Minimum carb daily consumption for gymnastics?

I would never, ever have a number in mind honestly. Especially something super low. Calipers are wildly innaccurate at low body-fat levels, and hydrostatic weighing CAN be reasonably accurate if you are really, really careful and follow very specific breathing and movement protocols, but even then DEXA is still the only thing accurate and precise enough to be relied upon for a number that means anything objectively. Calipers are great for relative progress, but the numbers don't mean anything in objective terms because there is huge error built in.

In my opinion the ONLY thing that matters is how you feel. There's no decreased health risk for dropping lower than 12-15%, and there are (possibly) health and (definitely) daily life effects of dropping below certain thresholds that are not great either. We throw around numbers like 6%, but that doesn't mean anything if it comes from calipers. What we do know is that all of us have a point beyond which we feel like crap no matter how perfectly we do things. Why try to go beyond that?

That's just my opinion, but there it is. Be where you are happy about how you look and feel.

I'm with Josh on this. Base it all on how you perform and how you feel. Increase or decrease calories as you feel you need to without taking away from how you feel and perform. I don't watch my BF these days. Rarely is it ever over 10 and that is usually if I eat utter crap for a week straight then it drops back down a bit after I stop. 12-15% I find to be best health wise for most people (males).

Agree with the above!

Train alot=Eat alot.

Try to vary protien source ALOT so it doesn´t all come from red meat.

Personally I stopped eating gluten since about a year ago and try avoid sugar, this helped me alot.

I also started to do bloodtests once a year. Found out I was low on vitamin D and Zink so I supplement those.

Haha I would love to get some other meat sources. It is hard to find organic grass fed anything else without paying my entire paycheck. I hope I make enough to be able to one day, but at the moment, I am still paying for education. Supplements are easy with a whole sale discount. I actually bought enough that I notice the huge difference.

You make great points. I tell people not to worry about their scale weights. But why worry about body fat either? No one cares unless you have so much weight that it is impacting performance. I'll judge by that.

Alex Chubb said:

But why worry about body fat either? No one cares unless you have so much weight that it is impacting performance.

This should be in large, bright letters in every locker room worldwide.

Joshua Naterman said:

Alex Chubb said:

But why worry about body fat either? No one cares unless you have so much weight that it is impacting performance.

This should be in large, bright letters in every locker room worldwide.

hahah truth truth...

the only problem is that a lot of people prefers too look great naked that perform greater haha

in the calipers bf calcs, which method/formula do you think might be the most accurate?

3 site and 7 site are pretty comparable, but 7 site is obviously a bit better. The ACSM guidelines are founded on the largest, most consistent body of research.

Joshua Naterman said:

3 site and 7 site are pretty comparable, but 7 site is obviously a bit better. The ACSM guidelines are founded on the largest, most consistent body of research.

=)

thanks man, i try always to have the 7 measures, but not always i have a hand to help me to measure my back muscles

thanks!

martinponce said:

well. in my case i opened this topic in order to know what coud be a significant difference, in order to perform.

I'll explain my situation.

Some months ago i was in kethosis. The main problem i found were recovery times between workouts. I used to workout twice a day and the only thing i got was weigh loss as i wasn't getting enough protein.

No, you weren't getting enough kcals. Insufficient protein would lead to slower gains, or perhaps stagnation in muscle synthesis, not weight loss. Getting insufficient kcals will lead to weight loss.

I didn't know that i had to use probably a lot more of protein in order to get a positive protein synthesis. My daily requriments are between 3300 and 3600 calories on workout days (talking about one workout in a day). I used to put in my mouth aprox 4500-5000 calories in a day, and i was still losing weight.

In that case, either you have some kind of nutrition uptake deficiency, or you were overestimating your kcal intake, or underestimating your TDEE.

Your body doesn't break the laws of thermodynamics. If you are on a caloric surplus, you will gain weight.If you're not gaining weight, then the solution is simply to eat more.

I was losin muscle, i was consuming aprox less than 80 grams of carbs, and probably around 1.5-2 g/kg of protein, considering that my weigh is 73 kilo, the only result i got, was a loss of strength and weight (muscle mass ) i drop to 68 kilo in two months, eating huge amounts of food.

If you were ingesting 1.5-2g/kg of protein and still losing muscle, you were not eating enougg kcals. I would advice you to buy a kitchen scale, start weighing everything, use some sort of calorie tracking program such as myfitnesspal and track everything. Just guesstimating your intake obviously didn't work out so good, so you just have to be more thorough

There are two ways to go from there. Either you eat as you usually do, while tracking everything, for about a week. Then you adjust from there. If you want to gain weight, eat more (about 10-20% above your maintenance). If you want to lose, eat less (10-20% less than maintenance).

The other option is to try to work out your TDEE based on your stats (age,***,weight, lbm, activity level, etc) to get a rough ballpark figure on what you need to ingest. Then you adjust from there based on what you see on your scale.

So, Slizz, in your experiencie, for a combined system that uses both glycolitic and phosphocreatine system, training 4 5 times a week, and considering a weight of 162 lbs at 5'11'' , what could be a good approach to a minimum daily intake of carbs???

Even though it was not directed to me, I'll give my advice. Eat as much carbs as you need to make you feel good in the gym, while still filling your protein and fat needs for the day. This is highly personal and not something one can decide from what little information you've given. Also, why are you interested in a minimum daily intake of carbs? Carbs are generally good for highly active individuals.

Stop making everything more complicated than it has to be. It's simple really: Eat, lift, grow!

Martin: Thinking in terms of minimums is like saying "how can I get the minimum training effect?"

You need the RIGHT AMOUNT. Nothing else is a good idea.

When it comes right down to it, it is all about three things:

1) Eat food and drink water regularly throughout the day

2) Work out

3) Eat a LOT of food after you work out, making sure that you are getting a LOT of carbs right after the workout.

Growth happens naturally when you do these things. Getting more things right, like good sleep patterns and effective stress management, makes things go even better.

Slizzardman,

I can't agree with you more about the substantial increase in performance from eating lots and lots of carbohydrates. I know you originally believed the opposite was true, as did I, but from the past couple of months, I've assimilated an entire new conviction on the matter.

For years, and essentially the entire time I spent following GB workouts, I followed a Paleolithic/ low carb diet that I was introduced to from Crossfit. Having extreme naivete, I stubbornly continued this approach despite minimal strength and performance gains. Eventually, I just stopped training, mostly because I lacked energy mentally and physically to do workouts and partly because I saw minimal improvement. However, in the past couple of months, I've started back slowly, doing my own version of workouts with FBE's, only this time around, I've basically stopped worrying about "healthy" eating so much and have included loads and loads of carbohydrates, mostly consisting of white potatoes (they're extremely cheap, versatile, and quick). Nevertheless, not only do I have much more energy throughout the day, mentally and physically, I have also seen significant strength and performance gains in a relatively short timeframe! The only downside, and it's a matter of opinion anyways, is that I've lost a little bit of leanness or tone. However, that is a relatively quick, two week fix, say if I want to lean up again in the spring or summer.

Not to discredit the overall health benefits of vital micronutrients preached in the Paleo diet, but in terms of fitness performance, I truly believe, at least with my body type and genes passed down from a northern German heritage, that lots of carbohydrates, coming from healthy sources such as wheat products or potatoes, are crucial to strength and performance gains. And one can still get the micronutrient nutrition with such a diet.

There are a couple of books that I've read lately that are excellent resources regarding diet, and for that matter evolutionary changes in human diet. One is In Defense of Food. It basically describes the history of food industrialization in America and how it came to be so important in relation the chronic disease. It, however, has nothing in it in regards to diet and exercise, but nevertheless, an important read. Another is The 10,0000 Year Explosion. This book is very very interesting. It describes, with tons of scientific evidence, how humans have indeed evolved, both internally and externally, including human diet, in the last 10,000 years. In fact, the author explains how we're evolving at a rate 100 times faster right now than ever before, and he backs it up with legitimate studies. I like this book so much because it essentially downright opposes the whole Paleolithic diet concept that we haven't changed. And I can relate to that 100 percent, from my struggle to reach my fitness goals.

Hope school is going well for you. Good luck on your finals.

Tyler

My body's biochemistry is set in favor of carbs ....i try to eat 5 grams of carbs per kilo of bodyweight (limiting my fat intake to 15% by calorie).my recovery is epic. I don't know why people give carbs a bad name. Pre-industrialized era everybody was eating high carbs (from fruits, tubers, grains,beans and legumes)...it wasn't long after the industry started making sh*^ty packaged and junk food mimicking real food content ( yes carbs major source of energy), people started getting range of diseases..and damn carbs had to take the blame....all i can say if you want excellent recovery ..consume 'micro nutrient rich' carbs (equivalent amount of calories you lost working out) within 45 minutes of post-workout(simple carbs from fruits goes straight up to your cells and doesn't remain in blood, which refills your glycogen reserves in no time and eating simple fruit carbs also save you feeling lethargic from eating cooked food as it requires relatively heavy digestion)...another point i wanna make is try eating meals straight from the soil.. keep alkalinity in diet, counter meat with lots of greens... don't consume rancid fats...just don't tick your biological system wrong and experience the wonder of human body.

To your original post on protein synthesis:

abiding by biological laws , living correctly, your body will demand less protein! for synthesis. For instance if your eating 2g protein per kilo of BW.. you would decrease your need to 1-1.2g per kilo of BW for same set of goals. Though this does not mean you should expect too less if your already on around 1g protein...I prefer between 0.8 -1.5 grams depending on goals.

p.s. hope you dont mind my informal style of writing.