it says. You should never go longer than 3 hours without putting some calories in your body.
Also, when it comes to training, you should try not to eat 45–60 minutes before you begin
a workout. You want all your energy devoted to training, not digesting food. This also maximizes
growth hormone release during your workout. Many people train in the morning before
breakfast, and there’s really no problem with this.
WHEN TO EAT CARBS
A real question that comes into play on the high fat portion of the Anabolic Diet is when to
eat your carbs during the day. Some people spread them out. Others get most of them in one
meal. Again, the answer has to do with personal preference. You can eat your carbs at any time
of day and it won’t matter, as long as you don’t go above the 30 gram carb limit.
But many bodybuilders find eating their carbs throughout the day makes them hungrier and
lazier. They’ll feel sluggish. They get that “turkey dinner syndrome” where they finish and all
they feel like doing is heading for the couch. This is not good, especially for the bodybuilder
who may train during the day and find his motivation affected.
It also presents a real problem that goes beyond bodybuilding and training. Some people
think that our eating patterns have become counterproductive in modern society. The average
person eats a lot of carbs during the day, and the insulin and serotonin responses we talked
about earlier can become very pronounced. At times of the day when we need to be productive
and alert, in the early afternoon for instance, we’ll be sleepy and lethargic from all those carbs.
Wouldn’t it be better to save the carbs for the night? That’s what many bodybuilders do on
the Anabolic Diet. They’ll keep the carbs minimum during the day and find their energy levels
much increased as a result. Then they’ll come home at night and have the bulk of their carbs
with dinner. The carbs at dinner will find them unwinding in the evening hours, relaxing and
sleeping like a baby at night.
It’s interesting to note that one of the trends in business today is toward a more streamlined
lunch. Those huge, 3 martini lunches and the like have become a rarity. Executives are eating
and drinking more sensibly in the middle of the day, and finding productivity rising as a result.
This comes not only from time saved at lunch but from the improved attitude that comes from
getting rid of all those carbs at noon.
EXPERIMENT
Personal experience and individual body chemistry will have a great deal to do with how you
structure the diet. Above, we stress that different people will have differing responses to the
carb loading portion of the diet, and that the length of that carb-loading period may vary greatly
as a result.
The 30 gram carbohydrate limit is also not written in granite. It serves as a good guide, but
some people may find that they can increase carb intake to as high as 40 grams per day and still
do fine. Others may find that anything over 20 will make them feel sluggish.
You have to experiment here. You may want to start the diet with as low a carb intake as 1034 CHAPTER 3