Let's talk a little about carb sensitivity and basics of what to do with your diet to lower your carbs and lose fat while still maintaining your muscle.
Cut Out Junk
Before you can ever know if you are truly carb sensitive you need to get real with your diet. A few days of "eating good" doesn't tell the story if you have carb sensitivity (CS). Often people confuse CS with junk sensitivity. They are sucking down sugar filled lattes, candy bars, 100 Calorie Snack Packs, Skinny Cows, Lowfat Snackwells, and anything else filled with sugar you can shake a stick at. To truly decide if you are carb sensitive, layoff the processed foods before you do anything else. Get to a clean diet of fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and lean dairy. Give it a good month to settle in before you change anything else in your diet.
Book to read "The Eat Clean Diet" by Tosca Reno. Great primer on how to incorporate a clean diet into your lifestyle.
Recognize the Symptoms
Next you need to evaluate if clean foods high in carbs effect you. Typically a person will eat a meal of a whole grain bread sandwich and then shortly after feel tired, bloated, and puffy. You may even experience unusual gassiness. Even simple sugar meals like fruits and yogurt make you feel lethargic and uneasy. If clean carbs are making you feel this way you are probably carb sensitive and need to work on reducing them in your diet and/or properly timing them.
Another common symptom in women is difficulty losing weight. Women, as you age you naturally become carb sensitive to a degree. You might rock and roll on calorie restriction for awhile and then just hit the wall. Simply adjusting your carbs, eating more protein and fat, and timing your carbs can make all the difference in your diet.
I've Cut Out the Junk...What Do I Do Now?
Stick to the healthiest of starchy carbs first. At any meal you will be enjoying carbs (and we all need them for energy and good "BMs"), make sure you pick the healthiest and friendliest ones.
There are other good, starchy carbs out there but if it were me and I was having sensitivity issues I would only eat off this list for awhile until I found that I could add other carby foods. Some things will set you off, others won't but this list tends to be pretty safe eaten at the right times a day.
What About Timing The Carbs?
What works for me and has worked for many people I know and work with is eating the bulk of your carbs in two parts of the day: Breakfast and Three Hours Post Workout.
How I Do It
I need carbs in the morning. My workout is at 10:00 a.m. almost daily. To have a good one that let's me show up the gym focused, ready, pumped up, and working hard I need the energy that complex, simple and starchy type carbs provide me.
AM Workout
7am - 1 cup of cooked oatmeal (1/2 cup dry with water), Splenda, a few berries, 5 egg whites, 1 egg, chopped peppers and green onions tossed into the eggs
11:00 am - Postworkout Recovery shake of Protein Powder and Banana blended
12:30 - 1:00 p.m. - Lunch of 4.5 oz top round steak with baked medium sweet potato or 5 oz. of chicken breast on a bed of letttuce, vinaigrette, a of piece of no added sugar whole grain toast, and big apple.
3:30 p.m. - Protein Only Shake or 2 tbsp of peanut butter
6:00 p.m. - Dinner of 5 oz. chicken breast with 1 cup of green beans, and a 1/2 cup of other veggies like red peppers, asparagus, snap peas, or cauliflower. I also will melt a little 2% cheese on top of the veggies if I have calories for it. Add in 1/2 tbsp of EVOO to the veggies to cook them.
8:00 p.m. - cottage cheese with sugar free jelly (1/2 cup of CC)
11:00 p.m. - Protein Shake
This is about 1700 calories a day. For those needing to eat a little less (like 1500 or 1400 calories a day), simply have 1/2 a sweet potato, drop the cottage cheese snack, and no cheese on your veggies.
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PM Workout
7am - 1 cup of cooked oatmeal (1/2 cup dry with water), Splenda, a few berries, 5 egg whites, 1 egg, chopped peppers and green onions tossed into the eggs
11:00 am - Snack of Protein Shake or 2 tbsp of peanut butter
12:30 - 1:00 p.m. - Lunch of 4.5 oz top round steak with steamed veggies/green beans or 5 oz. of chicken breast on a bed of letttuce, vinaigrette, and side of cottage cheese sweetened with Splenda and Sugar Free Jelly
4:00 p.m. - Protein Shake with a 1/2 banana or Turkey Wrap with veggies (190 calories)
6:30 p.m. - Post workout shake with 1/2 banana
7:30 p.m. - Dinner of 5 oz. chicken breast with baked medium sweet potato, and a cup of other veggies like red peppers, asparagus, snap peas, or cauliflower. I also will melt a little 2% cheese on top of the veggies if I have calories for it. Add in 1/2 tbsp of EVOO to the veggies to cook them.
11:00 p.m. - Protein Shake
What About My Milks?
Calcium is so important but milk is loaded with simple sugar. It's best had in early part of the day. Yogurt is the same way. If you want it, have it before lunch. You will get plenty of calcium in protein shakes (each one you drink has 25% of your daily requirement typically), you can eat cottage cheese like it's going out of style, and every woman needs to take a calcium supplement regardless to fill in the gaps.
When I'm trying to lose fat I don't drink a lot of my dairy. I eat dairy but I'm not a drinker of it. That means I'm eating the cottage cheese as a dessert, drinking my protein shakes, and having some hard cheese.
Should I Always Eat Like This?
I encourage people to eat like this if they are truly carb sensitive and then plan to have one day a week where they let loose and recharge the metabolism. That day they get to have a meal or day, their choice, where they can eat whatever they want. If you live relatively lower carb this is an excellent chance to "carb up" and fool your body. Eat carbs you normally don't and in quantities you typically avoid. Warning: the next two days your scale will go crazy. Just don't weigh. It's your body reacting to the carbs. Give it a few days to normalize and then you will probably see the scale go down shortly after.
That's my lesson on carb sensitivity and planning a fatloss diet that works with a good strength training and cardio program. It's not perfect, I'm not a dietician, but it works for plenty of my clients and might work for you too.
For PNP Subscribers - threads that discuss this topic in more detail:
http://phit-n-phat.com/forums/p/1384/15195.aspx#15195
http://phit-n-phat.com/forums/t/1800.aspx - this thread goes into MUCHO detail as it was the weekly discussion thread with Corinne. There is also a sample Carb Sensitive Menu for those who need to get the right foods and the right timing down with their exercise.
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