anecdotal carb,paleo discussion

[wbsgn12]

i wanted to see if anyone had any thoughts or experiences similar to the following for me...

i more or less try to eat paleo. i drink a lot of beer on the weekends though, but have even cut out all dairy, so i would say that I'm a full 85%. I workout M/W/F, and usually refuel glycogen with sweet potatoes for carbs post workout.

On Tuesday and Thursday I eat big salads and stir fry, but no starch...Anyhow, this past Wednesday I decided not to eat any potatoes after working out. i had a chicken/garlic/olive oil/onion/pepper stir fry post workout. Come this Friday I feel great going to the gym, minus particularly sore hamstrings. I came nowhere near the squat output I had achieved on Monday, just "didn't have it."

Obviously, I immediately presumed that skipping my carb refeed on Wednesday was what did me in. Anyone else think this is plausible? I was surprised that skipping 100g of carbs (ONE TIME) could do that. I wouldn't have thought the human body is that sensitive...but at the end of the day who knows. I just wanted to see if anyone else had skipped carbs and noticed repercussions in such a short period of time?

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

The odds of 100g of carbs being the only factor precipitating a failure of squats is pretty low. However, since you don't eat much starch anyway and perhaps are not really efficient at making new glucose and glycogen since you carb up rather frequently, it is plausible that this caused lower muscle glycogen levels and decreased available substrate for Friday's training session. More likely, the miss was multifactorial (technique, mental, sleep, etc.) but the absence of carbs certainly didn't help.

[wes]

My experience with a similar diet (minus the beer) is that if I miss carbs in the meal before/after lifting its noticeable but not a big deal, if I have a tough day at work its noticeable but not a big deal, but if I miss carbs and have a tough day at work its going to be a mess.