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Originally Posted by vanessa40
Hi Everyone,
I posted this in the low carb thread but wasn't sure anyone would see it..I though i might have better luck this way 
Ok...i'm very interested in doing a low carb diet but i'm not sure if it will work for me..tell me what you think..
I run 5-6 miles a day and lift 3 times a week.
I weigh 133 pounds and i'm 5'2.
I would love to lose 10 pounds and thought this might be a good way to do it but i'm not real sure how low i should go.
Thanks..
Vanessa |
Here's the anchoring principle that I strive to get through to people: eat the most amount of carbs that will still allow you to lose fat. This will give you the greatest amount of leverage for incremental carb reduction when/if progress plateaus occur. This is gonna differ per individual. The majority of everyone I've counseled for fat loss in my 15 year career does well having somewhere between 1-2g carbs per lb of target bodyweight (TBW). Where people fall along this continuum depends primarily on activity level and obviously metabolism/genetics. It's rare outside of precontest or sedentary conditions that folks need to AVERAGE below 1g/lb TBW. Finding your personal ideal upper threshold for carbs is a matter of:
1) knowing how you respond to carbs in general, and
2) being aware of what your current protocol is and how it's been affecting your body comp.
It can seriously be this simple... Get a grip on exactly how much carbs you're eating currently, and cut back a little (by 10-15% from your current intake), see how far you get fat loss-wise after putting the reduction to trial, and repeat as needed. Also keep in mind that your intake of carbs throughout the week doesn't have to be linear. This way you can match supply a little closer with demand. For example, instead of eating 120g/d, you can structure your diet to have 160g on your 3 most exhaustive training days per week, and 90g for the other 4 days. Not only will this equal to the same amount of carbs by the end of the week as a linear 120/day, but on 3 of those days you won't feel like you're dieting.
There's gonna be a slew of differing advice you'll receive on this, but trust your instincts to a certain degree, especially if you've been an athlete for a while. Also realize that you'll have to put in a certain amount of trial & error. Also realize that the objective "going low carb" has no real magic in terms of fat loss over "sensibly reducing calories". The latter involves maximally supporting your physiological demands, while the former involves cultivating a pathological fear. Carbs are generally the macro that should be reduced in the event of lowering calories for obvious reasons incuding LBM maintenance, etc, but as someone who's pretty much seen it all client-wise, I hate to see people take the approach of "how low can I go and still function" versus what I said earlier -- how high can you go and still lose fat.
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Good luck!
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