Nutrient Ratios and Caloric Intake are the Keys to Fat Loss

To get ripped, should I be on a high- or low-carbohydrate diet?

Properly managing carbohydrate and calorie intake are vitally important for getting lean. Here’s what we recommend:

If you exercise for an hour, three or four times a week, you’ll typically need to consume a number of calories equal to about 10-12 times your bodyweight in order to lose bodyfat quickly, without sacrificing much hard-earned muscle.

Some people need more calories than this, and some people might need less, but this is a good starting point.

I weigh about 195 lbs now. For me to drop bodyfat rapidly, I need to keep my calorie intake down to right around 1,950 calories a day with about 40% of these calories coming from carbohydrates. For me, that’s about 800 calories of carbs, and since each gram of carbohydrate contains 4 calories, I consume no more than 200 grams of carbs a day.

Over the last decade, I’ve tried a lot of different cutting-up nutritional strategies, but keeping my carbs relatively low and controlling calorie intake always works well. However, I recently tried a new strategy—instead of dividing up my carbohydrate intake evenly among six different meals, what I do now is consume a “double serving” of carbs after my weight-training workouts, and I eliminate carbohydrates completely from my last meal of the day (making it almost all protein). Here’s an example: for my first four meals of the day, I’ll have around 30 to 40 grams of protein and 25 to 35 grams of carbs. Then, after I work out in the evening, I’ll have about 30 grams of protein and around 70 grams of carbs. Then, in my last meal of the day, I’ll eat around 30 to 40 grams of protein (2 chicken breasts and a salad) and virtually no carbs.

This produces great results in terms of fat loss, and it also seems to help me maintain my energy and recover more quickly from my workouts. (Sometimes when I’m on a fat-loss program, don’t seem to recover from my weight-training workouts nearly as well.)

Some people have had success using diets that contain 60% carbohydrates or even more, but those don’t seem to work as well for me. Others have had success using very, very low-carbohydrate diets (less than 50 grams a day), but when I tried that, I couldn’t even function; it was really hard to work out or even think straight.

Remember, there is no ONE solution that will work for everyone. We are individuals and although there are some staples that should be included in EVERY fat loss program, the ratios of carbs-protein-fat best suited will most likely need to be adjusted person to person.

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