Advanced Strategies to make Fat Loss and Social Events more Enjoyable
When it comes to carbs, there’s no reason to fear them at all. In fact, after reading this page, you’ll understand if, how, and when to use the carb cycling technique, and you’ll discover how eating more carbs may actually help you maintain a healthier metabolism, burn more fat, and make dieting less physically and mentally less stressful. With that in mind, what is carb cycling? Do you need to carb cycle? If so, how? To answer these questions properly, let me briefly review the basics.
The Issue of Metabolic Slowdown
Sometimes, cutting calories further isn’t the answer
Dieting in a calorie deficit for a long period of time (especially on an aggressive deficit) is not good for your metabolic health or your mental wellbeing. When calories are kept low for a prolonged duration, adaptive thermogenesis starts to occur, which means you start to experience metabolic slowdown, and now you aren’t actually burning as many calories each day as you initially predicted on paper. The hormone that regulates feelings of hunger and fullness, called leptin, is also impacted by caloric restriction, and the urge to eat more increases. Leptin levels drop whenever your body senses a calorie deficit and when body fat mass is lost.
At this point your hunger levels become unbearable, you’re obsessinve about food, getting agitated, cravings for carbs and to becomes very difficult to stay consistent on the diet without caving with an all out binge. Even those who are super disciplined and are able to avoid giving in to binges, continuous hunger can be miserable. Low energy levels are also a common problem with low calories and if your energy is down, your training can suffer and your calories burned from daily life (Non-exercise activity thermogenesis) will fall.
These negative side effects of dieting become worse and worse the leaner you become. If you’ve been on very low calories for a long time, have already lost a lot of fat, and want to get even leaner, you’re likely to experience the most severe effects of all if you keep going with even more low-calorie, linear dieting. Not good.
Carb Cycling to the Rescue
Making Fat Loss Easier than Ever!
This is where carb cycling comes to ease your burden. Instead of continuing to diet on low calories every day, you can actually increase the calories every now and then, to give your body a much-needed break from the continuous deprivation of caloric energy. By raising your calories back to maintenance levels, you get physical and mental benefits.
- Improves leptin and thyroid hormones.
- Stimulates metabolism by 3 – 10%.
- Gives you more energy.
- Reduces hunger levels.
- Provides mental relief from the diet.
- Possibly improves nutritional adherence and consistency.
- May be less chance of binging.
- Improves leptin and thyroid hormones.
- Stimulates metabolism by 3 – 10%.
- Gives you more energy.
- Reduces hunger levels.
- Provides mental relief from the diet.
- Possibly improves nutritional adherence and consistency.
- May be less chance of binging.
A boost of calories, temporarily also boosts leptin, which leads to downstream beneficial effects on fat oxidation, thyroid, dopamine, and testosterone. However, this leptin-boost is short-lived and drops again once you resume your diet and your body senses the deficit. It’s for this reason we use frequent but moderate calorie cycling or refeeds to continue receiving these benefits. For more information about leptin and the science of refeeds, click here.
One additional mental benefit of calorie and macro cycling is that it can bring greater adherence by increasing variety in our diets. If you’re on low calories all the time, you may start to get physically hungry (hormonal changes), and emotional hunger (cravings). If you then introduce carb cycling, you know you get to eat more on occasion, and even if you do feel some hunger/cravings on the low days, it’s easier to hold out. This is how carb cycling also helps most people with compliance. The end result is you avoid plateaus and falls off the wagon (overeating, binges, “unauthorized” cheating, etc). This doesn’t always work for everyone, as the additional complication may disrupt diet adherence.
Carb Cycling is Not Magic
It’s important to understand that carb cycling will NOT accelerate your fat loss. It simply enables you to lose fat like you would normally (or, it helps to prevent those plateaus from happening in the first place). Even though you are increasing calories on occasion, you’re still in an overall calorie deficit on average. You are continuing to lose fat, but now you’ve hopefully mitigated and minimised many of the negative effects that come from staying on low calories every day, week after week.
Should I be Carb Cycling?
Metabolic adaptations are less of a concern when bulking, eating higher calories, doing less cardio, or when higher in body fat (above 20%). If this is the case for you, carb cycling is not a concern for you at the moment. If on the other hand, you are in a fat loss phase, then consider where you fit in the scenarios below.
First Two to Three Months
Not Required
Don’t jump into carb cycling too soon. In the early stages of a diet (first month or two), it’s simpler, easier, and more effective to establish a reasonable calorie deficit and stay at that level every day for the most efficient results. It’s perfectly normal to feel a little hungry right from the first week, so be prepared to expect it, and accept it as the feeling of fat loss taking place. The negative hormonal changes and metabolic slowdown adaptions from calorie restriction (mentioned above) don’t start to kick in until you’ve been consistently dieting for two or three months. Therefore, carb cycling is only required for those who are already deep into their fat loss program.
Issues with Consistency or Compliance
Optional
Some people choose to start using carb cycling from the beginning as a pre-emptive strategy, hoping to sidestep as much metabolic adaptation as possible before it happens. You might want to do it to keep energy levels up, hunger in check, and improve compliance to make the diet easier and more enjoyable. So if you want to start carb cycling from day one, it’s an option you can take, but it’s not mandatory.
Higher Priority on Muscle Gain
Recommended
Another benefit of carb cycling is that it may explain how some people add lean body mass while in a calorie deficit. That’s because when you’re raising calories periodically, you’re actually NOT always in a deficit, and your body is given more fuel on “high days”, which could be directed into muscle tissue for growth.
The extra fuel also makes for more intense training, and if you can train harder, you can build more muscle and burn more fat. So for those who don’t have fat loss as their main priority (higher focus on muscle gain), they can use carb cycling for a body recomposition to gain a little muscle while also losing fat. Carb cycling can even be used as a way of preventing muscle loss for those on an aggressive calorie deficit (more than 20-25% calorie reduction) and are struggling to maintain strength in the gym.
Beyond Two Months & Struggling with Progress
Recommended
If you’ve been dieting a long time (more than 8 – 12 weeks), but still feel good energy, motivation and are getting steady progress, don’t change a thing! If however, you’re starting to feel more tired, weak and hungry, you’re having trouble sticking with your diet, you’re struggling to maintain muscle or if your progress seems slower than it should be, then these are all signs that adding in some higher calories via carb cycling will be very beneficial.
Carb Cycling Guide
How to Introduce a Carb Cycling Strategy into your Meal Timing
We want to strategically increase the intake of certain macronutrients at certain periods to get the positive benefits mentioned before. Some of these techniques are referred to as refeeds, or they may be referred to as carb cycling, calorie cycling, or macro cycling. Regardless of the name, each means that you are distributing calories, and potentially macronutrients, in specific ways across days of the week, month or year in hopes of favorable outcomes. If by now you’ve decided to try carb cycling, let’s talk about how to do it.
The key is to ensure carb cycling is done under control and is a carefully calculated increase without becoming a period of all-out uncontrolled eating.
Carb Cycling Calulations
During each temporary period of higher calories, your calorie intake is simply increased up to maintenance, or a slight surplus. This increase in calories comes primarily via an increase in carbohydrates as it is the macronutrient that causes the greatest boost in leptin (the hormone mentioned earlier). So how do we get our maintenance calories and carbs?
Based on four calories per gram of carbs, and an assumed 3600 calories deficit equating to 1 pound of weight loss:
Additional Calories = average rate of weight loss (grams / week) x 0.792
Equivalent carbs = average rate of weight loss (grams / week) x 0.198
As an example, if you are currently losing a pound a week on average, that’s 455 grams per week. 455 x 0.792 = 360 calories and 455 x 0.198 = 90 grams.
So you would plan to eat an additional 90 grams of carbs (360 calories) over the high carb period to bring your calories up to maintenance levels. Intake of protein and fat remains unchanged for the duration.
Be sure to bring calories at least up to maintenance level. Do it even if it seems like a lot of food. I find it funny how many people complain for weeks about being deprived and hungry on a diet, then when I suggest eating more (when carb cycling), suddenly they’re afraid to do it, or it’s “too much food!” Most people find themselves surprised that they can eat a lot more one or two days a week – sometimes to the point of feeling completely full and satisfied – and still keep losing fat weekly, and enjoying more energy at the same time.
Carb Cycling Diet Applications
Single Day Refeed
As Required During Fat Loss Phase and Social Events
If your primary goal is fat loss, start by introducing a single re-feed day once a week. This is the most common type of carb cycling. It means that six days a week, you are still in a deficit. If you decided to take high-calorie days more often than twice a week, then you would start cutting into your weekly deficit too much. Eating more on occasion can help the fat loss process over the long run, but if you spike your calories too often, you will actually slow down your rate of fat loss.
How often should I do a Single Day Refeed?
Your “high carb days” are not set in stone – feel free to adjust the frequency and amplitude of your high carb days as needed. Pay attention to how you feel, including your energy during workouts, throughout the day, your hunger levels, your cravings, and your confidence in maintaining consistency and control. If energy is low, hunger is high and progress is slow, that’s a sign to indicate more frequent re-feeding.
Another way to help you decide how often to refeed is based on how dieted down you are. The less dieted down you are, the less often you refeed. The longer you’ve been dieting, the more aggressive your deficit has been, the lower your body fat is now, and the greater the amount of fat you’ve already lost, the more often you should refeed.
My Own Experience: “Personally, I don’t like to schedule a refeed day. I just decide to have one whenever I feel I need it. If on one day I feel more depleted or I have a hankering for more carbs, or if there is a social event in the week, I’ll assign it as a refeed day. To ensure the day remains under control and to stop myself from going off the rails, I’ll log my additional carbs ahead of time. This way I’m being proactive with my nutrition instead of reactive.”
Multi Day Refeed
Males below 8% Body Fat (15% for Female) – Clearly Visible Abs
Single-day refeeds can prove to be useful for some reasons, but they aren’t the most effective tool for staving off metabolic adaptation. As you become leaner, get deeper into your diet, and experience your body pushing back harder and harder, the potential utility of multi-day refeeds increases. A single day spent even far above maintenance calories may no longer be enough to effectively reverse the hormonal adaptations that occur from dieting.
If this is you, increase your refeed days to two in a row each week. Implement them in the same exact way I explained for single day refeeds, except instead of spreading your deficit over 6 days, you would spread it over 5. Alternatively, you can have 3 days spread across the week as desired that are at maintenance.
It seems not only is the magnitude of calories consumed during a refeed important, but the length of time spent out of a deficit as well. In fact, refeeds lasting 48 hours or longer at maintenance calories may be required. Unlike weekly 24 hour refeeds, there is actually a fair bit of research on what could be described as multi-day refeeds. One such study found that fat loss was higher in a group dieting only 2 days a week versus a group dieting continuously on all days, despite the same intended caloric restriction over time! Also, in a review of studies using these strategies it was concluded that intermittent caloric restriction was superior for lean mass retention compared to restricting calories on all days. So not only do multi-day refeeds have the potential for reversing metabolic adaptation to a degree, they can also result in a superior body composition at the end of your diet than if you had just dieted straight through.
I don’t recommend taking more than 3 refeed days a week if your primary goal is fat loss. Remember, you still need a calorie deficit to lose fat, and carb cycling does not necessarily make you lose fat faster in the short term, it’s designed to help make dieting easier and prevent negative side effects so you can make it through the long term.
Carb Cycling for Muscle Growth
Goals in Body Recomposition – Slower but Steady
If your goal is focused primarily on muscle growth and fat loss secondary (aka body recomposition), may use a multi-day carb cycling strategy mentioned above, and refeed more often – up to half the week at maintenance calories or a small surplus. Your low carb days have a small to moderate deficit (10 – 15%), the high carb days have a small surplus (10 – 15%), and about 50% of your time is spend in a deficit. A recommendation is to take your high carb days on the most intense, high-volume or metabolically demanding weight training days (legs, back and heavy compound exercise days).
This may sound ideal – gaining muscle and losing fat at same time – but keep in mind if you’re only in a deficit half of the week, then reaching your fat loss goal takes twice as long. Body recomposition is painfully slow and requires a huge amount of patience, but most people pursuing muscle gain as one of their goals come to understand and accept that. If you have a lot of body fat to lose, your best bet is stay focused on fat loss as your primary goal until you reach the “lean” category for body composition. Then shift gears and pursue a muscle gain program, if you choose.
The Diet Break
When it’s Time to Pull Back and Recover
If you’ve been dieting a long time and you’re extremely depleted, it’s also a good idea to take a diet break for one or two full weeks at maintenance calories, and then when you go back to the fat loss phase, re-start with carb cycling on single or multiple days.
Researchers are still debating how much you can re-stimulate your metabolism when you raise calories for only one day. It’s probably not even close to enough to restore a suppressed metabolism to normal because the boost in carbs is too brief, so the boost in metabolism-regulating hormones is also too brief. Full diet breaks of one or two weeks are often prescribed to my clients after long stretches of dieting to more fully restore metabolism. In some cases for example, when someone comes to me who has previously been starvation dieting for years, it could take a whole year of maintenance eating (or a muscle gain phase) to get all their body systems to recover.
Watch Out – The Scale Plays Tricks On You When Carb Cycling
One thing about carb cycling that many people don’t account for is the fluctuations in body weight due to the changes in carbs. After say 5 strict days of lower carb, lower-calorie eating, you may actually have already accrued a pound of fat loss. But then you carb up on day 6. Your body composition has improved, but the carb up makes you gain total body weight (water and glycogen).
If you only judge your success by the scale on the morning of day 7, and if you only look at short term (daily) numbers, you may be misled into thinking you were not successful when you really were. So here I say, you must have patience, watch the trend over time and avoid obsessed with short term fluctuations in body weight especially on high carb day and or the day after high carb day.
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My Closing Thoughts
Go and See What Works for You!
“Ultimately, we are all different and must each experiment with different meal frequencies and meal sizes and decide for ourselves on the best custom solution. In order to achieve long-term compliance and habit formation, it’s important to choose your own daily meal timing, make sure it’s one you like and that you see yourself sticking to for life. That includes how you spread your calorie budget across meals through the day.
Regardless of what anyone tells you is the best meal timing strategy to adopt, none of it will do you any good if you can’t or aren’t willing to follow plan long-term. On one hand, you want to follow a meal plan that nutritional science says will give you the best results – more energy, more muscle, less fat, better health. On the other hand, to achieve that, you may have to make some compromises or impose some discipline on yourself if what you’ve been doing up to now has left you with results you’re not happy about.
The best approach for most people is not an extreme meal frequency or extreme meal size, it’s a moderate, sustainable approach, customized for your lifestyle and long-term enjoyment.”