Part 2: Carb Cycling
carb cycling
Want to lose fat while maintaining or even gaining muscle? Say hello to carb cycling, a diet strategy that has you adjust your eating to meet your daily needs, allowing for maximal results. By doing this, you can select several days of the week to be your “gain muscle” days while still having several days a week designated as fat loss days. A diet like this will be a little more complicated and require more planning than your typical eat the same every day diet, but the results will speak for themselves. We are talking about the potential for losing fat while actually gaining muscle. Read on to learn how to master carbs for the best of fat loss and muscle retention
It is common bodybuilding dogma that one cannot lose fat and gain muscle at the same tame. People sometimes even say it’s extremely difficult to maintain muscle while losing fat! This is simply not true, but creating a muscle-preserving environment while still losing body fat requires dedication and planning. On most diets, this perfect situation is hard to achieve largely due to one macronutrient: carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates tend to be highly anabolic for most people. Unfortunately, they also can lead to excessive body fat. Therefore, many dieters drastically reduce their carb intake in order to quickly strip off body fat. This works great for losing fat, but it also leads to crappy workouts and muscle loss. So how can we get the best of both worlds? Answer: Carb Cycling.
In essence, carb cycling is merely a dietary strategy where you eat very little carbs on off days, high carbs on 1-2 “priority” workouts, and medium carbs on “non-priority” workout days. By doing this, non-workout days become “fat loss” days, non-priority workout days become lesser fat loss days, and the 1-2 high carb days per week allow you to still focus on gaining muscle during priority workouts. Most of these carbs will come from starchy, complex sources. Now that we have gotten the basics out of the way, lets dig into the details.
Example Weekly Carb Cycling Plan:
Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
Low Carb Medium Carb Medium Carb High Carb Low Carb Medium Carb High Carb
Off Day/Light Cardio Pull Push Legs Off day/light cardio Pull Push
Above is an example schedule for how I set up
my carb cycling in conjunction with my 5x/week push/pull workouts. As you can see, I aligned low-carb days
with my off days, high-carb days with workouts I wanted to focus on (legs and the second push), and eating a
moderate amount of carbs on the other days. This allows you the energy to keep your workouts productive while
still having two days of major fat loss. Don’t get me wrong though, the other 5 days of the week, especially
the medium carb days, will also lead to fat loss due to the lowered calories. Now let’s dig even further into the details by defining what exactly dictates “high-carb” vs “low carb.”
We are going to base our high carb vs low carb days on percentages.
If you are unfamiliar with dieting by percentages, the concept is simple: eat a set
percent of your calories from each of the 3 macronutrients. For example, a 40% protein, 40% carb, and 20%
fat diet would have you eating 40% of your calories from protein, 40% from carbs, and 20% of your calories from carbs.
In this diet, the percentages will be set as thus:
high carb: 35% protein, 45% carbs, 20% fat
medium carb: 40% protein, 30% carbs, 30% fat
low carb: 50% protein, 10% carbs, 40% fat
Step 1:
Now that we have our percentages set, we need to calculate our daily calorie needs to make these guidelines useful. This, however, involves a lot of math and is a bit time consuming. To avoid the hassle, you can go use my calculator here and skip to step 4. The first step is calculating your BMR. Here is a mathematically approach below, but there are also many good BMR calculators online that can also factor in activity level (the next step after BMR):
For Men
BMR = 66 + (13.7 x weight in kg) + (5 x height in cm) – (6.8 x age)
So for a 30 year old bodybuilder of 220lbs (100kg) at 5’11? (178cm) it comes up to:
BMR = 66 + (13.7 x 100kg) + (5 x 178cm) – (6.8 x 30)
BMR = 2122 calories per day
For Women
BMR = 655 + (9.6 x weight in kg) + (1.7 x height in cm) – (4.7 x age)
So for a 28 year old figure girl of 132lbs (60kg) at 5’6? (165cm) it comes up to:
BMR = 655 + (9.6 x 60kg) + (1.7 x 165cm) – (4.7 x 28)
BMR = 1380 calories per day
Step 2:
Alright, now that you have practiced your math skills,
on to the next step: factoring in activity level. This step is simple,
just multiply your BMR by the number in the table below based on your activity level.
By the way, if you are a 4 or 5x per week weight lifter but do not have a manual labor job,
your activity level is probably “moderate”
Activity level factor Activity level
1.0 Sedentary
1.2 Very light activity
1.4 Light activity
1.6 Moderate activity
1.8 High activity
2.0 Extreme activity
So if our 220 pound bodybuilder with a BMR of 2122
calories/day is moderately active, his daily energy expenditure
is bumped up to 2122 x 1.6 = 3395 calories per day.
Step 3:
This number we just calculated is the amount of
calories to consume to maintain present body weight.
Now we are finally ready to adjust set our calories for optimal fat loss.
To do this, follow the guidelines below:
high-carb: 85% of calculated daily energy expentiture (
x .85 = 2890 calories for our 220 lb. bodybuilder)
moderate carb: 80% of calculated daily energy expenditure
(3400 x .80 = 2720 calories for our 220 lb. bodybuilder)
low carb: 65% of calculated daily energy expenditure
(3400 x .65 = 2210 calories for our 220lb. bodybuilder)
Step 4:
Unfortunately, we still have more calculations to do.
Now that we know our daily calorie targets, we need to
calculate how many grams of each macronutrient
we should eat based on our percentages we set up above.
protein: (daily % protein in decimal form x daily calories) /4 = daily grams of protein
example with 35% protein: (.35 x 2890 calories) / 4 = 253g of protein for our 220lb bodybuilder on the high carb day
carbs: (daily % carbs in decimal form x daily calories) / 4 = daily grams of carbs
example with 45% protein: (.45 x 2890 calories) / 4 = 325g of carbs for our 220lb bodybuilder on the high carb day
fat: (daily % fat in decimal form x daily calories) /9 = daily grams of fat
example with 20% fat: (.20 x 2890) / 9 = 64g of fat for our 220lb bodybuilder on high carb day
Whew! Finally done, just repeat that last process for each of your
three type of days and you have your daily caloric targets as well as exact macronutrient numbers to target. Now,
lets talk food. Here are the acceptable carb sources,
of which you should be eating plenty on your high and medium carb days.
Carb Sources
oatmeal, grits
sweet potatoes, yams
brown rice
beans (as long as they aren’t covered in sugar or fat)
all bran cereal
fruit
Yes, the list is fairly small, but sticking to these
sources will ensure the best results. Now on to protein.
On high and medium carb days, your protein sources
should be fairly lean. Here is a list, but there are certainly other lean protein sources our there:
Lean Protein Sources
chicken, turkey
most fish (tuna, mahi mahi, cod, etc.)
crab, lobster
shellfish, scallops
Egg whites!!!!
extra lean ground beef
good ol’ whey or casein protein powder
On your low-carb days, you will be able to eat l
ess lean sources of protein, but watch your
calories as these can add up quick. Here is a short list of protein sources I would recommend for this day.
Low-Carb Day Protein Sources
ground beef, steak
whole eggs!!
pork
any other meat!
Between those three lists you have all the foods
that should be the majority of your diet. In general, you should have lean protein + carb meals for mos
t of the day on high-carb days, and you should have protein + fat meals for most of the low-carb day. Every day of the week should start out with a protein + carb meal for breakfast, with this being the only time you eat carbs on your low carb day.
Well now you have all the tools to b
gin constructing your carb cycling diet
. It is not simple, but with a little effort, and maybe another reading,
ou can master carb cycling for superior
fat loss and muscle retention. As a little bonus, i offer you a sample high-carb day meal log for our 220lb bodybuilder:
Breakfast:
1 scoop whey protein powder, 1 cup old-fashioned oats, 1 apple
Lunch:
1 cup brown rice, 8 ounces grilled chicken breast
Pre-Workout:
(45minutes-1 hour before): 10 oz sweet potatoes
(15minutes before): 1 apple, 1 scoop whey protein powder
Post Workout:
1 scoop whey protein powder, 1 cup old-fashioned oats
Dinner:
9 ounces lean ground beef, 1 cup brown rice, 7 oz baby carrots (2 servings)
Night Snack:
1 scoop whey protein, 1 tbsp natural peanut butter
Note: I realize that this sample diet has 4 scoops of whey protein in a single day, which is a substantial amount. If this is too much for you, the breakfast
protein shake can easily be replaced by a few scrambled egg whites and the late night snack protein shake can be replaced by 6 ounces or so of chicken.
Daily Totals: 2920 calories, 261g of protein, 324g of carbs, 65g of fat
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