I went into an athlete nutrition store yesterday and met one of the workers there.

He was buff as all hell and in great shape.

We got to talking, and I told him I was cutting.. he told me that he did a cut just a couple months ago as well.

He said he started at 190 and dropped to 168 in 2 months.. and is now at 4% body fat.

The way he did it was he eliminated carbs completely and just ate a lot of proteins and fats..

He said he was getting around 300 grams of protein and 150 grams of fat.

He also said he didn't pay attention to calories.

He did 30 minutes cardio sessions every day at an intensity of 130 heartbeats per minute.

Oh, and he also said that he retained all of his lean mass.

What do you guys think of this? Could this possibly work for an average guy like me? Does this guy just have really great genetics? Could it be because he already had so much muscle in the first place?

I am thinking about trying this out for a while to see if it would work for me.. what do you guys think?

it sounds like hes twisting the truth..alot

Do you train with weights - and if so, how often and how long per session ?

Do you do cardio - and if so, how often and how long per session and at what intensity ?

yeah I do a full body workout 3 times a week with 15 minutes of HIIT after it... an hour total

I try to get some light cardio in on two other days of the week for about 15-30 minutes varying.

Intensity is arond 160-175 when doing hiit and 120-130 when i'm just doing the light cardio.

Why do you ask?

In my opinion, carbs are very important in any diet plan. They're not called a macro-nutrient for nothing. Carbs play a vital role in any diet plan. Cutting them out completely is not good for the body. When lifting, your muscles break down during your workout. We all know that eating excess protein right after the workout helps to build new muscle fibers. Well, you also need carbs to provide a surge of glucose which helps you body carry out the muscle rebuilding process. This is especially important when you are cutting and you need to hang on to as much muscle mass as possible. Without providing the building blocks of new muscle growth, you will lose a lot of muscle as well as fat. I don't believe that fat free, protein free, or carb free diets are ideal in any way. Our bodies need all of those nutrients to function. I say, If you are trying to cut, focus on calories.

Weight training is primarily an anaerobic activity. Which means, the primary fuel you use to weight train comes from glycogen. When you eat carbs they convert to glucose and - if not used for energy - get stored as glycogen in your muscles.

Now, you're musing about " eliminating carbs completely " from your diet when it's primarily carbs you need to fuel your weight workouts.

In addition, HIIT is another primarily anaerobic activity which relies mostly on glycogen for energy.

Yet, for some reason, you're musing about " eliminating carbs completely " from your diet when it's primarily carbs you need to fuel your HIIT workouts

Why ? Because you need carbs to fuel your workouts - and yet you're thinking about cutting out all carbs.

It's simply not a very smart way to train IMO. Protein should be used in it's primary role to repair and build tissue - not to fuel workouts.

very good points wrangell...

Well, he did say that carb cycling is very important. He said that he had two pieces of toast in the morning for breakfast for his carbs, and then 60 grams of carbs with his post workout shake.

but other than that he suggested getting rid of them for the most part. He said once a week he would have a cheat day and eat a lot of carbs.

Maybe with carb cycling he meant cut out almost all carbs on non training days?

.

Why ?

One gram of carb is 4 calories and 1 grams of protein is 4 calories.

If he is keen on cutting ( losing fat ) - why would he cut carbs if they have the exact same calories by weight as carbs ? He only needs about 170 grams of protein at most - not 300.

And, from an excess calorie perspective, carbs are equally as " fattening " ( by weight ) as protein. So why cut carbs ? Carbs aren't fattening.

But why ? He needs carbs / glycogen to fuel his training.

But your muscles replace glycogen at a rate of about 5% an hour - or 20 hours ( or less with post workout nutrition ).

So, if this guy trains at 5:00 p.m.- and he is using mainly glycogen stores to train - then he wants to start eating carbs no later that 9:00 p.m ( 20 hours earlier ) the night before - at the latest. And since he doesn't take in carbs from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. , his focus should be to pack on some carbs the day of his training as well. The common sense thing to do , however, would be to simply focus on also taking in carbs on ' non-training ' days to allow adequate time for his glycogen stores to be fully topped up for training the following day.

Hes full of S*** he might have said low carb. But the human body cant function without carbs. ZEE brain goes all fuzzy.

rememberrrr "fat burns in a carbo flame" !!

He's not lying. It's called keto diets, and it goes something like this:

When you deny your body carbs but give it plenty of fats, it eventually goes into ketosis, where it starts burning ketons for fuel, which are partial fat molecules. It continually breaks down fat into these ketons, which are then either burned for energy or you pee it out.

You shouldn't completely cut carbs though, since they're needed for glucogen for the muscles. You should eat a little amount of carbs each day, and do carb loading days. People do that in different ways.

I tried it for a short while, and it worked great. More stable energy levels during the day, excellent fat loss. I hated the fact that is almost impossible to eat anything normal though, you have to shop and prepare food in a completely new way. But the main reason I quit was that the fat burning just wasn't effective enough for me to keep it up when doing martial arts - weight training was fine though, perhaps a bit tough late in the week before the carb loading day.

A lot of guys swear by keto, both for cutting and bulking.

Wrong. The brain works fine on ketones.

Ok, you just changed what he said. At first you said he ELIMINATED carbs completely and then you said that he carb cycled. I think the second way you explained it (with 60 grams of carbs on workout days and 1 day cheat) is a very realistic way to cut. So I wouldn't say he's full of ****. I would say that you twisted his words around in the first post.

Carb cycling actually involves eating a ton of carbs. So thats weird that he mentioned that. Also putting your body into ketosis is all on a person to person basis how they deal with this reaction of consuming almost zero carbs and trying to do the same things you do in your average day. I have tried it before and its rough for me but hey thats me maybe some people like it or get used to it.

I wasn't the original poster.

I don't think that there's anything wrong with cutting carbs completely, except that without glucogen your workouts will be really weak - which for the fitness crowd ofc is a big deal.

I'd also like to point out that it feels very different from normal cutting. You can eat more calories and still lose way more fat than normal cuts, and it actually feels like you have more energy throughout the day. I lost 2 lb in a week, felt great, and ate some funny stuff (turkey bacon with lettuce and olive oil, your meals are so weird). I think I responded quite well to it though, I got into ketosis quickly, didn't get sugar cravings or anything. My skin started feeling sort of greasy though, and one day I screwed up my veggies and didn't get much fiber, damn that screwed up my bowels the next day.