Nutrition Archives - Page 4 of 15 - Lose Fat Gain Muscle

Carb Cycling Diet for Weight Loss

Cycling Carbohydrates: An Introduction

One of the dietary strategies you may have heard about about from bodybuilders, fitness competitors, or those just wanting to lose weight is called carb cycling. This is a term for scheduling days of high carbohydrate consumption followed by days of successively lower carbohydrate consumption. This approach seems to be a very effective way to maximize fat loss while maintaining training intensity. I’ll explain the basics of why this works.

Why Lowering Carbs Works

Restricting carbohydrates (aka low carb or ketogenic diets) can be very effective for helping people lose weight. Going several days with low carbohydrate intake (lets say 50 grams or less) eventually causes glycogen levels (glucose in the liver and muscles) to get so low that the body has to switch to another fuel source. This metabolic shift is called ketosis, meaning the body is primarily using fat as its source of calories/fuel. I discovered ketogenic/low carb dieting years ago and have used it with good success.

Some have adopted adopted a low carbohydrate lifestyle and credit it with saving their health (if not their very lives). These individuals follow this diet year-around in order to stay at a healthy weight. More power to you if you are able to do this.

The Drawbacks of Restricting Carbohydrates

But eating this way all the time is not very practical for athletes or those who engage in intense exercise like weight training. Those of us who have trained while in ketosis can testify how sluggish the workouts are. Eating carbohydrates refills the before-mentioned glycogen so muscles can perform optimally.

Thus the dilemma: low carb eating is great for fat loss, but not so great for exercise performance.

Carb Cycling: Lose Fat, Maintain Training Intensely

One solution to this is carb cycling, which may be able to give you the best of both worlds. It really isn’t that complicated: you simply lower your carbohydrate over the course of a few days. The first day, for example, you can eat 200 grams of carbs, followed by 125 on the second and only 50 on the third. You could then repeat the cycle or just reverse it over the next two days (125 grams of carbs on day 4 and 200 again on day 5).

You may want to do your most intensive training on high carbohydrate days and try to consume most of your carbs after you work out. This will encourage the glucose to go to your muscles and liver instead of being stored as body fat.

Most of the plans I’ve seen also incorporate a “cheat day” where you just eat what you want. This shouldn’t hurt your fat loss in the long-term as long as you are consistent the rest of the time.

Just keep this in mind: all successful diets are based on a negative calorie balance–using more calories than you are consuming. Carb cycling is not a “secret formula” to get around this–it is simply one dietary strategy that you may find useful.

Starvation Mode: fact or fiction?

You may have heard about the danger of going into “starvation mode” if you don’t eat enough calories while trying to lose fat. The idea is that you’ll start losing muscle and wake up one morning looking like Christian Bale’s sickly movie character. This fear lead many of us bodybuilding types to believe that you had to eat six times a day to keep the precious lean mass gained during training.

The starvation mode terminology still gets thrown around a good bit today. I remember hearing it from a trainer a few years ago while watching The Biggest Loser. The before-mentioned trainer was warning a contestant (his trainee) not to go any lower on calories.

Do we really lose all our muscle when calories are set very low? Not necessarily. One study looked at the impact of very-low-calorie diets (VLCD) on body composition in twenty subjects (17 women and 3 men). All twenty subjects ate only 800 calories for 12 weeks (a liquid diet). The subjects were divided into two groups: one group did cardiovascular training four times a week while the other did resistance training (lifting weights) three times a week (the weight lifting group did circuit training–their routine consisted of 10 different exercises).

There were some striking differences in how the exercise type affected the subjects’ bodies. Those who trained with weights experienced an increase in their resting metabolic rate (RMR) despite the low calories (the cardiovascular training group’s resting metabolic rate decreased). The cardiovascular training group lost more weight, but some of this weight was muscle. The resistance training group kept all their muscle despite the ultra-low calories. Repeat: those who trained with weights did not lose muscle. ¹

Let me make something clear: I would not recommend anyone attempt this kind of diet without medical supervision. 800 calories a day is extremely low: the typical trainee will lose weight on around 11-12 calories per lb of body weight a day (much higher than what these subjects were taking in). And I can’t tell what the subjects’ starting body fat levels were, which would also make a big difference (the leaner we get, the more resistant our body becomes to losing fat).

But this experiment does leave us with an important takeaway: weight training is a powerfully effective strategy for preserving your muscle mass. Those who desire to try intermittent fasting , for example, need not worry about losing muscle as long as they continue with resistance training.

Note: I’d recommend Lyle McDonald’s Rapid Fat Loss Handbook if you are looking for a scientific guide to “crash” dieting (losing fat as quickly as possible).

Reference:

1. J Am Coll Nutr. 1999 Apr;18(2):115-21. Effects of resistance vs. aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on lean body mass and resting metabolic rate.