Very Low Carb Bodybuilding?

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If you’ve read my other articles, you might have noticed that I often discourage people, particularly bodybuilders, from following very low carb diets.

This isn’t to say that I feel you need to consume lots of carbohydrate every day to build muscle, but very low carb bodybuilding diet plans are unnecessary and damage your metabolism.

There are a number of reasons why everyone, especially trainers, should, in my opinion, consume an absolute minimum of 70 grams of carbohydrate per day. You can drop below this for short periods, but there really isn’t any reason to, and staying below this level for more than a couple of weeks could hurt chances of building muscle in the short term and staying lean in the long run.

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There are a whole number of reasons why following a low carb bodybuilding diet will actually hurt your body’s ability to burn fat and build muscle in the long term:

Lowered Metabolism

Your thyroid needs a constant supply of glucose to function properly – when you deprive yourself of glucose for even reasonably short periods like a couple of days your metabolism slows down and fat burning becomes compromised.

Contrary to low carb gurus ‘science’, your liver needs some carbohydrate to effectively fuel the burning of dietary and body fat.

This isn’t to say that the higher you go in carbs, the better. Everyone has an optimum carb level, which can change over time and as a result of various diet and lifestyle factors, but the vast majority of people are always going to need more than 70 grams per day.

Reduced Glucose Tolerance

When you drop under 70 grams a day (probably higher if you perform aerobic or weights training) for more than a few weeks your glucose tolerance will start to decrease.

Given your body and brain need glucose each day to function at top performance, and your muscles need glucose in the form of glycogen to train well, any diet that worsens glucose tolerance is going to cause problems in the long term.

When you reintroduce the carbs that your body needs, you will handle them less effectively and will likely gain weight and feel lousy.

Protein can supply glucose by a process called gluconeogenesis but this process is inefficient and shouldn’t be used to supply all of your glucose needs. High protein low carb diets can be useful for some people who deal with glucose poorly, but a long term strict restriction of starchy carbs will train your body to deal with these carbs even less well.

Most people feel best with some starchy carbs in their diets so it’s not a great idea to go on a crash diet that worsens your ability to handle these.

Stressed Adrenal Glands

There are a few reasons why very low carb bodybuilding diets actually stress your adrenal glands:

Firstly, the majority of sedentary people, and certainly not trainers who rely on glycogen to fuel their training, cannot convert protein to glucose efficiently enough to supply all of their energy needs.

When not enough glucose is supplied, the adrenals are forced to kick in between meals to keep blood sugar levels stable.

This rise in adrenaline is likely why many people feel great on very low carb diets initially but after a couple of months start to feel a bit worn down.

Secondly, most people massively up the amount of protein that they’re eating when they go on a very low carb bodybuilding diet.

Everyone’s protein needs are slightly different, and protein requirements clearly increase when training, but very high protein diets force the adrenal glands to work overtime and leave many people feeling somewhat jittery and anxious.

Consuming decent quantities of quality protein is crucial to supporting the adrenal glands and keeping energy levels high, but when you unnecessarily restrict carbs and replace them with protein for sustained periods, the adrenals become worn down and this will hurt your energy in the long term.

Increased Cravings

It's wide spread knowledge that low carb dieters tend to crave carbs when they are dieting and binge on them when they go off of their diets, leading to them putting the weight back on.

This is a result of various factors, but it’s clear that an extreme deprivation of carbs can lead to an imbalance in neurotransmitters such as serotonin and beta endorphins and this can cause an increase in carbohydrate cravings.

To me, the inevitable craving of carbs after low carb diets is a clear sign that most of us actually need some starch in our diets.

As discussed earlier, our bodies begin to handle starch less well if it is severely restricted for more than a few weeks, so when dieters come off very low carb bodybuilding diets, and load up on all the delicious carbs that they’ve abstained from, they generally put on quite a bit of fat in a fairly short period of time.

Worsened training performance

We all know that both weights training and aerobic training requires glycogen, which comes from glucose. Protein is converted to glucose inefficiently and cannot provide enough glycogen to fuel even low intensity training.

It’s clear to see how going on a severe low carb bodybuilding diet will hurt your weights and aerobic training performance, meaning you will be able to burn less fat and build less muscle than you would be able to on a more mixed diet.

Since muscle burns glucose so effectively, anyone with poor glucose tolerance would do well to pack on more muscle mass as this alone will improve their handling of glucose.

It’s worth pointing out that reduced carb diets can improve your training as fat begins to be burned as your primary energy source when you’re not training and more of the carbs you eat are stored in your muscles and liver as glycogen to fuel your training.

This effect can be achieved by moderately reducing your daily carbs, often to between 70 and about 150 grams, and the effect can be enhanced if you consistently leave longer between your meals i.e. 4 or 5 hours.

Lowered Recovery Ability

On low carb bodybuilding diets, trainers, particularly those aiming to lose fat, often cut out post workout carbs. This is unnecessary and unhelpful to both muscle mass gain and body fat loss.

Post workout carb and protein drinks have been shown repeatedly to slow muscle catabolism, to speed up the rebuilding of muscle tissue, and to improve muscle recovery time.

Even if you are looking to burn fat it’s a good idea to enjoy a well designed post workout shake as your body handles glucose extremely well after exercise, almost all of it heading to your muscles and liver - even simple carbs won’t be stored as fat.

Low carb diets that minimise carbs even post workout will limit your ability to pack on muscle because training frequency and intensity will have to be reduced if not enough glycogen is supplied.

Since muscle burns fat as fuel 24 hours a day, dieters should avoid very low carb bodybuilding plans and should look to pack on some more muscle if they are serious about losing bodyfat and improving their body compositions.

Low carb bodybuilding diets aim to help you lose weight and build muscle by controlling the hormone insulin. Insulin management is indeed crucial to bodybuilding, and to health generally, as it is involved in the process of fat storage, but a chronic restriction of carbs to below around 70 grams a day is not the way to go for most people.

Whilst a moderate reduction of carbs could help many people and trainers, very low carb diets may actually reduce insulin sensitivity after a while.

There are many better strategies for controlling insulin and for improving insulin sensitivity than following a very low carb bodybuilding diet.

Without going into too much depth here, examples of strategies for improving insulin sensitivity include: