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I think that's not a bad start. If anything I've found eat most of the "non-paleo" foods in the morn helps a lot too. If not breakfast than for lunch. When you start eating lots of starches for dinner is when I ran into trouble.

Why is keeping muscle glycogen full important to you?

Once you go low carb for a few weeks your body stops relying on glycogen stores and starts burning fat for energy. Once you reach that stage, you can get by quite well without carbs for energy, but if you have them, you will use them. Someone said carbs are like nitrous oxide. You can run your car on it but you wouldn't want to all the time.

http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2009 ... letes.html

Weight training performance would be hindered by a lack of skeletal muscle glycogen, which in the long run would most likely cause some muscle atrophy as I wouldn't be able to keep my intensity up.

At least, that's what I figured. Not to mention glycogen/water makes up like 20% or something of your muscle size - something a bodybuilder would like to have. :p

Fructose, from what I understand, is poor at converting to muscle glycogen.

It doesn't convert as readily as glucose, but of my MMA buddies eats nothing but fruit and protein powder. But he's both lean and built, and he's never lacked for endurance. I've yet to see him tired out. So apparently even it it converts poorly it still converts, and if you get enough of it, you'll be fine.

If you're really concerned, though, why not just aim for a more paleo-ish diet? Keep the carbs, but emphasize tubers and fruits over processed grains, aim for more whole foods over non-processed foods, etc. It's not a good way to judge paleo, but it might satisfy your curiosity, and you can also dial it up or dial it back little by little and see how you adjust.

It depends on your goals but you could carb up slightly before competitions (or dates) to pump up the volume. If you get used to working out fasted or in a glycogen depleted state, you will eventually prepare yourself for that task and have the endurance, size and strength that you would nomally have. This would be accentuated when you do add carbs. You would still build muscle and get lean. Carbs are not completely excluded by a paleo diet. It's the unnatural volume and type of carbs that's the problem.

If you try it, be prepared to go for a few weeks with reduced performance. Don't do it leading up to an event. Wait until you are in a reconstitution phase.

That's essentially what I'm thinking about doing, just basically moving away from grains in their entirety, because I Honestly believe they probably hold me back more than anything else on getting super lean. They're not very satiating and I could literally eat a whole loaf of bread without a problem haha.

Makes sense - when I said bodybuilder though, I meant more my style of training (for aesthetic reasons) rather than competing. I don't (currently) compete in bodybuilding competitions.

Like I said, I think I'm going to see if I can maintain a lifestyle without pasta/breads and see what happens, I know it's not quite paleo but that's what attracted me to paleo to begin with. Once I reach my goal weight, I may see about re-adding potatoes to my diet, as they're a personal favorite and see how that affects things.

Essentially my goal would be to get to the point where I don't have to count calories. To maintain at around 10-12% bodyfat right now, I can kinda eat relaxed, but I still have to watch it - I'd like to get an eating lifestyle that allows me to simply eat when i'm hungry and not worry about anything else.

Paleo makes a lot of sense for you then. Cutting out grains was the first step for me (after cutting out pop and donuts). The key is to eat real food. Avoid anything that comes in a package. Restraunts are hard since you don't really know what they're putting in the food. You should assume that they fry in vegetable oil and use flour for thickening agents. That cuts out a lot of what's on the menu. Meat, salads and steamed vegetable are your fall back menu choice.

A lot of people are addicted to sugar even though they deny it. Artificial sugar is not an effective method of breaking the addiction. It's better to suck it up for 3-4 weeks and break the cycle.

Don't forget that corn is a grain. It's easy to forget since it's so pervasive as an additive and it's normally eaten as a vegetable.

Potatoes, tubers and legumes are not grains but your body treats them like grains. Cut them out at first and then add them in later in small doses. Treat alcohol the same way.

You will need to offset the carb calories with something. That will have to be protein and fat since there's nothing else. Protein needs no introduction. For fats, all animal fats are good. Also coconut oil is good for cooking. Olive oil is good wityh vegetables and salad. Butter will probably be your #1 fat. Nuts and seeds are ok in moderation. Get a variety of these since they all have different strengths and weaknesses and vareity evens that out.

The bulk of the paleo diet will be vegetables. Get a variety.

For what it's worth, I've never noticed any negative impact on my training during low-carb stretches. (Which most days is about 30g or so I think.)

Here's my next question for anyone who might know, how does lactose effect the body?

I'm not lactose intolerant, so no worries there. I'm wondering if it converts well to glycogen, it's affect on insulin, etc...

woah 30g a day? I think i get more than that with each meal

Lactose is a sugar and the body treats it like Glucose. It's GI is tempered by the fat and protein though. Fructose is treated differently but it's still negative.

30g/day is normal for someone cutting. The body can get by nicely on very low carbs. It uses ketosis to generate glycogen from fat.

I figure there's a few grams in the meat/cheese/collards I eat (sometimes they round .5g down to zero which is sneaky), maybe 8g total tops? And then there's 18g from a lb of broccoli (not counting the fiber). Post-workout (not every day) I'll do 1/2 cup mixed berries for another 6-10g or so. Oh, also some days I'll have a few almonds, for another 3g tops.

So maybe 35g total on the high end?

I burn through that just walking around and stuff in a day, so I'm certainly getting enough fat intake for energy.

I'm still losing body fat (I think) but I'm gaining muscle mass (hopefully) at around the same rate.

So it works well for replenishing glycogen and causes slightly smaller insulin spikes than pure glucose because of the fat/prot content?