New here/advice for hitting my carb macro

Yeah I was kinda confused by that as well. Apparently if you don't have enough carbs in your diet, you can burn muscle in addition to fat or something along those lines. I'm pretty new to the whole nutrition side of this. I'm only about 18% body fat right now, and I'm trying to do a pretty lean bulk, probably upping my daily calories every few months depending on how I'm progressing.

There are foods I am sure that could help (eat sugary candy), but honestly, I don't see why you would need to up your carbs. Protein and Fat are the most important macros.

:huh: :huh: :huh: :noway: :noway: :noway:

Really, serious on that??

Hey Alan,
Read your AARR that came out for May.

Question on the High Protein write up….
In it you noted how the increased protein intake didn’t increase BF all that much…due to Thermic Effect.

I am wondering, if someone were looking to bulk and put on mass, while minimizing BF increase.
Would this be a viable option??
Or are carbs still the better option when trying to increase muscle mass…along with a calories surplus?

Thanks
Seth

Carbs will be the best thing to raise - assuming protein was already high (which it should be).

Similar stats to mine....
Feel free to look over my diary if you like.

But my go to's
White rice
potato
sweet potato
skim milk
gummie bears
carb powder
cinnamon toast crunch cereal

for a few things..

Right on, yeah I'll take a look at your diary for sure. Would it be better in the long run to get the majority of my carbs from food, or would the powder suffice?

Here is one thing to consider. You've been placed in an impossible situation if you want to maintain your macro ratios. As you increase carbs, that macro % goes up, but the others must show a net decrease to keep the ratio at 100%. Obviously you do not want to decrease protein on lift days and fat is not an issue. Forget the macros on lift days. Protein on the other hand from natural sources has bulk. One solution perhaps would be to get your protein strictly from the protein mix I'm assuming you use on lift days. Less bulk, less full.

If you're hitting your targets for calories, protein, and fat, one of those is going to break if you add more carbs. You're either going to have to cut back on protein or fat (which will leave you with more room for carbs), or raise your calories (which doesn't solve the too full problem, admittedly), or both.

I find that calories drink easier than they eat, so my first suggestion would be a watery juice like apple or orange or grape (as opposed to one of the blends with banana or added protein or fiber).

Yeah my macros might not be perfect on lift days, though I do cut the carbs back to 200g on rest days so I could eat more protein and fats on those days.

What I've been recommended is:

Lift Days:
2800 Calories
Protein 175g
Carbs 350g
Fats 80g

Rest Days:
2800 Calories (a bit less is fine)
Protein 175g
Carbs 200g
Fats 80g

Nothing wrong with upping his carbs if he's getting sufficient protein and fat, but you're overexaggerating a bit when it comes to depletion. He's not going to get depleted when just getting back into a lifting program with 200g of carbs on rest days and 300g on lifting days. If you look at what's required for true depletion on a carb cyling diet, it's way more drastic than alternating between 200g and 300g of carbs - we're talking ketogenic levels of low carb throughout the week and then a single weekly or even bi-weekly refeed day. And even that is not going to give you true depletion without sufficiently intense training. He's not even close to depletion with 200-300g of carbs every day of the week.

And honestly, if he prefers to get by on 200g of carbs, any difference in terms of health/results between creating his surplus from 100g of extra carbs vs. a combination of fat and protein is going to be trivial at best.