Carbs day before CN, skip CN?

[steffenvisser]

Tomorrow I’m about to have myself a great lunch containing some bread. Will eat appr. 60-70 grams of carbs in one sitting. Saturdays are my regular CN days.

I’m 5 months into the program, should I skip the upcoming CN because of the carbs on friday? Is it possible to do a CN or is it best to play safe and go ULC till next saturday?

[Penny Danner]

I am assuming there is a special occasion for the lunchtime bread. If so, I’d just use tomorrow as my carb nite (ending by CN eating still in the 8hr window) and move on about life.

[steffenvisser]

Unfortunately doing a CN isn’t possible so I guess I’ll just do an exta 7 days going ULC.

Will use it as an opportunity to see if my lifting gets affected by skipping the carbing up. Interested to see if my 4 days a week HIIT session gets me extra results.

[some dude]

For what it’s worth….

I had a similar scenario a couple of weeks ago. I had an impromptu and less than desirable carb nite. I had a really long 20 hour day and stayed carb free for most of it. I was on my feet the entire time preparing for a marketing event and around 10pm, quite exhausted, fell prey to a few late night cookies and a beer. I considered it my carb nite and continued on. I am currently in a maintenance mode for strength training so I don’t have any real data for you with that respect. What I noticed was a plateau effect on weight loss the following week. Perhaps I may have lost some fat but the scale didn’t really show any loss in the 7 day period following my less than desirable carb nite. The following week I had a normal, awesome, carb nite. In the week following my normal carb nite I went right back to losing at the normal 1.5ish lbs that week.

[steffenvisser]

Thank you some dude. I decided to skip the bread and just eat a salad so everything is ok.

Thinking about doing a CN every 2 weeks now, getting of those carbs very quickly.

[Penny Danner]

steffenvisser wrote:

Unfortunately doing a CN isn’t possible so I guess I’ll just do an exta 7 days going ULC.

Will use it as an opportunity to see if my lifting gets affected by skipping the carbing up. Interested to see if my 4 days a week HIIT session gets me extra results.

So you didn’t eat the bread? Are you gonna do your CN today (Sat)?

You’re probably going to hate life if you are doing HIIT 4 days and lifting and not had a CN. Just saying.

[Makoto Tomizawa]

First of all, whenever situations rise like that, I find it better to just not even worry about it and carry on like it didn’t happen. That’s different than deliberately eating carbs mid week and pretending it’s all okay and still having your Carb Nite. Well, depending on your goal/stats you very well could but. Glad things worked out for you though.

I’d also like to add… (and feel free to take it for not take it)
Carb Nite = glycogen depletion
HIIT = uses glycogen for fuel
Weight lifting = uses glycogen for fuel
Glycogen usage + glycogen usage + depleted glycogen = fuel from readily available amino acids, aka your lean muscle tissue

If anything, you’d want to decrease the amount of high intensity activity you do while on Carb Nite.

Training Log: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vuwHRdBaPVILxxLhXly_N1Ys66Hcwk4j-bM7nvKSLrI/edit?usp=sharing

[steffenvisser]

Thank you for replying! Just had my CN, I’m from Europe.

So decreasing HIIT would be best? Won’t be sad if it would 🙂

I workout four times a week and supplement with amino’s all the time, just to be sure. So: lift four times a week and one post CN HIIT session? Would a CN every 14 days slow down weighg loss and increase muscle tissue teardown?

[Makoto Tomizawa]

Training becomes a little tricky with Carb Nite (or any other cyclical ketogenic diets). If you’re lifting 4 days per week already, you definitely do not need to lengthen the days between your Carb Nites – yes, you’re setting yourself up for increased muscle breakdown, because you’re trying to run on glycogen when it’s not there; in addition to that, your cortisol level will probably be very high, and chronically elevated cortisol tends to slow down fat loss for most people (but accelerated muscle loss).

I can’t remember where I read it, and I’m by no means an expert, but I believe aminos don’t do much. You’re taking BCAA supplements I’m assuming? Someone correct me if I’m wrong here, but I’m hearing more on the side of not a whole lot of difference being there between BCAA supplemented training and completely fasted training… either that or the body using the available aminos increases the rate at which the body starts using aminos from your muscles. I’m actually curious myself now so I’ll have to go look.

CN every 14 days would be fine if you’re completely sedentary. If you have intense training on a regular basis, I would actually recommend Carb Backloading. The Strength Accumulation protocol was written for fat loss for individuals who train hard regularly.

Training Log: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vuwHRdBaPVILxxLhXly_N1Ys66Hcwk4j-bM7nvKSLrI/edit?usp=sharing

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