Carbohydrate Timing

This post is about spreading and timing your carbohydrates on training days versus
non-training days. It was inspired by one of my clients, Nancy.
Carbohydrate timing is mainly geared towards people with a moderate to high level
of familiarity of carbohydrates, are regularly engaged in resistance training, and are
vigilant about measuring progress and staying consistent on their routines. Here is
the list of what well cover:

Who carbohydrate timing is for

Brief intro to carbs: what they are, what theyre used for
How fit should you be to benefit from carb timing
Carbohydrate timing: what it is and how to do it
Progress checking: how to ensure its working

Before we dive in, lets get a few housekeeping things out of the way.

Carbs is short for carbohydrates

Carb timing can be used in conjunction with carb cycling (a protocol where
you adjust the amount of carbs you eat per day)
Carb timing may not be for everyone

Who is this information for?

Once you get to a certain fitness level, carbohydrate timing may help you achieve
the next level of improvement. Carb timing is the strategic placement of carb food
sources around training to see better performance and physique development.
How do you determine if youre ready for this strategy?
1. You should already be comfortable with a consistent nutrition protocol. This is
tops. If you have an issue eating on a consistent and predictable basis, then
you will have a very difficult and frustrating time with carb timing.
2. You should know how many carbs youre eating. This is for people who are
beyond the learning stages of dieting and are exploring how much they
should be eating rather than what. Again, if youre having issues just being
consistent with putting together a healthy meal, this isnt for you.
3. You should be at a requisite body fat level. For females, 16-25% is a good
range. Nancy is about 20%. Keep in mind, women will start to experience
menstrual cycle issues (lost or delayed periods) at around 12%. Jihees (my
wife) lowest number was 15%, where she had a visible six-pack and striated
quads.
4. Engage in 2-4 days of heavy resistance training. When I say heavy, I mean
high intensity (heavy weights), high volume (high amounts of
repetitions/sets), or both (high intensity/high volume).
5. Engage in high-intensity interval training (HIIT) or high-intensity conditioning
(HIC). These types of routines get your heart rate into near maximal ranges
(90% and up) for short periods of time. If you dont know your heart rate
during exercise, consider either getting a heart rate monitor or learning how
to regularly take your pulse right after an exercise.
Carbohydrate Timing
6. Effort levels warrant extra carbohydrates. Not all training is created equal. If
youre in pre-hab or re-hab mode where youre doing lots of ground
exercises bird dogs, planks, mobility drills you dont require that many
carbs. If you engage in a healthy dose of squats, sprints, deadlifts, presses,
rows, chin-ups, farmer carries, or high level athletics, then carbohydrates are
going to be your friend.

What are carbs and how do they affect you?

Lets preface this with: carbs are controversial nowadays. You have hundreds of
books decrying carbs and claiming low-carb diets are the way to go for optimal
health. That debate is not the point of this article. Nor am I going to dive into
nutrition science or biochemistry.
If youre ready to move on, here is a short crash course on what carbs are. If you
know what they are and how they influence your body, skip this.
Carbs are one of the four main macronutrients found
in the food system. They supply 4 calories per
gram. If a food contains 5 grams of carbs, is gets 20
calories from carbs (5 * 4 = 20).
The term carb encompasses several other nutritional
terms:

Fiber (insoluble and soluble fiber)

Non-starchy carbohydrate (carbs that
have very low carb content broccoli,
asparagus, spinach, etc.)
- Starchy carbohydrate (carbs that have high
carb content, but low sugar content
potatoes, rice, pasta, oats, quinoa, legumes)
Fruits (apples, pears, banana, kiwi, etc.)
Fruits contain a type of sugar called
fructose, a so-called naturally-occurring
sugar. Most fruits derive almost all of their
carbohydrates from sugar. Fruits like
berries have lower sugar and higher fiber
content.
When reading a nutrition label, youll see two of
these terms under Total Carbohydrate: fiber and
sugar. Look at the left:

See how theres 37g of Total Carbohydrate?

4g is from fiber and only 1g is from sugars. That means this food has a high starch
content. I dont know what this this; just pulled it from Google.
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Conversely, this food has 11g of Total Carbohydrate

and all 11g is from sugars. According to the ingredients
list, this is low-fat milk.

Carbohydrates are technically not required for

survival. However, carbohydrates are required for
optimal performance (we all want to look, move, and
feel great, right?)
They are the preferred energy source for working
muscles, the brain, the immune system, skin and hair,
and some carbs contain vitamins, minerals, and other
beneficial compounds not found in other foods (fruits
and vegetables).

While there are studies showing you can engage in high

level athletics while on a low-carb or ketogenic diet, a
vast majority shows eating carbohydrates is more beneficial.

The fate of all dietary (from food) carbohydrates is sugar. Whatever carb source
you eat potato, candy, rice all get turned into sugar. The use of those sugars is
determined by a variety of factors, but for most, carbohydrates either get used as
energy or stored for later use (the storage form of carbohydrate is called glycogen,
and the two main storage sites are the liver and muscles). If youre active, your
body will be efficient at using carbs for energy. If youre sedentary, your body will
not be as efficient and will prefer to store for later use.
Glycogen is important for a couple of reasons. Glycogen stored in the liver is
responsible for keeping blood sugar levels stable. Your liver will release a slow,
steady drip of sugar into your bloodstream so organs, like your brain, can function
optimally. Glycogen stored in the muscle tissue is less about organ function and
more about performance enhancement and recovery. Research shows having
glycogen in muscle tissue hastens recovery, makes them look fuller and denser
(since glycogen attracts water), and influences function by improving contraction
(better contractions mean more strength and tension).
Carbohydrate manipulation will have a big impact on physique development. One
primary way fitness buffs drop their bodyweight and body fat levels lower is to
decrease carbs. This strategy certainly works, but it must be approached in an
intelligent way. Remember, carbs are the preferred source of energy for high
intensity activity, so we want to find a strategy that not only allows you to drop fat,
but also maintain (or even gain a little bit of) strength and athletic performance.
Carbohydrates also makes a diet sustainable through two ways: 1) theyre
everywhere. You cant escape carbs. Chips. Rice. Pasta. Donuts. Their mere
Carbohydrate Timing
presence makes avoiding them nearly impossible if you live in civilization. 2) They
taste good when prepared well. Raw potatoes dont taste good, but roasted
potatoes do.
Knowing carbohydrates are required for optimal performance and how they affect
your body are, hopefully, enough reasons to convince you to keep carbohydrates in
your diet and start using them to your advantage.

How fit should you be?

How your body metabolizes carbohydrates can be determined by a variety of
factors gender, age, nationality, body weight, and activity levels. With all things
being equal, activity levels and bodyweight are the two huge variable factors, so
we will address those here.
Just to give you an idea of what type of fitness and effort levels would benefit from a
higher carbohydrate intake and their strategic timing:
Nancy is a strong chica (shes Puerto Rican). At ~150 pounds, she can back squat
225 pounds for reps, trap bar deadlift 330 pounds for reps, bench press 135 for
reps, single arm dumbbell row 100 pounds for reps, and do 30 push-ups in a row.
Her waist is damn close to a 28 yet she wears 6 pants (she has a lot of junk in
her trunk and a small waist).

We worked out her daily carbohydrate requirement to be around 200-250 grams on

training days and 100-150 on non-training days. With this quota, her primary goals
are to lose fat (which shes doing) and maintain strength levels. And to our delight,
her strength levels are slowly increasing despite the fat loss.

Do you need to be this strong and fit? No, but this is to give you an idea that
strength and fitness levels go hand-in-hand with carbohydrate requirement for
optimal performance.
My other clients who are not as strong or fit as Nancy have lower carbohydrate
requirements.

Carbohydrate Timing
Timing your carbs is simple in essence, a bit difficult in initial practice, and easier as
you practice it.
The core tenets of timing are:

You want most of your daily carbs around training the pre- and post-
training session meals
Starchy carbs are best for carb timing around training
Carbohydrate Timing
The post-training meal should have the highest amount of carbs out of
any meal
The pre-training meal should have the 2 nd highest amount of carbs out of
any meal
Takes into account your training time
Assumes your training sessions are taking place on a consistent schedule

The rationale of timing is that youre supplying your body with performance-
enhancing carbohydrates during the most critical performance-enhancing times:
before and after training.
By shoving carbs down your gullet before training, your body has easy access to
sugar its already circulating in your system rather than being stored as glycogen,
which requires a bit more work for the body to extract. By shoving carbs down your
gullet after training, your body can replenish glycogen. As a reminder, glycogen
levels correspond positively with performance the higher the glycogen levels, the
better the performance, generally.

The nitty-gritty how-to

Now lets get into how to put this into practice:
1. You should know how many carbs youre suggested to eat per day.
2. Determine how many meals youre eating per day. Below has 4 and 5 meals
per day schedules.
3. Carb timing is more important for days you train.
4. Pre-training carbohydrate intake should be 20-30% of your total
carbohydrate intake.
5. Post-training carbohydrate intake should be 40-50% of your total
carbohydrate intake.
6. Proteins should still be included in both meals.

Lets take Nancy as an example and figure shes eating 200-250 grams of
carbs on her training days.
The first table will be evening training. The second table will be morning
training.

4 Time Amount 5 Time Amount

meals/day meals/day
Meal 1 35 Meal 1 25
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Meal 2 35 Meal 2 25
Meal 3 75 Meal 3 25
(pre)
Meal 4 100 Meal 4 75
(post) (pre)
Meal 5 100
(post)

4 Time Amount 5 Time Amount

meals/day meals/day
Meal 1 75 Meal 1 75
(pre) (pre)
Meal 2 100 Meal 2 100
(post) (post)
Meal 3 35 Meal 3 25
Meal 4 35 Meal 4 25
Meal 5 25

What if you train in the morning and cant eat a lot of carbs in your pre-
training meal?
For a morning schedule like the above to work, you have to wake up 3 hours before
training so the food leaves the stomach and begins the process of digestion. But
lets say you want to train at 7am and dont want to wake up at 4. Pretty
reasonable. You dont want your first meal to be on the gym floor.
You can simply have a small meal consisting of protein and carbs, like turkey slices
and a fruit or Greek yogurt and a fruit. The carbohydrates will be made up at the
other meals. You dont want to stack your post-training meal with more
carbohydrates because your body can only handle so much at once.
What if you dont want to eat anything before training?
While not the best case, not eating before training is still possible. Most of the time,
proteins eggs, chicken, etc. are the first things to get nixed because they require
more time to prepare and digest. If possible, try to keep the fruit in there. If you
cant stand food sources of protein:

Protein powders (whey, beef, rice, egg white, pea proteins)

Branched-chain amino acids (BCAA powders that use the three main
amino acids responsible for muscle growth and slowing down muscle
breakdown during training)
Eat this about 30 minutes before hitting the gym.

4 Time Amount 5 Time Amount

meals/day meals/day
Meal 1 35 Meal 1 35
(pre) (pre)
Carbohydrate Timing
Meal 2 100 Meal 2 100
(post) (post)
Meal 3 50 Meal 3 50
Meal 4 50 Meal 4 35
Meal 5 35

Heres what a typical earning morning training session with low carbohydrates could
look like.
What types of carbs are best for carb timing?
Pre-training: fruits or starches
Post-training: starches

Fruits include: Starches include:

One fruit, or a cup of fruit, has about 30 1 cup, cooked, has about 40-50 grams
grams of carbohydrates of carbohydrates
Apples Oats
Bananas Rice
Pears Tubers potatoes, taro, sweet potatoes
Orange Quinoa
Kiwi Pasta
Mango Beans (careful here as the fiber will
Papaya slow digestion)
Pineapple Bread 1 slice has 15-20g, depending
Berries on brand
Watermelon

My clients usually ask me: whats a good meal to eat after a training session?
Proteins, veggies, starches. Chipotle bowls and burritos fit the bill here chicken,
lettuce, rice, peppers, tomatoes, corn, a little guac. Thats a meal done right. And
the good thing about Chipotle is that they have the amount of each macronutrient
that goes into their dishes on their website.
If you want to put together your own meal, take a look at the table and see which
foods fit your diet and lifestyle the best.
Why the different types of carbs?
Any dietary carb you eat has the same fate at the end of digestion. They all get
broken down into simple sugars: monosaccharides (meaning one sugar molecule).
The monosaccharides are: glucose, fructose, galactose. All dietary carbs are made
up of a combination of these simple sugars. Im going to get real simple here
because the types of carbs, how each are metabolized, and how human
processing affects their rates of absorption can make up another post.
Table sugar is half glucose, half fructose.
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Fruits are mostly fructose.
Starches are mostly glucose.
All things being equal, glucose gets metabolized the quickest, fructose the slowest.
Its why table sugar poses a problem for most people, because half of the sugars
get metabolized very quickly.
Fructose is usually taken to the liver first to be metabolized. And most of the time,
rather than sending the sugars out again, the liver just holds onto them as
glycogen. Saving sugars for a rainy day, body is smart like that.
Glucose, while it has the potential to get absorbed the quickest, also gets
preferentially used by working muscles. That means after you train, your muscles
want glucose, and want it quick. Enter starches, feed muscle.
While fruits and table sugar have some glucose in them, youd have to eat an
abnormally high amount of fruits to satisfy glucose requirements. And you dont
need me to tell you why you shouldnt consistently eat table sugar as a primary
source of carbs.
Carbohydrate Timing
Progress checking
Like with any fitness protocol, the ultimate litmus test is your experience. Try it out
for 30 days. Be diligent and vigilant. The only way to figure out if a certain method
works for you is to try it with your best effort.
Some of you may see results within a week, others may not see results within 30
days. If at 30 days you keep seeing results, keep doing it. Dont fix whats not
broken. However, if youre one of those souls who dont see results at 30 days, you
have two options:
1. If you dont feel like a pile of raccoon dung, keep doing it and see if
something clicks. Its very possible to feel better on carbohydrate timing
than seeing actual physical changes (especially if this is your goal).
2. If you feel worse on carbohydrate timing, stop. Remember to do this after 30
days. But what if you feel worse before 30 days?
a. You may not have set it up correctly. Revisit your numbers and track
more diligently, if youre not already.
b. Your body may not be ready for carb timing.
Use these tools to track your progress:

Pictures. Take pictures every 2-4 weeks.

Scale. If the number of the scale means something to you, track it. Twice a
week works well.
Body composition. If you have a way to measure body fat, do it. Calipers,
bioelectrical impedance. Do this every 2-4 weeks.
Performance. We want your strength to maintain or improve during this
time. You should be able to tell on a weekly basis.
Health. Sometimes, all you may need to do to turn your health around is
keep tabs on your carbohydrate intake at meals.
Energy. Because youre getting into a routine and conditioning the body to
respond to certain levels of carbohydrates at certain meals, you may have
more energy.

Wrapping up
Carb timing is not a miracle protocol. But it can improve your level of results. By
how much, no one really knows. Ive used it with great success with many of my
clients and even for my wife and myself. For it to truly work its juice, you have to be
consistent, put the work in, and give it time.
I hope this information helped you decipher what carbohydrate timing is. Try it out
for at least 30 days and see if it makes an impact on your health, performance, and
physique. Shoot me any questions, if you have any.