Low-carb diet is at the moment one of the most popular ways of loosing body fat. The reason for this is mainly due to its success (also shown by scientific studies) in overweight sedentary people. This has spread to the athletic community as well. During the eighties, extreme low-fat diets were used by bodybuilders. If you go further back to the 70's, you found that low-carb diets were popular. Thus, there are trends in diets. It is important to have this perspective and do not forget about basics. One aspect with low-carb diet is that healthy fats are more popular which is good.

The basics are, that if you consume less calories than you "burn", you will loose weight. If done in the right way, that is dieting slow, with a fairly high protein intake and combined with weight training, most tissue lost will be fat and the loss of muscle is kept to a minimum.

The basis behind low-carb diets are, low insulin levels which in turn is favorable during a diet. My personal experience is that female bodybuilders benefit more on a low-carb diet compared with male bodybuilder (especially larger ones). The other aspect with low-carb diets is that, for some bodybuilders, it is easier to stick to the diet because the food might taste better due to its higher fat content.

Now, let's get practical on how to do a low-carb diet. I will divide this into 4 phases, each phase 4 weeks long so that total time is 16 weeks. When carb intake is given, it means the average intake daily during a week. Within the week, carb intake fluctuates. Put higher carb days before or the same day you train a weak muscle group or a muscle group you prioritize.

Phase 1: Cut carb intake by 25%. This will get you going in a smooth manner. This will be a very easy phase so enjoy it.

Phase 2: Carbs are cut by an additional 25% (now 50% of the pre-diet carb intake). During this phase eat mostly complex carbs but with some simple/medium carbs post training. As said before, do not forget to cycle carbs within the week. Keep the protein intake constant (2 g/kg or 1 g/Ibs bodyweight) all the way until the last phase. If weight is lost too fast during this phase, up the healthy fats a little bit. If not enough weight is lost, do not decrease carb intake but instead increase aerobic activity instead. The reason for this is that, if you do decrease carb intake even further, glycogen levels will go too low too early and you get flat and overtrain easily.

Phase 3: This is the toughest phase and here you decrease carb intake by an additional 25% (pre-diet carb intake is now cut by 75%). During this phase you increase protein consumption to 2.5 g/kg or 1.25 g/Ibs body weight. If needed, adjust fat intake/aerobic activity as described in phase 2. Also, do not forget to cycle carbs during the week. This phase really sheds fat and during the last part of this phase, you should be really low in fat tissue. You will probably be a little flat in the last part but do not worry, you will fill up during the last phase.

Phase 4: The last phase starts with getting the protein intake back to 2 g/kg or 1 g/Ibs body weight and carb intake is increased by 25% (50% of pre-diet carb intake). As before, cycle carbs during the week, adjust fat intake and aerobic activity if needed. This phase will fill you up some while fat levels are really low and you will now look really good.

If you are planning to compete, you have 1-2 more weeks when this phase is over. Then you have 2 choices. Either do carb-sodium-water manipulation (popularly called carb loading) or a more moderate (and safer) approach. More on this later. Good luck and get going.

/ C-M Lokrantz, sept 2004
www.lokrantzconsulting.com

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