Loosing muscle from lowering carb intake for last meal at night..why?

[diesel]

a few weeks back, I cut back my carb intake to about 50g
(seems alot) for my last meal at 10 or 10:30 pm...oatmeal or green peas as source. protein is always 50g per meal. I'm quite lean, but this simple change made my midsection tighter...w/ out cardio. I'm a very hard gainer, I'm under 175 and I eat more than guys over 200lbs

I ate 65-75g carbs for every other meal and had 50g w/ last meal. I did not eat during the night, this was difficult since hunger wakes me at 3 am and sleep is hard to get if I don't eat.

...that said, I liked the lean/hard look, but I slowly began losing strength and muscle mass...If I only drank whey isolate w/ out carbs at 3am will I keep the muscle, or should I have carbs as well?

 

[Ifrit]

You'll keep muscle as long as your protein is really high since you have no carbs to spare. It most likely isn't muscle loss but glycogen storage is low from not enough carbs and it has simply "deflated" your muscles. If you upped your carbs to 300 you would gain the muscle back you seemingly lost. I dieted and lost half an inch on my bi's but a few days later when I had carbs again they were right back up.

 

[Frosty]

Maybe you should eat more.

 

[Grillgansta]

I guess this is where carb cycling would be a good idea

 

[Southernfish]

if I was you don't eat any carbs for your last meal at all, instead eat a healthy fat source along side your protein, or drink a casein shake, in doing either of these your allowing your muscle to have a steady source of food for a decent period of time and you might actually find your not waking up hungry at all, cut that isolate shake out in the middle of the night too that's useless, drink a casein shake instead, most of them are very low in carbs anyways so you don't have to worry about that if you in fact are.