When to start carb/sodium depletion?

[AandF6969]

I'm doing a show in 7 1/2 weeks and I'm trying to get everything figured out for the last week. I'm planning on sodium and water loading and depletion, and carb depletion and loading. I'm just confused as when to start these processes, mainly when should I start the carb up? Does that start 3 days out or does it start when shitloading before the show?

Also, my show is at 10 AM which means I'd have to eat around 8 AM, and the evening show isn't until 5PM so I have to be careful about spilling over until about 7PM.

Any advice?

Thanks much

[j martini]

There really is no right and wrong way everyone is an individual, as can be seen by the many different approaches competitive bodybuilders use. Even if you devised a method and it worked perfectly there is definitely no guarantee that it will work as well again, especially when you consider all the different variables like how depleted you are how severe your pre contest diet was etc.

Me personally i am competing in my 3rd comp this saturday. My first comp i followed a traditional 3 day carb depleting and 3 day carb loading phase, my carb intake on the 3 days depletion was limited to just 30g of oatmeal in the morning, all cardio was stopped and i went into the gym for the 3 days and done an upper body circuit style workout to further deplete myself/
My first carb load day was a wednesday, the show was saturday, the first carb load day was the heaviest 1000g total for the day eating carbs on the hour my carb sources where dextose, rice cakes and white rice. The second day was 600g total for the day eating carbs every 1.5hrs with the same carb sources.
3rd day was 400g total for the day eating carbs every 2 hrs again same carb sources.
Water intake was 8 litres per day while carb depleting and carb loading, i continued drinking this amount of water on up until the friday 9pm the evening before then just sipped water.
All in all this process for me worked quite well, though i was actually a little flat, hard to believe given the amount of carbs, but i am extremely carb tolerant with a very fast metabolism.


The second show i just trained and dieted as normal on through until the friday, then i had a complete binge day, the end result was i bloated and held water, now i was not tight enough to begin with so that was certainly a contributing factor, but saying that i had run a few trial runs of this approach a few weeks out and it worked a lot better than it did the day of the show, my theory is that due ti me knowing i had a show the next day my aldosterone levels where very high causing me to retain a lot more fluid than i had on previous trial runs using the same approach.

By best advice to you is to read as much as you can about different methods that people use, then come to some sort of conclusion on what sounds like it might work for you then incorporate it.
Nobody can give you there exact program and tell you if it worked for them then it will work for you everyone is different.

Take into account factors such as how easy you bloat, how carb tolerant you are, some people can carb up on 400g of carbs for 3 days while with others this would not be enough for there big toe.
Also take ito account how hard your diet was and how depleted you really are got if your diet was very severe you will need more carbs than someone who only had to diet off 15 pounds.
Diuretics and what type you are using also have a big impact.

[Big Bapper]

Good post mate, best of luck with your show.

Respect