Hi All. These are some questions regarding carb intake and timing, brought on by the thread and debates recently here and in Author’s Locker Room.
I altered my meal plan (specifically on non WO days) to have more meals (before they were too large and gaps too long). I do morning cardio after which I have P/C for breaksfast + 2 meals, after which it is P/F (4pm onward) making it 3xP/C and 3xP/F.
From what I have read up on the topic, it’s suggested to have breaksfast + 1 P/C meal, and the rest P/F. Currently I get about the same amount of fat on training and non training days, so this change would make fat intake much higher on non WO days.
Q1: would you suggest having 2 P/C meals, or sticking to 3 P/C meals as I have it now.
Along the same lines: carb intake on non WO days. If I have only 2 P/C meals, it would be around 1g/lbs BW carbs total.
Q2: what are the suggested guidelines for carbs on non WO days while maintaining? Is that 1g/lbs sufficient or must I bump up the amount of carbs in each of the 2 P/C meals to try get it higher?
Finally, now moving onto workout days: I have 4 P/C meals. Preworkout (upon waking, PWO shake, PPWO meal, and one more meal at around 12pm. After that I have 3 more meals (around 3pm, 6:30pm and 10pm) of P/F.
Q3: Is that ok or do you suggest also cutting it down to 3xP/C meals, and having P/F from the 12pm meal onward?
I read over that a while ago. Looks quite solid. Once again the only problem I have found when trying to follow a plan like that is getting in all the necessary carbs withing only 3 meals (pre, post and PPWO). Currently I have one more meal with P/C at around 12pm to make up for it.
I honestly think you as well as many just make this WAY to complicated. Its easy to overthink this and I feel you will make better gains if you just relax and do it. You dont have to crunch eavery little macro unless you are doing some serious contest dieting IMO. Just get a solid base paln and try and stick to it see if it works and go from there. Everyone is a bit different, find what works for you.
For me its simple I have more carbs on days I lift. I have roughly 4 P+C early in the day and around my w/o then 2 P+F including my bed time meal. Post w/o whole food meal is also the ever so dreaded P+C+F adding good fats in the form usually of a couple hundred k/cals of walnuts maybe some avacado to go along a bunch of meat veggies and fruit.
On non lifting days I have P+C at breakfast and the go right to P+F with lots of veggies throughout the days. So 1 P+C and 5 or so P+F. Its simple but it works for me. I am positive that many times on those P+F I get more than 10g of carbs in the form of veggies but hey It is not worth sweating its more about aiming to get around tern and the sources of carbs you are getting.
Thanks for the great info! I guess one of the reasons I am being so anal is that I have tried to read up a lot on the topic, both in the actual articles and in the forum posts. Very often I came across threads where people were, for example, having 4 P/C meals instead of 3 etc. and lots of people were close on bashing them, saying that was the reason their diet/training/overall plan was failing etc. That got me really worried.