With so many fitness gurus out there, it’s hard to know where to turn for solid advice. There’s a long list of qualified people, with good credentials, who produce decent content, but if you try to implement everything everyone says, you can find yourself spinning around in constant state of flux, trying everything for a short time before trying something else.
For the most part, I’ve been fairly set on my dietary approach, subscribing to a low carb, occasionally full ketogenic, sometimes with a Paleo twist diet strategy. It’s been remarkably successful for me in terms of body composition, and the keto dieting really improved my blood work. The biggest dietary change I made was to lower my protein intake based on reviews of the existing research by Menno Henselmans. However, of late, I have added more carbohydrates into my diet and have been doing a form of carb backloading mixed with calories cycling. Two issues I have with it: It’s a pain in the ass, and I don’t like how full I feel after backloading the carbs.
What got me looking back into nutritional strategies is the same thing that got me looking at my training strategy: I’m old. Having accepted and embraced the fact that while I have lived a lifestyle that has prevented the steady decline in the human body associated with aging, could it be that at my age, a bit more protein would be helpful? After all, muscle loss is the biggest concern now. So I turned to a man who has provided a fairly comprehensive nutritional book, who is a Ph.D. in something related to health and fitness, and is a successful bodybuilder and powerlifter, while allegedly remaining steroid free. This man is none other than Dr. Eric Helms.
I read his Nutritional Pyramid again and have decided to increase my protein intake, and rather than continue the calorie cycling I’ve been doing which is annoying as hell, I will cycle lower and higher carb days. For now, I’ll probably just do one low, one high keeping calories the same, but as my training mutates from the current every other day schedule to a 5-day/week program–which is coming soon–I will likely do more high carbs than low. That’s a pretty major change for me after embarking on my first keto diet 5 or 6 years ago. I am going to assume that total energy balance is more important than macronutrient breakdown in terms of body composition and trust in the process. Perhaps more carbohydrates in my diet will improve my training. I doubt it, but skepticism is a healthy thing.
As usual, once I decide, I decide. I’ve already eaten 33 grams of carbs today and it’s only 8:30 in the morning. When I was doing keto, that was a whole day’s worth.
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