It’s been a stressful week…

Like I mentioned in my last post my girlfriends dad passed away this Saturday past and the whole thing has really been tough…

I’m normally pretty good with stuff like this and handle it as well as anyone can be expected to, but for some reason this one hit me hard and I found it very emotionally draining.

Again no doubt the whole stress of the bodybuilding competition this coming Saturday and being so depleted is taking its toll. But we were also quite close with her dad and he died much too young (only 61 years old).

Anyway the funeral was this afternoon, and after it was all over I felt a big feeling of relief. He can rest in peace, and we can now start to move on with our lives…

I’m actually going to head to the gym now after I write this and do my last weight training workout before the competition. I’m looking forward to it, both as a form of stress relief, and afterwards I can start my “carb up” for the show so I’m really looking forward to actually eating some carbs after several weeks of nothing but protein and veggies.

One of the readers asked a question in reply to my last post:

“With the body only able to store so much glycogen and most of that stored
in the liver do you feel the carb loading helps ? Whats your take on Fat loading
?”

Well, I pretty much cover the whole idea behind carb loading in my last post, so I won’t go into detail about it here. But the bottom line is that it does work.

You can even try it out for yourself...
Just go 10 days or more without eating any starchy carbs at all (i.e. just eat protein and green veggies) then do a 3 day carb load where you eat 400+ grams of starchy and simple carbs per day and you’ll quickly see how effective the whole process is. After the 3 day carb load your muscles will feel like they are on bust and you’ll be much fuller and stronger in the gym.

Fat loading works as well, it goes good with carb loading. I’ll actually eat slightly fewer carbs on Friday afternoon before a Saturday show and increase my fat intake mainly from red meat and peanut butter. This helps fill out the muscles even more and avoids some of the excess water retention and bloat that high carbs can sometimes cause.

But honestly the whole thing is not an exact science, some people will react differently to how it all works. It just comes down to a lot of trial and error. I’ve personally been competing and experimenting with this for 13 years so I have a pretty good idea of how my body reacts to carb depletion, carb and fat loading, etc.