Carbs! Sweet… sweet… glorious carbs!
Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 21, week 1
- Work Set – Bench Press (working max: 210#)
- 2x5x45 (warmup)
- 1x5x85
- 1x5x105
- 1x3x130
- 1x3x150 (work)
- 1x3x170
- 1x5x190
- Assistance – DB Incline Press
- Assistance – DB Rows
- Assistance – JM Press
- Assistance – Face Pulls
After 10 days of essentially no carbs, last night I got to finally have some. More on diet stuff below. It made a difference, as you’d expect.
I slept like a rock. Solid 8 hours of sleep. Woke up and just didn’t feel it. I felt… zoned… out of it. I couldn’t kick my brain into gear. Not sure why. But I just trudged along and figured lifting would make it all better. Physically I felt alright. The noticable part for me was not feeling like I was out of gas half-way through things. I distinctly remember my body saying “stop, out of gas, on the reserve tank, so preserve energy and stop”. But no such feeling today. I pushed and felt alright. I do not feel as strong as before all of this diet change, but that’s to be expected.
All in all tho, the session went fine. Nothing glorious either way.
As for diet….
I’m going to essentially follow Carb Back-Loading. So I finished my 10 day start up. Before I started, I was about 240#. I say “about” because the bathroom scale is old and crappy, but good enough. It’s hard to sometimes read where the needle is pointing on the dial, and I honestly don’t recall taking an official “before I start” measurement. So I’m going based upon the last known weigh-in, and even then I know I rounded a bit. It might have been 241 or 242, maybe even 239. But 240 is good enough. And weighing myself this morning (always weigh first thing in the morning, no food), I reckon 233? 234? So I’m rounding it to a simple 5#. I’m sure most, if not all, of this is loss from glycogen exhaustion, the water that goes with it, etc.. Might have lost a hair of fat, but I’m chalking it up to just dietary manipulation at this point. I don’t really count true loss until I’m down about 10# because then you know you actually lost something, not just water weight. I mean, I can flux 5# in the course of a day from just eating, food, and taking a good dump. But from weighing myself during the past 10 days, it’s solid weight loss, just I expect most isn’t fat loss.
So re-reading the CBL book and browsing the forums again, I think the plan will start something like this.
I’m targetting 200# for weight. Is that actually what I’ll weigh? Well, I don’t know because it’s not so much about weight as it is about composition. But I need numbers to go on, so 200# seems good. Why? Well, if I’m 240#, I estimate my body fat is probably 25% based upon some tape measures and looking at some of those visual charts I’ve found online. So, that’s about 60# of fat (gah!), so that’s 180# of lean body mass, and so if 10% body fat is about good, that’s 200#, right? So, a fair target, if nothing else.
With that in mind….
Every day, strive for 200g of protein. No compromise here. Oh sure, maybe some days it’ll be 190 and others 210, but essentially 200. I have to be mindful of just inhaling lots of protein because 250g, well, that’s 50g more, that’s 200 calories more, and given my goal right now, that 200 cals will add up. Basically, I’m going for 1g of protein per pound of target bodyweight.
Fat will be at least 100g a day, maybe up to 200g depending, but then probably only that much on non-carb days. So this is essentially about 0.5 to 1.0g per pound of target bodyweight.
Carbs will be cycled. I will only ingest carbs the night before going to the gym. One possible exception is Friday night, if I know I’ll have a long and hard day at KR Training on Saturday. Using the 5# of initial loss as a guide, I look up in the CBL book chart, then use the formula I read on the CBL forum which says to take that number, multiply by 1.5, then divide by the number of backloads you get in a week (3 in my case). Comes out to about 225g per backload session. And 5# is low. But I’ll explain this in a sec. But basically, it comes out to about 1g of carb per pound of target bodyweight.
Frankly, that sort of simple math I like. If I have to make this a science experiment every day, I’m going to go nuts. Part of why I’m doing CBL is because I think it’ll be something I can manage on a daily basis. Be it this, Mountain Dog Diet, Renegade Diet… lots of the shit is the same. Heck, the latest video from Brandon Lilly and Paul Carter was talking about this very stuff. So point becomes… yeah, I think this is a route that might work for me.
My numbers are low. Do the math. 200g protein is 800 cals. 100g fat is 900 cals. So that’s like 1700 cals a day on my no-carb days. Shit, that’s low. If I throw in the 200g carbs, that’ll be 2500 on those days, which is a bit more normal. And really, if I was training to get bigger, I’d probably have that 2500 every day, maybe 3000. And while I’ve always minded things like protein, I haven’t minded carbs and fats as much. Heck, last night when trying to figure out my carbs to get 200g, I realized that’s a LOT of carbs, at least from the sources I was trying to get it from. But then I also realized how quickly carbs can get out of hand.
Case in point. Wife found this awesome recipe for a “chocolate mousse” thing that was just cocoa powder, maple syrup, a little vanilla, and then avocado as the base. Oh, this is totally awesome stuff. Thing is, I looked at the syrup bottle (real maple syrup, not that corn syrup artificial flavor shit). The serving size was 1/4 cup and you got like 53g of sugar. 1/4 cup isn’t much, and I’d reason most people put at least that much tho probably more on their pancakes and waffles. Now you’re also eating pancakes and waffles on top of that, which is just carbs out the wazoo…. and you wonder where and why we get fat.
But then when I was trying to eat carbs this morning with my breakfast, post-workout, a peach, a banana, and some greek yougurt… and that was enough. And somehow a lot more satisfying not just to my stomach, but also my palette. But yet, that’s all I needed post-workout. Yet trying to cram another 150g or more? Shit… that’s almost work! Maybe I should just drink maple syrup. 🙂
Nevertheless, I know these numbers are low. I want to see what they do for me. Again, I expect to lose some muscle and strength, and I begrudgingly accept that, so long as I do drop the fat. I’m hoping these levels will get me there, and I will adjust if and how I need to.
I figure if I can stay the course until the end of the month, that should be a good time to fall back and assess if this is working for me or not. If so, Labor Day will probably be the next big milestone checkin to see how it’s going. If I can drop 1-2# week, gee… 15# or so dropped by Labor Day? That would be awesome and be a noticeable difference.
Onwards.
Stuff From Hsoi 