Sometimes, trying to do the right thing and help, even though the help isn’t predicated on the principles laid forth in an article, is more trouble than it’s worth. The people who skim the article for words they recognize—like workout and carbs—who then read the comments don’t understand the key points, nor do they grasp the niceties. Helping by responding to the comments becomes a Catch-22. So, because of the I-know-more-than-anybody-because-I-read-a-book trolls, the next person asking how to back-load carbs if lifting in the morning will get the response, “You don’t.”
The troll says: I read a book, now I know everything and you stupid!The point of the article, what I was trying to relay, what is new and goes against conventional wisdom is that many things cause changes to the body. Food is recognizably the single most versatile tool for manipulating the body from hormones to gene expression. Resistance training, I would argue, is second. To optimize for performance—performance here meaning strength, mass and fat loss—not only must diet change, but so must training, including the time of day. Laid out in four simple principles, the points I tried to make are:
1) If you’re a native born US citizen who’s 40 or younger, you should back-load your carbs whether you workout or sit on your ass all day (because America’s youth has been fed crap since infancy with some nasty epigenetic consequences).
2) If you have the flexibility to lift at any time of the day, lift sometime between 3 to 5pm to get maximum advantage from the circadian cycle of insulin sensitivity (more sensitive in the morning, less sensitive at night).
3) If you back-load properly and adjust your workout time to optimize, you can eat trash in the evening before bed and not worry about it—want a cup of rice before bed, do what everybody else does; want a box of cherry turnovers and a quart of ice cream, then back-load it.
4) If you cannot change your day around, then your next best option for mass is to eat carbs post workout, whenever that occurs, but still avoid carbs pre-workout (Precision Nutrition Style, a la Berardi).
And one point I didn’t address in the article
5) If your main goal is not mass gain, but preservation thereof while getting lean, then you should still back-load carbs with a slight modification.
The article was about back-loading your carbs through the day, and even ended with the hint that changing your diet and your schedule is part of the formula. Then people asked how they would back-load their carbs if they workout first thing in the morning, implying they should have post-workout carbs. And maybe I shouldn’t make that assumption, but I did. Well, this is kind of a no-brainer from the perspective of back-loading, isn’t it? Eating carbs first thing in the morning post-workout, nullifies the chance to back-load. Now let’s talk about back-loading carbs and lifting first thing in the morning.
The general belief about post workout carbs is that it’s the carbs that matter. They do, but they’re not the most important factor. It’s the spike in insulin levels. Insulin signals cells to shuttle all kinds of nutrients and building blocks across the cellular wall, not just glucose. Cholesterol depends on insulin to enter the cells of the body, as do amino acids. If trying to back-load carbs and lift in the morning, what’s needed is a way to spike insulin levels post-workout without eating carbs. Luckily, there is a way to do it.
So, that magical carb-free-insulin spike: casein hydrolysates and leucine. This mixture causes insulin spikes without the aid of carbohydrates. The Mag-10 and Anaconda formulas from Biotest® are both based on this combination. Protein Factory also sells pure casein and leucine. I recommend Protein Factory for cost and because of the ability to create custom blends of protein. About 10 grams of casein hydrolysate, 10 grams of leucine and 40 to 50 grams of a whey hydrolysate or isolate is excellent post-workout nutrition, causes an insulin spike, supplies all the necessary amino acids, promotes recovery and growth, all without carbs. Add coffee and creatine to the mix and there’s not much better that can be done after a morning workout without carbs. (Caution: hydrolysates taste like shit because of the massive amount of proline produced during the hydrolyzation process.)
Now, armed with adequate, carb-free post-workout recovery, you can still take advantage of back-loading carbs, stay strong and get ripped and still eat some trash before bed if you feel like it.
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