There has been increasing interest and debate on the War on Carbs lately. As a participant, I feel the need to chime in. Before I start however, I need to say that I am certainly no nutrition expert, nor am I some ripped bodybuilder-obviously. I am merely a layman who has taken off 75 pounds and kept it off. You will not find any deep research, annotations, or references here. These are just my experiences with the carb conflict.

First, I must give credit where credit is due. I originally waged this war after seeing Mark Bell's progress when he went ultra low carb. I could definitely relate to another powerlifter's plight in the battle of the bulge. It also helped that Mark at one point was using John Kiefer's Carb Nite Solution, as I had worked with Kiefer in the past. So I had trust in the process.

When I first started going ultra low carb, the initial days were a little brutal. I even remember getting light headed a few times during training to the point where I'd have to sit down. Within a couple of days though, I became pretty adapted. Now, my training definitley suffered, but that was not the immediate goal, getting less fat was. I have found that it is very difficult to serve two masters at one time. I was willing to take the hit where training was concerned, as I have learned strength does come back pretty quickly.

Regarding every day life, I was actually feeling better without carbs. I was much less sluggish. This is where I also leaned that I don't much care to eat during the day. I got by just fine with protein coffees made with heavy cream and a handful of peanuts. Once I got over that initial hunger pang in the morning, it completely subsided. A nice side benefit if you ask me.

The greatest perk was how the weight just flew off when I started. Of course a lot of this weight was just water as a result of depleting glycogen, but that initial quick loss is very inspiring. That doesn't really happen if you just start cutting back on calories.

OK, back to training. Once my body adapted, lifting suffered less. However, that was a result of of making certain accommodations. I removed a bunch of fluff and I'm not talking about my gut here. After a bit, I found I had about one really good hour of training in me. That also meant that I had to tone down my warm up. As an aside, most of us are warming up way too much nowadays. So where I could (based on a number of nagging injuries) I stuck with larger movements whenever possible to get the most bang for my buck. From there I'd give whatever my body had for assistance. When I started to drag, I just wrapped things up there.

Just a quick mention on conditioning, without carbs I knew it would be limited. Personally, I am not a fan of trying to condition weight off. I find it's harder than restricting calories and can zap strength. So while going low carb I just focused on keeping my target heart range round 70% so I wouldn't go into a catabolic state. That was just enough to help foster recovery and get some blood pumping to my heart.

This is a long way to go to tell you, I survived. I waged a war against carbs and won. Guess what happened... I am less fat than when I started, and I'm still very strong.

Now, what did I learn from this experience? Well, ketones are not some magic chemical that just gobble up fat regardless of calories. For a while just going ultra low carb was enough to drop weight, but that didn’t last too long. Once the progress halted, I realized it was a numbers game. I had to start tracking my calories to make progress. Unfortunately, this was also the case with those delightful re-feeds all of us dieters love so much. That magical time when I’d stuff my face under the guise of replenishing glycogen and balancing out hormones, were over. Sure, I enjoyed myself a little, but it was no free for all. Those calories all count.

So why would I want to go carbless when it creates less than optimal training conditions, and I still had to painstakingly track calories? I’ll tell you, limiting food choices really helped me. Considering a good chunk of my nutrition consisted of awesomely processed and fast foods while eating myself up to the superheavyweight class, temptation was removed by taking them completely off the table.

In turn, I found a lot of other foods I enjoyed that I could still eat. I lost a bunch of weight a while back and it consisted of the usual diet foods; boneless-skinless chicken breasts, oatmeal, egg whites, etc. Sorry, for me, those choices suck. I hit my weight loss goal and couldn’t stand eating that way anymore. On a keto based diet I was encouraged to eat things like steaks, whole eggs, bacon, and rotisserie chicken. I had nearly forgotten how good crispy chicken skin tastes. And of course, bacon, nothing more needs to be said. I was very sated by these foods which made staying on the plan much easier.

Fast forward to present day. My nutrition program has morphed into a more flexible style of eating. However, I took with me a lot from my low carb lessons. Most importantly, I learned that carbs make me crave more carbs. When eating them in quantity I become a huge bottomless pit. When I added them back to my diet, I would find I’d try to keep lowering and lowering my protein intake to fit in more carbs in. This became a vicious cycle and would throw me off the rails. Before I knew it I’d be over my calorie allotment for the day. That never happened when I was following a ketogenic diet. I mean, I can only eat so much bacon in one sitting. Believe me, I’ve tried.

In my experience, I have learned carbs are just not as necessary for me while I’m trying to be less fat. It’s not like I need some huge glycogen store to go run a marathon. If I were to dissect my strength training, I’m probably only performing between 20-25 work sets during a session and more than half of those are assistance exercises. Lyle McDonald said on Body Recomposition that carb requirements for weight training are not that high. Actually, he figured you only need 5 grams per 2 work sets to replenish glycogen. That comes out to only be 62.5 grams for 25 sets. So on a training day I usually come in around 200 grams of carbohydrates if not a little lower and that's been more than enough. On non-training days I’m closer to 100 grams. In a nutshell, I’m properly fueling my training, I feel great during the day, and more importantly, I’m taking off the chub.

Is there a war on carbs? I don't know. They probably don’t need to be killed off with extreme prejudice. Maybe they just need to be beaten back a little. The only way to truly know, is to experiment for yourself.