Contest Prep - Carbs?

[NPC-OHIO]

Curious - I know we do it, but I am unsure of the reasoning.

Say bodybuilder A trains in the morning. A typical pre-contest diet would have carbs in meal 1 and postworkout and then eliminated throughtout the day, moving more to pro fat meals.

If a calorie is a calorie, why is it that we cut carbs save the water retention factor?

Not challegening the theory, just trying to understand the rational of no carbs after your first few meals.

 

[Eric Broser]

The reasoning would be to keep insulin levels as low as possible throughout the day, which shifts the metabolism into a more efficient fat-burning mode. The meal post workout is a "safe" time to take in carbs because at this particular time the metabolism is "set-up" to only store carbs in muscle tissue and not fat cells.