Low carb and Gymnasts….
According to a recent NBC Sports article, Olympic gymnasts have jumped on the low-carb bandwagon.
And they do it because they need plenty of quick energy for the intense activities they perform.
With rock-hard biceps and abs that would make a bodybuilder jealous, gymnasts don’t need to lose weight. Yet count them in as devotees of the increasingly popular low-carbohydrate diet.
A 2000 U.S. Olympian trying to make it back to the Games this year, McCain (a gymnast) started doing the high-protein, low-carb thing well before it became the biggest diet fad in the country. "I used to think it was all about carbs, carbs, carbs to get the energy," he said. "But over time, I realized I performed better when I kept that stuff in check."
That’s because gymnastics, unlike swimming or long-distance running, is considered an "anaerobic" sport, one in which short, intense bursts of power are much more important than endurance. "Over the span of a three-hour workout, we’re probably only up on the equipment for 15 minutes," McCain said. The longest routine for a man or woman is the floor exercise, which lasts between 60 and 90 seconds. Thus, having lots of complex sugars stored up — the kind produced by carbohydrates — does not help a gymnast that much. Those energy spurts are best provided by a diet high in protein. Most gymnasts try to get between 60 percent and 70 percent of their calories from proteins (like meats and cheeses) and the rest, 15-20% from carbs (like whole-grain pasta, fruits, vegetables) and fats 15-20% (like oils from peanuts and or nut butters).
And, as has been proven by all the Atkins, South Beach and Zone diets so popular these days, all these high-protein regimens help gymnasts keep their weight down in general and fat weight off.
Look at all gymnasts, they are always lean and muscular.
Something to think about when reaching for those all those carbs to eat that you just may not even need that meal, that day or even that week. That brings me to another topic… carb cycling. I’ll get to that later 
Shannan
August 28, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Great blog! Just goes to show how important diet is in our quest to be fit. By the way, what is carb cycling? I’ve heard a lot about it.
August 29, 2008 at 8:57 am
Just to give a basic explaination…. this is what carb cycling is: (you can do many different ways of cycling your carbs, low and high days or, 3 days low carb and 1 day high carb, etc…. the options are endless) that’s the great thing about it.
Carb cycling is an eating method in which you alter the amount of carb calories that you consume from one day to the next. You slip in low carb days every so often but before and after them come regular carb days. What this accomplishes is 2 things: First, the low carb days help you to create a calorie deficit needed to lose weight. Second, the cycling or carb rotating helps you to keep your metabolism from slowing down as it often does when we reduce our overall calorie intake. The metabolic influence helps us to continue losing weight far into the future.
May 4, 2009 at 2:13 pm
The only bad carbs are sugars but nobody recognizes that. Good carbs inflate the glycogen in your MUSCLES and don’t effect fat reserves at all. You’re torturing yourself for no reason by avoiding carbs. You’re making your muscles flat and this will hide any and all developement you do gain. Fitness should be about body shaping, not muscle shaving. Carb exclusion diet schemes are what drones and sheeple obsess and rave over. You actually need hundreds and hundreds of GOOD carbs in your system on workout day when you hit the gym. Eating 200-400 grams of carbs on training days is what you need, and you won’t gain any wieght excpet muscle and this will be because of your increased energy and intensity levels. So if you want to be featherlight and streamlined and feel shitty mentally and physically, then keep avoiding carbs. If you want to make dramatic improvements to your body and not have to contend with terrible cravings all the time then start incorporating good carbs into your eating.