talk about the sort of damage that you can expect when you add prolonged low carbing with high intensity training, and what you can begin to do to start revving up your metabolic engine. Using the principles we will look at here today, you can be like some of my clients who have lost as much as 6 pounds in 1 week from adding in MORE CARBS!
Without getting into the nitty gritty science here, I’m going to point you all to a very lean and mean looking dude, called Shaun Hadsall. Shaun is a nutritional genius when it comes to patterning food with your activity level, and some of our rapid fatloss programs at Primal Fitness Pittsburgh are based upon these principles. Take a look at the video below, and keep on reading to further enhance your metabolism 😉
Now that we got over the insulin hurdle, let’s get Shaun on a discussion for ATP.
And finally, let’s talk about waking up your thyroid from a metabolic slump.
Now that we wrapped up this discussion on hormones, here’s what you want to do to strategically start revving up your metabolism if you’ve traveled too far into the heart of low-carbville. If you’re a high intensity athlete or training with me directly at Primal Fitness Pittsburgh, I recommend slowly increasing your carb intake to higher levels to keep up with the activity. Start by adding in 25 grams of carbs a day over a period 1-2 weeks until you reach roughly 250 grams of carbs. This may seem like a lot but in actuality, it really isn’t when you are factoring your performance. Once you reach a solid 250 grams, monitor your performance and wieght for another week. You should notice that your athletic performance is picking up and gasp! You may be looking leaner. If you are like me and have a very high volume program outlined, you may need to jump up to about 300 grams of carbs (or more if you are of the male gender). By week number four, you should have found your carbohydrate sweet spot in terms of your training volume. On non training days, cycle down your carbs but only marginally so. Generally speaking, I get 250 grams of carbs on training days, and roughly 150 on non training days. Again, they are cycled down but not in a manner that is ultra restrictive or severe.
If you need help structuring your meals to align properly with your training days or have more questions about how to carb cycle for optimal body composition and performance, please feel free to send me an email at janelle@primalfitnesspittsburgh.com. By the way, I want to announce that I have teamed up with a fitness expert, friend, and fellow kettlebell enthusiast, Anthony Tran of Strong First to work on a metabolic priming program designed to rest your metabolism and make it a furnace. Be on the look out for that in the coming months! That’s it for today folks! Eat smart and as always. . .
Master your instincts!
