Can simple carbs be used when bulking as well as complex carbs?

Hi Daniel,

This is a popular question, as the 'simple' versus 'complex' and 'low GI' versus 'high GI' carb discussion is everywhere these days!

Here's what I've told my many clients who include IFBB Pro bodybuilders and other elite athletes...

Whether you are bulking or cutting, always maintain a core healthy diet - a variety of lean meats, fatty fish, vegetables and fruits. When bulking, as long as you are getting your 5 to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables, there is no longer as much need to ensure that all of your additional calories are complex, low-glycemic carbs.

So the solution is to add calories over-and-above your core, healthy diet primarily from carbohydrates that you enjoy!

I always recommend that guys who have trouble eating enough to gain weight add foods they like to their diet...if you have a core healthy diet, then just add some chips/crisps, chocolate and other foods that may not be so healthy but can help you achieve your calorie requirements for gaining muscle.

For more details from a brief article that lays out the fundamentals of gaining muscle, read my previous article: http://fitnessinventor.com/articles/652-how-to-gain-muscle-it-s-the-calories-stupid

Complex carbs have a greater food metabolism from the "thermic effect of food"; your body will burn calories with processing and digestion at a greater amount with complex carbs over simple carbs. Complex carbs should help with overall health and disease prevention. You will have more calories going out to the body with simple carbs because of the lower amount of food metabolism taking place rather than having the calories lost with processing and digestion.

will body composition be the same if you eat the same amount of calories from simple carbs as opposed to complex?

Because of the thermic effect of food, approximately 20% of the complex carb's calories will be spent with processing and digestion. With simple carbs, the thermic effect of food is very little (probably about the same as fat, which is about 2%).

For example, if I eat 100 calories of whole grains, legumes, veggies with fiber, 80 calories are going to the body and about 20 are used with processing. 80 calories are available for other types of metabolism (resting metabolism, activity metabolism, adaptive metabolism (any other process that could use energy, such as hormonal processes, very cold weather, being sick, etc.)). If those 80 calories are not spent through your metabolism, they will add to your body composition with lean tissue or non lean tissue.

If I eat 100 calories of candy, very little of it will be used up in processing. I have probably 98 calories going out to the body to be used up by the non-food metabolic processes. Just like the 80 calories, they can be spent through the rest of the metabolism or add to the body composition.

Simply put, you should have approximately 18% more calories that could potentially add to the body composition when looking at simple carbs in comparison to complex carbs if they both start out with the same number of calories.

I read a lot about the metabolism stuff from www.bodyrecomposition.com, and specifically http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/metabolic-rate-overview.html.

Hi Daniel

Just to clear things up, a higher metabolism would mean that you burn more (not fewer) calories. Also, some complex carbs increase sugar levels in the bloodstream just as fast or faster than some complex carbs (although complex carbs are usually lower GI).

So if anything, the simple carbs would be less likely to be burned off due to the extra metabolic effort the body would partake in to digest them - although the difference would be small and probably not significant.

What I was trying to say is that once you have a core healthy diet as I described above, you can add some less healthy foods to hit your calorie requirements because the core healthy diet will provide all of your nutrients and will include the protective effect of fibre, and all of the healthy chemicals in fruits and vegetables, etc.