I officially finished my carb nite protocol experiment last Friday, 2 days short of a month. My overall experience with the protocol was mediocre at best. I stuck to the plan 100% but overall lost nearly no weight. My appearance did seem to change a bit which makes me think I was doing more of a body re-composition than weight loss. But that wasnt my goal. My goal was weight loss, pure and simple.
I chose to end it on Friday because that was the day I did my weigh out for my company's weight loss competition. Leading up to that day, I did a water cut in which I drank 2 gallons of water a day starting on Monday and continuing that through Thursday at noon. Then I cut the water off completely until my weigh in Friday at noon. Over the week, I dropped 9lbs of water weight which put me 2lbs below my starting weight 1 year ago.
I mention the water cut because I was hoping that, it, combined with the carb nite protocol would have helped me cut about 15lbs in that last month. Heck, I even stopped lifting serious amount of weights in order to cut weight. Nothing seemed to work.
I think the carb nite protocol might work great for someone that's quite overweight and wants to lose weight fast. But for someone like me who has at best 10lbs of excess fat, it might not have been the best way to go. I am starting to get frustrated with my quest to be a lean mean fighting machine.
One Life to Live
Hmm so after the water cut and the protocol, do you still see the better definition you had mentioned before? Have you looked at what your body fat percentage is? Sounds like you might have and you still haven't been able to shake off that stubborn fat. Sorry to hear.
ReplyDeleteHave you thought about what you want to try next? We should start a Tyson pool to get Martin Berkhan to do a program for you :)
I did see better definition in my abs but not to the point where I could point out each ab muscle. Definitely not what I was hoping the end results would be. I tried to measure my body fat but at that point I was pretty dehydrated and it measured quite high. I didnt bother to measure again.
ReplyDeleteI constantly think about Leangains after seeing the great results that other have with it. My biggest issue with it is the food. I like eating all natural , unprocessed foods and for me to get the carb numbers required, I would have to eat a ton! Every time I try and do it, I never get close to the numbers I need so I panic and eat like crap to make up the difference. I then go way over where I should be.
Right now I am just eating good healthy primal/paleo type foods. I am eating lower carb on my non-lifting days and a bit higher (less than 150) on my weigh training days. I am also consuming the majority of my carbs in the evening. So far its been enjoyable and stress free. I actually feel better and my clothes actually seem to fit better. Not sure if its my imagination or not.
I can't stop thinking this (sorry): "that's what you get from following a men's health program"
ReplyDeleteI know, I know. But the guy is legit and has a great website and book out. Plus who hasnt heard of carb cycling for weight loss? I was just trying to see if it would work for me. Lesson learned.
ReplyDeleteI really don't know how you have a job writing articles for this website. If you would have bought the book (that's 15$) you'd see that everything you did to so called "test the diet" was wrong. First of all your supposed to eat a 50:50 ratio of fats to protein not 200 grams of protein and 120 grams of fat. The excess protein your eating was being converted to glucose in your liver spikeing your insulin everyday. You did 90 min of cardio every other day when the book says you can't do any cardio. As well as heavy training all week. Number 1 rule on any diet is to cut back training volume when calories are limited, especially on a low Carb diet! Your body was responding to this increase in stress by dumping cortisol into your body causing a host of bad effects like fat cell production. And last but most desturbing was your Carb night that lasted a whole 3 hours. The book states a minimum of 6 hours of Carb loading must happen to ensure elevated leptin levels for the week. Please refrain from posting more articles till you gain some more knowledge.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the delay in writing back although I am not even sure if you will get this reply. First I want to say thank you for actually thinking that I get paid to post on this site. This site is my personal hobby and, believe me, I am not getting paid to post anything here.
ReplyDeleteNow to the guts of your comment. I do appreciate your comment and it did have me thinking of some things. I would like to state that the point of me doing this was to see if the fitness articles we so often read actually do us any good or if they are just written to entice us to buy the books. From what you are telling me, I would have been better off buying the book (for $20 btw. Not $15).
I did do the p90x lifting workouts but not the cardio stuff although I did do one day of plyo. My fat to protein ratio (although not 50:50) was more like 45:55 so I am not sure how that would have affected the outcome. My calories were also closer to 2000 a day which I don't really consider low calorie.
The magazine article I read didnt say anything about how long the carb nite should last so I just went with what felt good to me.
But again I thank you for your comment and I do agree with you that I would have been better off buying the book instead of wasting 2 weeks of my life going off of a fitness article from a magazine.
[...] help me to get even leaner and meaner. It’s a bit of the Carb Nite Protocol that I attempted here. As you can read in that post, that attempt at cutting saw a 9lb weight loss. I was heavier then [...]
ReplyDeleteSpend $30 and get a basic body fat meter. test every morning, after using the bathroom and make sure you stay hydrated evenly every day. It sounds like you dropped body fat on Carb Nite. That is exactly what it does, removes fat, not weight. No one needs to lose weight, they need to lose fat. Doing any protocol and not finding decent ways to measure it, is a WASTE of time. 99% of people quit by watching a scale. You need to watch bodyfat and don't even expect it to most quickly. 1% a week as an example at best. I am on Carb Nite 3 weeks. I have measurable fat loss between 3-5 pounds. I went vegan and lost 45 pounds before, but I guarantee I lost half or more as muscle. I did not measure at the time. Biggest mistake I ever made, not measuring.
ReplyDeleteYes. 30% of people can tolerate sugar and carbs, most cannot. Most gain weight over time. Reduce carbs to a minimum, eat fat and protein to fullness and you lose weight. Hormonal balances change. Fat drops, muscle is gained. Eat sugar too long and your hormones change as fat gains. Meat, fat veggies.
ReplyDeleteTo be specific, as of 2014, probably the same as before, the Carb Nite example meals come out to about 60% fat 40% protein, minus a touch of carb. For people over 150 pounds they average 2000-2100 calories, which can be a severe deficit for higher weight people, especially if people do chronic, metabolic damaging, cortisol raising cardio. Hormonally, it "should" spare 90% of lean mass.
ReplyDelete