Carbohydrates can be a bodybuilder’s best friend and therefore should be treated as such. However a lot of bodybuilders are making the huge mistake of cutting their carbohydrate intake far too low. Many also don’t understand what carbohydrates actually do for us and why you need certain ones during certain parts of the day. Read on and become educated as to why carbohydrates are absolutely essential for bodybuilders and which ones you need the most of.

            First of all let’s categorize carbohydrates into two groups to keep it simple. We have low and high glycemic index carbohydrates, which are both of use to bodybuilders. High glycemic sources come from the likes of white bread, white rice and certain sugary foods such as jam. On the flip side low gylcemic carbohydrates are best sourced from oats, brown rice, brown pasta and sweet potato. What is the difference? In short, high glycemic carbohydrates are fast digesting. This is why they can cause fat gain because if your body replenishes your muscle glycogen levels and there is still some left it is easiest for your body to convert and store it as fat. Yes you guessed, low glycemic are the opposite where they digest very slowly which allows your body much more time to make use of the nutritional content, thus limiting body fat gain throughout the day. Low glycemic carbohydrates also give you long lasting energy levels as where high glycemic carbohydrates only last for a short period.

            Having discovered how low and high glycemic carbohydrates behave it should be relatively easy to delegate which ones you need when. As a rule of thumb the bulk of your carbohydrate content needs to come from low glycemic sources throughout the day, from breakfast until bed time. However there are two windows of opportunity where your body actually needs high glycemic carbohydrates. The first is as soon as you wake up and the second being directly after a workout. This is because in both instanced your in a catabolic stage where your muscles are depleted of glycogen and your body needs energy quick! As body fat is too difficult to breakdown your body will start eating away at your very hard earned muscle mass instead! So by plowing in a good dose of fast digesting sugary carbohydrates during these two periods of the day you’re able to take your body from a catabolic state into a much desired anabolic state. In these two instances your body’s need for carbohydrates with a fast conversion rate to glucose means that all of it will be used therefore you won’t gain any body fat. Furthermore, high glycemic carbohydrates spike your insulin levels whenever you take them. Most of the time this is bad as it causes more body fat gain as well as decreases the anabolic activity of insulin which is in itself very anabolic. However these periods of the day it is great to spike your insulin levels and increase the sensitivity of them. The reason as to why you need low glycemic carbohydrates for the rest of the day is that they burn slowly as stated above, which means your energy levels remain high and you don’t add any unwanted body fat to your frame. Furthermore, low glycemic carbohydrates keep your muscles looking really full and your metabolism motoring which obviously helps shift body fat. To add to this, despite what many believe, our body uses low glycemic carbohydrates as its key energy source opposed to high glycemic carbohydrates during anaerobic exercise such as weightlifting. With all of this said it must now be pretty obvious as to why you want low glycemic carbohydrates throughout the day and evening. You should now also be able to understand why you need two hits of high glycemic carbohydrates first thing in the morning and straight after training.

            There is the simplified version of why carbohydrates are so important to any bodybuilder. From this article you can see exactly what carbohydrates do what and when. In short, you know understand that carbohydrates along with protein are the bodybuilders ‘bread and butter.’

‘Knowledge is power ‘ Team KagedMuscle