As a nutritionist and a Paleo eater, I’ve (Neely) thought a lot about people’s carb intakes.

My own journey has taken me through periods of eating lots of carbs as a vegetarian kid and teenager, then down to very low carbs when I first started Paleo and when I experimented with the ketogenic diet, and now I’m back to a moderate carb intake. I probably eat around 25% carbs, 25% protein, and 50% fat every day. That’s about 120g of carbs for me (on around 1800 calories a day – and no, I’m not on a diet, I just guesstimated that).

For reference, many Americans’ diets are made up of about 40% carbs or more. That’d be around 240g on a 2,400 calorie diet. Low-carb is considered anything under 45% (by the USDA, at least).

I personally found that on low carb diets, I feel pretty awful. My performance sucks, I’m tired, grumpy, hungry, and get muscle fatigue really easily. So throughout my 7 years on Paleo, I’ve made a pretty concerted effort to add more carbs into my diet in the form of tapioca flour, sweet potatoes, veggies, fruit, and some honey.

I’ve noticed a similar trend among my clients and friends when they go low carb and try to keep up with their climbing training (or running or whatever they’re doing): they feel tired and grumpy and hungry when they’re too low carb.

While I think people’s bodies are all different, and we all thrive on different macronutrient ratios, I do think there are some generalizations that can be made about carbs and athletes – especially power athletes like climbers.

The guy over at www.climbingnutrition.com did a really great job of summing up the research on this topic and making some awesome points about how carbs affect climbers, and particularly, how low carb diets affect climbers. I think you should give it a read if you’re on the fence or in the low-carb camp.

Read the Low-Carb Article from ClimbingNutrition.com

 

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