Carb Backloading

I have been chasing some squat and deadlift numbers in the gym and eating with reckless abandon for the last 6 months because I know the weight gain will help me hit my numbers. I don’t have a scale and the gym scale is broken, so I’m just guessing here: I’m probably running at about 230-240lbs. It’s quite a bit lower than you’d expect from a 6 month unlimited bulk, but the local Filipino diet really isn’t conducive to gaining and holding weight.

The plan was to gain as much weight as possible for six months and then start cleaning up my diet to “grow into” that weight. Basic re-composition; put on a little more muscle and lose a bit of fat and try to keep the bodyweight about the same. Yes I know that you can’t put on totally lean weight because some fat will accompany it, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. You can lean out and maintain weight. I’ve done it plenty of times.

By the end of May (6 month mark) I was feeling like total crap and happy to be done. I didn’t really let myself go completely, but my body fat was getting up there. Every lifter with a 2 pack is convinced that they are at 15% body fat but I’m not that guy. I’m not pulling out the calipers, but I’d say I’m easily 20%+.

So here I was just poking around on line trying to get some diet structuring ideas beyond the basic “just eat cleaner” thing (which still works by the way). Several top powerlifters that I respect are running Kiefer’s Carb Backloading protocol with good results in both fat loss and strength, so I looked into it. http://www.dangerouslyhardcore.com/

What I found was a diet structure that mirrored one that I ran about 12 years ago.  I refer to that time of my life as “the bait and switch” because that’s when I met my wife and I was lean as fuck when we met and then I blew up about a year later.

At the time I was a typical meat head bachelor and besides work, my life revolved around training and paddling. I worked up to it, but by the end of the season my training looked like this:

Monday:              Lunch- Lift           Afternoon-Paddle Practice

Tuesday:              Lunch- Run          Afternoon- Lift

Wednesday:        Lunch- Off           Afternoon- Paddle Practice

Thursday:             Lunch- Run         Afternoon- Lift

Friday:                   Lunch- Lift          Afternoon- Paddle Practice

Saturday:              Off

Sunday:                 Race

This kind of paddling

Despite my steady diet of frozen pizza, frozen burritos and ice-cream sandwiches, at the end of the season, I was super lean with a 32” waist at about 190lbs. I felt strong every day and still kicked ass in practice. I always figured that I managed to out train my diet back then, but since then I have replicated that training volume during triathlon seasons but never managed to get that lean again. Up until now, I kind of figured it had more to do with father time.

Usually 2-3 of these

and a box of these

So when I started researching carb backloading it hit me. The thing that was different about that paddling season was that I was carb backloading and maybe I didn’t lean out like that in spite of my diet…but because of my diet. At that time I was running on protein shakes during the day up until my 2^nd training session or practice, and then I’d go home and pound pizza and ice-cream sandwiches before crashing out.  I was carb backloading by accident and didn’t know it. Hell, the system wasn’t even invented yet.

First off, let me issue a disclaimer here…I did not buy and read the Carb Backloading book, instead I just read, listened to, and watched everything I could find online and oddly enough, there really isn’t that much information out there. If you want the entire fine tuning details you’ll need to buy the book, but Kiefer has freely given enough information to run his system in broad strokes.  Here’s the gist of it as I understand it:

The cornerstone of the system is the manipulation of your insulin levels. Insulin affects everything, but I’m only going to discuss fat and muscle cells here. Your body is most sensitive to insulin in the morning and it tapers off throughout the day. Insulin is an anabolic hormone for both fat and muscle, so the idea is to use it to drive nutrients (grow) muscle and minimize fat growth. Since insulin will grow both muscle and fat cells, you want to keep it low throughout the day to minimize growth in general.

What Kiefer recommends is to skip breakfast (I’ll touch on this later), eat low carb up until training at 3-6 p.m., and then pound carbs until bedtime. The reason for this is because insulin sensitivity bottoms out at this time of day and the heavy training “turns on” your muscle’s sensitivity to insulin. The heavy training does not increase fat cell insulin sensitivity, so you’ll be eating all of your carbs when your muscles can easily soak them up (due to training) and your fat cells are disadvantaged (due to the time of day). That’s it in a nutshell. The caveat here is that it’s a diet for hard training individuals and it wouldn’t be nearly as effective for “regular folks”.  

As for Kiefer’s recommendation to skip breakfast, it’s because of the catabolic hormone cortisol. Apparently, cortisol levels peak in the morning along with insulin sensitivity. Cortisol is a catabolic hormone which means that it breaks shit down, which is bad for muscle. According to Kiefer, in the absence of insulin, cortisol prefers to attack the fat cells. So his recommendation is to leave well enough alone, skip breakfast and let the cortisol go to work on the fat stores. I’m majorly paraphrasing of course.

I’m almost 3 weeks in and feeling pretty good. As I said, I don’t have access to a scale so I took body measurements at the waist, chest, thigh and arms. I carry most of my fat in my gut and chest and my arms and legs tend to stay pretty lean, so I figure that this is probably the best way to track progress. As of today I’ve dropped 1.5” on my waist, dropped 1” on my chest and my arms and legs are unchanged. So far so good and it looks like I’m slowly dropping fat and still maintaining my lean mass. It’s not a drastic improvement, but that’s not what I’m after. I initially planned to give Backloading a 3 month run, but I really think I might take it for a 6 month ride now. It’s an easy diet to follow consistently and over time, all of those inches will add up to a decent change. I’m pleased so far and it sure as hell beats out “eating cleaner”.

 

 "Slow and steady"

Flexible Programming: Have a Backup Plan

I consider flexibility to be one of the most important components of a good program. I have heard so many people say that they are not motivated to train and although I really don’t understand that mindset, I can tell you that not having a backup plan is probably a big factor driving that statement. People tend to get off track on rigid programs because it’s all or nothing. My recommendation is to have a backup plan for every part of your program to include both scheduling and the actual training sessions. Figure out what you WANT to do and also what you NEED to do and you’ll have a program with a good backup plan.

Sometimes this is good enough

 I think of it as plan A, plan B, and plan C: plan A is the bare minimum to achieve my goal, plan B is extra work to support that goal, and plan C is reserved for my crazy/stupid side. Most people write out their programming with the best intentions and they leave no stone unturned. They load up their schedule with lots of lifting and then they fill in every nook and cranny with supplemental and conditioning work. When in reality just a few things will get the job done and keep the progress coming. I have no problem with ambitious programming as long as you understand the bare minimum requirements to make progress and are willing to drill everything down when you need to.

The first thing to consider when writing your program is when you will train. Most folks will specify certain days, MWF for example. This might be necessary based on your life schedule, but I think approaching it more like “I’ll train every 2-3 days” makes more sense if you can swing it. Maybe you’ll hit it every other day like clockwork and blaze through a cycle in 4 weeks. On the other hand, if everything goes to crap, what’s the worst thing that will happen? Maybe you’ll end up stretching that cycle out for another week or two. You’re a lifer and you’ll be lifting for 30-40 more years, is it really going to make a difference?  No it won’t…but that built in flexibility will go a long way to keeping you on track.

I also recommend having a full plan on training days, while being prepared to call an audible. This is not a license to be a pussy, but the minimum goal should be to just get in and do your core movement’s working sets. You can have all kinds of crap lined up; extra singles, multiple back off sets, 2-3 assistance movements, post training conditioning, etc. But if all you can manage on this day are 3-5 heavy squat sets, just do that and leave, happy that you got your main work in and that you moved forward. Plus, there is something kind of primal and barbaric about a guy that just rolls in to the gym, squats heavy and walks out. If I see a guy do that, I’m not thinking anything negative at all, just “that guy has his shit together”.

Here’s a sample squat session so you’ll see what I’m talking about:

Plan A:

Squat – (Whatever I have programmed) right now it would be a warm up then my work sets (6 sets of 2)

If I get to the gym and feel like crap or have limited time, I’ll do this & bail and be totally cool with it. This is the bare minimum work that I need to make progress and it earns me the right to move on to the next session.

Plan B:

Squat – Work sets (6 sets of 2)

Squat – Back off sets (1^st work set weight X3X10)

Good mornings – 5x10

Weighted abdominal work: 5 sets

This represents a full session and an average day. There is nothing special going on here…just getting the work in to support my squat.

Plan C:

Plan C is reserved for just getting stupid in the gym and tends to result in a massive training hangover. So it’s plan B, plus whatever else I decide to do: maxing out, tons of back off sets, repping to failure, running around the gym getting a ridiculous pump, stuff like that. Plan C is good old fashioned poor judgment and tons of fun.

I really think that building flexibility into your program is super important. Having a backup plan will keep you motivated to plug away and move forward even in the shittiest of conditions. Sometimes things can get rigid, a peaking cycle for example…there’s really not much that you can do about it so just suck it up and go to work for a couple of months. For your meat and potatoes training though, I strongly recommend that you build as much flexibility into it as you can.

 "Just don’t use it as an excuse to be a pussy"