Should I go on a low-carb diet and do cardio every day?
I want to build muscle too, but a lot of people tell me that a low-carb diet isn’t good for adding muscle mass. Help. A: There have been lots of heated debates about low-carb vs. higher-carb diets. The answer, which Jonathan Lawson and I discuss in our nutrition guide, X-treme Lean, is very simple. You should treat carbs as fuel. You need enough glycogen from carbohydrates to replenish what you burn from your muscles—to keep them full and able to contract intensely during your workouts. On top of that you need a slight excess to power bodily functions, like optimal brain activity. How much is that? The body stores about 400 grams of glycogen in the muscles and liver. If you train two or three bodyparts hard at a workout and deplete all the glycogen from them, that adds up to maybe 100 grams. You need another 30 to 50 grams for good measure—and good brain health. That’s a total of 130 to 150 grams a day you need to replenish. What if you take in more than the amount your brain and muscl
