Carb Coding: What does “low”, “medium” and “high” mean?

<text-size-medium>Discover why Carb Coding is the achievable and sustainable fueling plan for athletes at all levels<text-size-medium>

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Carb Coding is at the heart of the hexis platform. At its simplest form it takes your body’s composition and identifies which meals and snacks should  be low (red), medium (yellow) or high (green) in carbohydrate so that your body is fueled to achieve your training and lifestyle goals. But how do you know what low, medium and high actually are? And how does that apply to me, in my sport, with my training goals and lifestyle?  

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We all have different training sessions during the week, some could be longer, harder or different activities (weightlifting vs running for example). We use these different training sessions to challenge our bodies in different ways to adapt different parts of our fitness, weights to build strength, cardio to improve our endurance. In the same way that we change our training, the latest cutting-edge research in performance nutrition has now shown that we should change the food that we use to fuel our body in the same way. Matching the training we are doing with the correct foods before, during and after our workouts allows us to enhance the adaptation that occurs in our body. This is power behind Hexis’s carb coding system. We give your body the right fuel, at the right time, so you can sustain your edge.

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It’s not all about Carb Loading

Low carb meals are there for days and times when we don’t have high carbohydrate demands from our training; this can often be on recovery days, or when we are doing low intensity light exercise like 30min of easy yoga. Medium and High carb meals and snacks are there to help us top up our muscles store of glycogen (the muscles store of carbs) ready to train or perform, and then help our bodies recover after exercise. Going for a hard run for 60min will require more carbs (and energy) than the yoga session. Both workouts are important in challenging different parts of our fitness and give us the best chance of hitting our performance goals as well as achieving the desired adaptation. Because of these different carbohydrate and energy demands we need to fuel these workouts differently. Depending on how intense and how long the exercise is, and  your overall goal (e.g. loose weight or gain weight) will influence what mix of red, yellow and green the hexis AI will suggest is best to fuel your day.  

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Eat like an Individual 

Because everyone is different we can’t use a “one size fits all” approach to define low, medium and high – so we don’t! Depending on the volume of training you do, the type of training you do most often and your body weight Hexis identifies what your individual red, yellow and green should look like. By doing this Hexis can provide you with individualized recommendations that fit the fuel demands of your day, training goal and lifestyle, something that would traditionally take a nutritions hours to workout for each individual athlete. At Hexis we believe performance starts with energy, and getting fueling right can have a big impact on how successful our workouts are.