A Step By Step look at effective low carb dieting.

Pre Diet: Spread your carb intake over six or seven smaller meals a day. This is essential to keep your muscles well nourished. The smaller food portions also increase your body’s metabolism, since it has a constant source of food streaming in.
(This is considered a pre-low carb phase, one during which you introduce your body to smaller portions of carbs. It can last anywhere from one to three weeks, depending on how lean you plan on getting, and doesn’t count towards your diet.)

- No carbs before you go to sleep or else they will be stored as fat.
- Eat complex carbs such as brown rice, wheat pasta, potatoes, yams, multigrain-breads and plenty of veggies.
-The only exception is after your workout, during which you can consume a simple sugar drink with your protein in order to speed up recovery.
-Learn the nutrient value of the foods you are eating; a no brainer!

Cutting Carbs: This is where you have options:

-Carefully manipulating the portions - such as only reducing your carb intake later in the day.
-Record how you feel at certain points during the day and adjust carb intake to suit your taste.
-Keep it simple: cut your carbs at every meal by HALF!

You can continue this regimen it for as long as you want, 6 weeks, 8 weeks, 12 weeks. Basically, repeat until ripped!

Nutritional Notes.

Veggies:
-Veggies provide you with plenty of vital nutrients, vitamins and minerals.
-The fiber helps you feel full and the bulk ensures you won’t be spending hours in the bathroom, if you get my drift.
-Prevents any carbs you eat from being absorbed too quickly, thus preventing an undesired spike in insulin (too much insulin production promotes the storage of carbs as fat).
-Fiber passes through your body undigested. Therefore, when eating vegetables, do NOT factor them into your daily carbohydrate intake. Grub broccoli chunks and celery sticks dipped in fat free ranch all you want if you get hungry.

Water:
-Carbohydrates in the body hold water.
-Cutting carbs naturally makes your body lose water. Some people think that drinking too much water while trying to get lean will cause them to lose muscle definition. Depriving your body of water NOW while you are dieting is the last thing you want to do. Heres Why:

Dehydration:
-You feel like crap.
-Leads to very unproductive workouts and cramping.
-Even Bodybuilders don’t cut back on water consumption until a few days before their contest.

Cheating:
-Increasing your carbohydrate intake for that meal or day replenishes energy stores, and take the stress off dieting for long periods of time.
-Complex carbs only. That means no snacking on potato chips.
-People with faster metabolisms can cheat more often and get away with it. If you have a snail-pace metabolism, you might want to only cheat one meal a week.
-You could even try not cheating at all.

Stay Hungry
-There is no such thing as a low carb diet without the hunger.
-Mentally prepare yourself to resist temptation.
-Find sources of inspiration; Watch bodybuilding videos on Youtube, hang a poster sized picture of your girlfriend/boyfriend in your room, even something to be angry at!
*Sources of inspiration help alleviate the mental stress of dieting because it helps you focus on your goals, and drives you to work even harder.

Now that you can survive a low-carb diet, conquer it and achieve your best physique yet!

Excerpts from: Ben Black, Bodybuilding.com “Low Carb Dieting: How to Strive and Survive!”

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