So yesterday I started fiddling with my workout and I’m happy about it. My legs are sore this morning and I haven’t felt that in ages. 🙂

The next part to bring in line is diet. I have been thinking about carb cycling since it seems all the rage and makes a lot of sense. The difference I’m attempting this time around? Doing the math. I want to calculate out the numbers, the macros, the ratios, everything, and make myself strictly follow them.

So I started doing numbers.

I started looking at the numbers that would come from Shelby Starnes’s take. At my current bodyweight of 240#, it would work out to:

High Days
Protein: 240g-300g
Carbs: 480g-720g
Fat: zilch

Medium & Low Days
Protein: 300g-360g
Carbs: 120g-360g
Fat: 36g-84g

Gee… that sure seems like a lot of carbs on the high days, but isn’t that the point? It’s a lot more protein than I figured, a lot less fat too.

Now if I start looking at Christian Thibaudeau’s take:

BMR: 2238
Calories per day: 3680 (moderate activity level)

but I want to lose weight, so shave 20% and that’s 2834 kcal/day.

Protein: 360g
Carb: 375g (high), 300g (med), 225g (low)
Fat: 29g

Somehow that seemed more reasonable and straightforward.

But then I started doing the math to break things down per meal. Plus I looked at the way they wanted you to ingest. Basically with 6 meals a day and front-loading the carbs in the morning, especially true since I work out in the morning.

The one that floored me? With Thibaudeau’s recommendation to get 50% of your carbs post-workout, that means on my high day I go and lift then come home and have to ingest 187.5 grams of carbs. How in the hell am I supposed to do that? That’s like 14 apples, 3.5 cups of uncooked oatmeal… how am I to eat that without vomiting? or resorting to something ugly like eating fast food? 🙂  Maybe there’s a way, but I just can’t see trying to do this without wretching.

As I’ve been reading, this guy “Scooby” keeps coming up. I read some of his stuff, and one interesting thing is he says carb cycling is not for someone like me. He says for someone in my boat, it’s better to just curb portions, jack up the workload, drink water. Which frankly all makes sense to me. I plugged into his calculator various values. Granted, a lot of it starts out the same as Thibaudeau’s because they use the same basis upon BMR. I pick a macro ratio of 40/40/20, and get some basic results. It comes out to getting about 40-50g of protein and 40-50g carbs per meal. Fat just keep minimal and it’ll work out.

And gee… that seems so much simpler. But fundamentally the same thing. The only difference is I’m not gorging myself like Takeru Kobayashi, everything is spread out; and that every day is the same instead of having high/medium/low days.

Hrm.

I’ve been down this road before and failed. After enough time my body screams at me and off the wagon I go. And that’s part of why carb cycling appealed to me, because there was a chance to recharge and acknowledgement of that need. But another difference from before vs. now is here I’m wanting to really measure things out and work to stick to it. And who knows… maybe I’ll adjust macros some so I get a little more carbs. Or maybe I have a “high day”. I don’t know.

But really, one key factor I need, apart from numbers, is simplicity. If it’s too complicated I’m not going to be able to stick with it. Not just because of myself, but I need Wife’s support in this as she’s the primary food preparer and deliverer. If I can say something simple like “40-50g each of protein and carbs per meal” then that greatly facilitates life for her and thus her ability to support me. That’s vital.

This is all stuff I started working, reading, calculating, and thinking on just in the past 12 hours… so it’s all still fresh in my head and no firm choices made. But this may be where I’m going. Time to let it simmer.