Over the years, bodybuilding nutrition has divided itself into three fairly distinct categories (I’m going to leave out the ones I consider voodoo nonsense) which are high-carb/low-fat, moderate carb/moderate fat, and low-carbohydrate. Low carb-diets can be further subdivided into high or low fat as well as cyclical or non-cyclical. I discuss each in more detail in Comparing the Diets.
In theory, you can make arguments for or against any of these approaches in terms of superiority. In the real world, it’s not quite that simple. You can always find folks (and this is true whether they are bodybuilders or just general dieters) who either succeeded staggeringly well or failed miserably on one or another approaches.Before going on, I want to mention that protein recommendations tend not to vary that significantly between diets and most of the arguments tend to revolve around the varying proportions of carbohydrate and fats in the diet and that’s what I’ll be focusing on here. Simply, I don’t consider low-protein fat loss diets in the equation at all for the simple fact that they don’t work for anybody but the extremely obese. Any dieting bodybuilder or athlete needs 1-1.5 g/lb lean body mass of protein on a diet. Possibly more under certain circumstances.
