i dont have any links to the info but just from my experience carbs dont make me gain weight, eating a high fat diet makes me gain weight. i figured this out a while ago but never really did anything about it but now im throwing everything i know together to get the best results from this cycle. im going to explain this from his point of view so it makes no sense, but i pretty much agree on it since he did help out a few bodybuilder and the one that came in said he won his competition (didnt get his name but the guy was big and shredded):es" because I can post up studies that will show the opposite point of what his studies say and being he is a advocate of high carb I personally
so the body is an energy first system. if u give it any kind of energy source its going to satisfy its current energy demands before doing anything else. so u give it just protein first thing in the morning or after a long fast, it will be low on liver glycogen and to replace it the substrate entering the body will be broken down for energy. if this is only protein, the nitrogen bonds can be removed and used for energy similar to glucose and some can actually be converted into glucose. leucine and lysine can also be burned similar to glucose. so if u give it enough protein only, then u will satisfy both the glucose demand and the amino acid demand, but since there are nasty byproducts from burning protein as fuel it should be better to burn actual glucose. so i eat all my protein containing meals with some carb source. there was some study he had showing bcaa's pre workout boost performance... but another study showed an equal amount of carbs did the same thing. the theory was that the bcaa's are just broken down during the workout and used as fuel. i changed my intra workout drink and used a lot less bcaas and added powdered gatorade and im less sore and perform better. my nutrition book that went along with the class had a nice segment on how to satisfy post workout needs and it was all based on high carbs and less protein than we usually would need. i forget exactly how high the carb numbers are but the protein said 8 grams after excercise. i believe this was meant for endurance training but the ideas would still apply. so carbs with the protein post workout because the body really needs to restore the glycogen before it can work on building more muscle. if u give it just protein it will turn it into glucose. (remember, protein still has calories so it can clearly be burned as fuel). hes also an advocate of the 6 meals a day and spreading out the protein content of meals equally so there is no heavy dips in the amino acid pool, which is catabolic. which i think everyone agrees with those two.
Sorry it took me so long to respond. I have been busy.. its hard to find time to get onto AM anymore since we had our baby but anyway back to your statement. First let me say that if you claim that a high fat diet makes you gain unwanted weight and with a high carb diet you feel your body is responding better, well than more power to you! You sir are ahead of many then, I have always advocated that one should experiment and see what works best for THEM and you sound like thats what you have done. There is no golden rule and what is true for someone may not be true for someone else, so if you think you progress better with high carbs then thats great! :thumbsup: Personally my views on nutrition many feel are wrong and/or controversial and they just may be. I am an endomorph and feel I am very sensitive to carbs and prone to easily gaining unwanted weight so this makes me very biased against them since I havent had much positive results with them in high amounts, but again that is me.
Now with that being said on to the BCAAs.. I wont get too much into it as I don't want to spark up a debate or detract from your log too much but just want to make some quick points for your consideration.
Since your goal is recomp your probably eating at around your maintence or a little below even. The leaner ones body becomes the harder that body tries to holdonto its fat stores. Our bodies dont like to give them up that willingly, this is a product of our evolution since we used to not know when our next meal was our body likes to keep a store of backup energy. So while your body is in this state it is more likely you will become catabolic and your body will breakdown muscle in order to obtain amino acids to use for fuel. On top of this the amount of protein systhesis will also be decreasing due to the reduced calorie (energy) intake. The equation for muscle mass = (rate of rotein synthesis - rate of protein breakdown). This is where your BCAAs will shine for your intra workout nutrition. Yes your professor is correct that he aminos will be used for energy (glucose o be specific) via gluconeogenesis. While this is true he is also wrong about leucine and lysine. Both aminos are not glucogenic. Another VERY important poin about BCAA supplemation in which your professor is forgetting is not only the use for energy during our workout but the effects on protein metabolism by increasing the rate of protein synthesis and decreasing the rate of protein degradation. BCAAs (specifically leucine) stimulates protein synthesis and also increase the synthesis of the cellular machinery responsible for carrying out the process of protein sythesis!!!! So here we get a double bang for our buck with BCAAs.. not only will you increase the rate of protein sythesis but also increase your cells capicity for protein synthsis. So here we have see how yes it is being used for energy AND also it is contributiting towards you gaining more muscle. Now back to the point that you are trying to recomp and trying t prevent muscle loss or breakdown while eating at or slightly below maintence. BCAAs will help reduce the rate of protein breakdown by decreasing the activity of the components of the protein breakdown pathway and also by decreasing the expression of several complexes involved in protein breakdown. So in a nut shell you are increasing protein synthesis while decreasing breakdown!!! or in other words WIN - WIN. Now to adress the reasoning that he has saying you can just use carbs to provide the same energy instead of the aminos again he is right but you will loose out on the above key points on muscle growth not to mention there is some information that hints towards increased VAT fat loss while on a slightly calorie deficit diet and supplementing with aminos. (The combination of moderate energy restriction and BCAA supplementation induced significant and preferential losses of VAT, and allowed maintainance of a high level of performance.) There also is another study done by weider where they divided people (39 people to be exact) into 3 groups (whey, BCAAs, and carbs) and tracked their progress over 9 weeks. Each group was given the same diet and workouts program, the resutls were amazing to say the least. People in the BCAA group experienced 9lbs of lean muscle growth and lost about 4lbs of body fat (2% BF drop). The BCAA group out performed the two other groups. The whey group dropped their percent body fat by 1% (around 2lbs of BF) and gained 5 pounds of lean body weight and the carb (gatorade) group dropped their percent body fat by less than 1% (only 1lb of body fat) and only gained 3 pounds of lean body weight. It didnt stop their either all three groups also experienced differences in their strength gains. The BCAA guys increased their bench press by about 15 pounds and squat by 25 pounds, the whey group increased their bench press by about 5 pounds and squat by about 10 pounds and the carb group increased their bench press by almost 5 pounds (4 pounds) and squat by almost 10 pounds (8 pounds). The link to the study is below along with some other studies where I got some of the above information from.
Now again I stand by my belief that you CANT put all your faith or trust into these science studies. In fact the weider one was partly ran by scivation who makes xtend so they have an interest in proving BCAAs to be effective. The other studies I listed below show the VAT fat loss and the anabolic effects of leucine and the effects of BCAAs and protein synthesis during physcial exercise. I posted the links below in case you wanted t read them but I would at the very least experiment with some BCAA supplementation and see how it works for you. The only way to know for sure is to experiment and try it out..
Best of luck to you and your log and sorry for the long winded, rambling post. I been meaning to respond to your post but I just havent had the time to sit down and type it up till now (with a crying newborn who wont sleep.. fun times) and I have had things to type floating around in my head. I tried to organize them so it would make the most sense but it might just come out like a bunch of random rambling. Again if you havent supplemented with BCAAs for intra and post workout give them a shot.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9059905?dopt=ExternalLink
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/136/1/269S.full
http://www.muscleandstrength.com/store/files/xtendstudy1.jpg
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10418071?dopt=ExternalLink
