I have been doing atkins for a little over a month now, and have lost 19 pounds, which is great (have about 28 to go), but I have encountered a problem: I have been an avid weightlifter for several yrs and have noticed that I am begining to lose alot of my strength. For example, when I began the diet, I was bench pressing 275 for 3 to 4 reps and could do 225 for 12 or 13. This past week my bench press was down to 2 sets of 225 for 8 and a set of 205 for 10. I was expecting a small dropoff, but I am growing concerned. Should I be eating more carbs right before a workout? I am eating about 25 to 35 grams of carbs a day right now, mostly of which consists of salads and nuts. Is it because of the glycogen stores in the muscles is depleted? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

I'm not certain as to what your body needs for this kind of concentrated effort - although I know some great people on this site with much wisdom.

Feel free to look up Natrushka or Digwig in the journal section - they are doing Body For Life and eat to lift often.

All the best.

Hey Homer,

I think you are going too low on the carbs. With all the weight you are lifting, you should think of some other way.

What I do is do a modified version of a low carb diet. Nat knows about this diet. It is called the T-Dawg Diet.

You are supposed to eat about 60grms of carbs on nontraining days, and about 100 when training. You will consume a high glycemic index post workout drink to add up ur total carb intake. This will not hinder your fat loss progress, in fact it will boost your power and nurture your fast-twitch muscle fibers giving you a greater fat burning potential.

Give it a shot, Nat has talked about this diet previously, but I will give you the link for the modified version 2.00 of the diet. (Diets get smarter with time )


http://t-nation.com/nation_articles/243tdawg.jsp

Good Luck

Loony

Hello Homer

You should maybe consider CKD by Dan Duchaine, which you run 5 days on keto, low carbs and 2 days of carbs up, so it help retaiin your muscles but also it bring glucogen and energy to the muscles

want happen (generally in the first week)
is that on the Monday to wedneday, you will be as strong as usual, But later on when you are on ckd for a while your strenght is back to normal.

Thanks alot for the advice. Yeah, I will give it a try. I kinda figured that the carbs were too low, so I started adding a few more in and it is helping (berries and no sugar added yogurt, nuts) What I actually landed up doing was cut my reps back to 3 to 7 again and bumped the weights up, cut the cardio down, and I found my strength came back pretty quick, and not only that, I actually lost 3 1/2 lbs the first week with this approach, after averaging 1 to 1 1/2 lbs per week before.

Having been on Atkin's when I started BFL I can attest to upping the carbs prior to lifting weight!

You can still maintain the Atkin's diet while lifting but you do need to make a few adjustments. One of which is eat 45 mins before a workout, I had steel-cut oatmeal. On lift days my carb intake was 80 to 100, and on non lift days it was around 30. Good after workout snack is an apple with natural peanut butter. It helps with replenishing the muscle glucose and helps the muscles recover faster.

Once you start building some lean muscle mass you will find that your metabolism actually starts working again and you can handle a higher carb limit.

Best of luck

I been on this Atkins Diet for 3.5 weeks and also lost alot of strength.

Since im off induction. I am now putting like 50-80G Carbs on Running and weight lifting days.

While days i don't worktout to be at 30G carbs...

So far so good
...