MY EXPERIENCE WITH CARB-BACKLOADING FROM A DEPLOYED SOLIDER AND A CERTIFIED PERSONAL TRAINER:
My best friend is a personal trainer. Between him and i we have a fairly serious power lifting/bodybuilding background. No we've never competed officially other than some military based "for fun" power lifting competitions that of course, he won. Regardless, we both had the same goal, we want to be as big as possible while being as strong and lean as possible as well. So obviously like a bunch of 'tards we followed the 6-meal a day protocall for probably a year and a half. needless to say he stayed at a fairly lean 9% but i got fat as fuck. I'm talking like almost 20% body fat. Embarrassing, right? So i started doing cardio, lots of it. We would lift 5 days a week and for half an hour after lifting i was on the eliptical running as hard as i could, or doing some weird variation of HIIT. My weight dropped, but so did my lifts. I reduced my overall body composition, but not in a good way. I was once again 189lbs of skinny fat weakness from a strong but fat 230lbs.
Well while being deployed to Africa for the past year we've buried our noses in nutritional information. During this "learning" process we stumbled across Kiefer's articles and fell in love. I was more hesitant that my bestfriend but he immediately jumped on the carb-backloading and after a few day of him just looking bigger and leaner and seeing his lifts shoot up in the gym. i had to jump in on this. We would skip breakfast and eat two chicken breasts for lunch and some chicken wings with some lettuce, shredded cheese and ranch. I was more prone to eat more lettuce simple for the fiber benefits since cheese stopped me up. We'd lift in the afternoon around 3:30pm. My bestfriend had constructed an awesome combination of powerlifting that after two compound lifts within the 2-4 rep range we'd move on to two different exercises of isolation exercises of about 2 sets of 8 reps. So our training was spot on. after we'd go soak up the carb-backloading with tons of lean protein and loads of ice cream, slices of pecan pie, soda and just other things that you wouldn't normally eat while trying to "lean up."
I saw amazing results for about 2 months. I put my size back on and my strength FINALLY shot back up from the retarded amount of cardio i was doing (which we stopped doing all together). I made new personal records on all my core lifts and my body fat was dropping from 15% (post cardio frenzy) to a lean 10.6%. I was fully convinced that carb-backloading WAS the answer.
It was about the time i was at an all time leaness that my brother and i went home on R&R for two weeks, away from the African desert and back home. We obviously still worked out while we were home on leave, but not as much as we usually would. We drank, eat and enjoyed ourselves. Getting back to Africa 2 weeks later i did my body fat again with a 9 site pinch test that we had been using. I was at 12.6%. I couldn't believe it. Time to tighten down the reigns. So we started to jump back into our routine and of course, carb-backloading. All seemed well until about a month later i did my bodyfat again, same 9 site pinch test done by my bestfriend (certified personal trainer) and sure as shit, i was getting fatter. Damn near 13% now.. what the fuck? My routine had stayed the same, and nutrition wise i was getting in the proper macro's. We'd be taking in roughly 1.3-1.5 grams of protein per pound of LEAN body mass. So for me, now weighing 200 at the time, would take in 220-240 grams depending on the food in the chow hall. Carbs weren't an issue, we'd eat till satisfied.
We'd usually get up and fast for 4-8 hours after waking before we'd eat. Meaning we'd completely skip breakfast and i would also skip lunch. Take some BCAA's pre workout and then eat everything post workout. My logic being that i would be even more insulin INsensative and could eat all my protein and carbs without the fat gain. Obviously i was wrong..
So i felt slightly betrayed, meaning that Kiefer said i COULDN'T get fat following this carb-backloading routine with resistance training. But i did.. what did i do wrong?
As of now, we're doing backloading still, but going completely carbless on off days (twice a week) and monitoring our carb intake post workout. I went from 150g of carbs post workout to what i'm at now at 100g of carbs post workout. so far no strength lost and seeing some fat loss but i haven't calipered yet because it hasn't been a full two weeks on this routine. I want to give it at least 2 weeks before calipering again to see if this is working. But i still would love to be pigging out more at night, but i don't want the fat gain.
Suggestions?
