Hey everyone,
Can you still gain on a low carb diet, and how?
Recently (past couple of months) I have cut a lot of weight by limiting my carbs (and also following a paleo diet where easily possible), I seem to be pretty carb sensitive, pack on the carbs I put on fat quickly, limiting htem I’ve got quite lean quite quickly… So, because of this, I’ve been thinking about a zero carb approach.
From my limited understanding - zero carb works as you are in ketogenesis for a few days (eg starvation), your body fuels itself off fat, you train hard, refeed on carbs, your body is happy, you return to zero carb, rinse and repeat. Hence it’s possible to gain muscle whilst at the same time, staying lean.
How about low carb? What dyou do after you have trained? You arent in ketogenesis, so you wouldn’t need to carb refuel? Or would taking in lots say one day a week screw up the whole low carb idea, because you arent in the ketogenesis state, so really you are just bumping up the intake needlessly? Or would you just not make any gains because you don’t have the carbs present after training? Can you gain muscle whilst low carbing?
OR is the best low carb solution to do tabatas/complexes etc to shred yourself after your weights sessions?
On a sidenote, since i’ve been low(er) carbing, my gut hates me and the toilet gets many (often liquidy) visits…
If it matters - train bjj 2/3 times a week for 2 hours, lift 2/3 times a week on the off days, no cardio. following a basic progressive 5*5 plan (eg upping %s every set, i just started this so haven’t yet started to add weight to the bar)
Finally, I don’t want to move to totally zero carb because that means killing fruit / veg intake, which I feel I want to keep right now.
Thanks everyone, always nice to hear what you guys think, I do a lot of lurking here.