I have completed the transition from a low carb, high fat diet to a high carb, low fat diet. It was easier than I expected, adapting to the full sensation following a high carb meal within the first few days. It took a little effort to get my meals planned, but as always, routines develop and habits form.
In terms of my experiment, it’s a bit early to come to any conclusions, but initial results are very promising and a little surprising. After an initial spike in my body weight, which I expected as my body stored all the glycogen along with the water to hold the glycogen in the muscle cells, my weight stabilized and starting coming back down. After two weeks, my body weight is precisely the same as when I started: 169.6.
I have been measuring my body fat levels with the Skulpt each day as well, and my average reading was 10.2% over the last week. So not only have I not gained any weight from eating almost 50% of my calories from carbohydrates, I haven’t added any body fat either; in fact I may be a tad leaner. So the preliminary results support the hypothesis that energy balance is king. Total calories matter more than macronutrient breakdown in terms of controlling body weight and body composition.
Part II of the experiment is more subjective, but not entirely. I have enough data to show that I am handling increased workloads in the gym, with higher overall volume, and I haven’t run into fatigue issues as a result. Boredom issues yes, but that’s part of being alive and being me. But doing multiple working sets of 6 in the Squat, Bench and then Deadlift, all in the same workout, have been handled with ease.
It’s not part of the carb experiment, but it is still part of what I’ve changed recently and that’s the circadian timing of my meals and my training. I have completely altered my approach to when I eat and when I lift and that may have an impact as well on the overall results I’m getting, but it would be harder for me to evaluate that objectively. I can certainly say that subjectively, I feel better and my day seems more organized and has a better flow to it by rising early, eating breakfast with the daybreak, getting about half of my total calories in by midday and hitting the gym in the early afternoon. I still go to bed too late, but I’ve definitely made progress there as well, probably hitting the sack about an hour earlier than I used to.
Going forward, I am planning a bulking phase to try to add some muscle, but according to my spreadsheet, I need to get to 10% body fat before I start, and 10.2% is oh so close, but spreadsheets don’t go for close. Those pesky formulas don’t trigger a response without precision, so I will play along and cut my calories slightly for this week and see how it goes. I imagine a few weeks of tinkering with slightly lower calories and I’ll probably get to an average of 10% readings. I enjoy being this lean very much, but as is my nature, once I decided I was going to bulk up, I’m itching to get started.
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