The Best time to Eat Carbs

Have you ever heard of the phrase,

“If you want to lose weight you can’t eat carbs after 3pm”?

This is one of the most common myths out there told only to make people limit their calorie intake, the truth is that there is no correct time to eat carbohydrate this varies from person to person. Not eating carbs after 3 is only going to lower your calorie intake so that you are in a deficit each day. I personally think this is bad because it can encourage over eating before these hours. When you eat carbohydrate your liver converts any excess blood glucose into glycogen via the Cori cycle and glycogenesis. This can then will be stored for 18 hours and released when needed via glycogenolysis. Also excess glucose can be transformed to fatty acids and stored as fat. The glycogen will then be used before any fat reserves are touched.

When is the Best time to Eat Carbs?

Pre and Post workout is an excellent time to take in carbohydrates. I often advise eating low GI carbs but before working out it doesn’t hurt to get a few high GI carbs that quickly digest for an energy boost in the gym. Also post workout high GI carbs are important in the recovery process and should be consumed in conjunction with your whey protein shake. This will spike insulin levels and promote anabolism and muscle growth again.

The choice really is up to you on the other times, you can either space carbs out evenly through the day, or have them in the morning or in the evening. As long as you reach and don’t go over your daily carb intake it’s not a massive issue the time you take them.

Is before bed the worst time to eat carbs?

Arguably before going to sleep is the worst time to eat carbs because, sleep is not exactly a demanding exercise. So if you happen to eat all your carbs before bed then this should be stopped and changed to another time.

Best time to eat carbs – Daily Carb allowance

Instead of worrying when you eat your carbs it’s far more important to keep track of your daily carbohydrate intake so that you don’t go over your allowance. How do you work out this allowance? Well this will depend on a number of things, the first being your body type and secondly it depends on whether you are bulking or cutting.

If you have not worked this out yet then a good place to start is by using the information over on the hardgainer diet. This will give you a rough idea of how many carbs you need, you then simply need to measure how much you consume in each meal. I can’t stress this enough being pedantic will give you far better gains.

For more information and to give yourself more understand of nutrition and the best time to eat carbs check out some of the other posts on my nutrition section.