Looking for a dietary addition to your programme of training to aid and help promote greater fat loss, then carbohydrate cycling to assist you.
In order to drop body fat you need to create a calorie deficit in the body on a daily or a weekly scale. For Jo Average that means eating less calories than that are burnt through training & activities, whilst maintaining a high level of protein intake. This approach starts to burn away fat revealing a leaner physique, however in order to maintain sufficient energy levels (especially if you train twice a day) carbohydrate consumption needs to to be comparitively higher.
So what is Carbohydrate Cycling?
Carbohydrate cycling is a term that covers a variety of nutrition plans. These plans rotate the amount of carbohydrates you consume in your meals on a meal by meal, a daily or a weekly basis. By rotating the levels of these nutrients it creates a highly anabolic effect on the body making it easier to build and maintain lean mass and burn body fat.
Avoiding a Fat Loss Plateau
Something to note carefully is the fact that if you stay on a low carbohydrate and a low calories diet for too long, your fat loss will start to plateau because your metabolic rate will reduce, hormone (testosterone and estrogen) output will also reduce meaning fat loss will become impossible as the body is in a starvation mode. Carbohydrate cycling “tricks” the body through infrequent high carbohydrate intake days which has the effect of keeping it out of the starvation mode that arrests/ slows the fat loss process. Introducing occassional high carbohydrate days replenishes the depleted glycogen stores in the muscles and the high fat days stimulate the body to use more of its fat reserves for energy provision.
To put it simply, on the high carbohydrate days your body uses carbohydrates for energy and high fat days the body uses fat for energy. For a drop in body fat to occur there needs to be more high fat days than high carbohydrate days on a weekly basis. For this approach to work, the nutrition plan needs to have 1-2 days in the week where the calories come from a high protein, high carbohydrate, low fat diet. Also another 2-3 days where calories come from high protein, low carbohydrate, high fat. Finally the remaining days in the week will be high protein, mid carbohydrate, mid fat. Now when you step back and review this as a dietary plan you should note that the key factor is variation; no ‘boring’ diet plan just an intelligent variation.
When taking the carbohydrate cycling approach, your highest volume training should occur on the high carbohydrate days, this ensures that the carbohydrates are used post workout so that glycogen levels in the muscle can be replenished effectively.
Here’s an overview of a carbohydrate cycling plan.
Monday:
Training – Once in am
High protein, low carbohydrate, high fat
Tuesday:
Training – Day off
High protein, low carbohydrate, high fat
Wednesday:
Training – twice, am and pm
High protein, high carbohydrate, low fat
Thursday:
Training – Day off
High protein, low carbohydrate, high fat
Friday:
Training – Once in am
High protein, mid carbohydrate, mid fat
Saturday:
Training – once in am
High protein, mid carbohydrate, mid fat
Sunday:
Training – Day off
High protein, low carbohydrate, high fat
Remember that the plan shown above is a specific dietary programme which is bespoke for someone who is a regular trainer with family commitments, there are other strategies that cycle carbohydrates within a daily nutrition programme, you have a high carbohydrate meal after training and a low carbohydrate meal before training. Thus, this can be formed into a plan for a client who trains in the evening and is interested in fat loss giving them a carbohydrate cycling programme similar to this:
Breakfast- 7am:
High protein, low carbohydrate, high fat – eg. Meat, eggs and nuts
Mid am- 10am:
High protein, low carbohydrate, high fat – eg. Greek yoghurt, ground flax seeds, handful of mixed nuts
Lunch- 1pm:
High protein, low carbohydrate, high fat – eg. Chicken or Fish, Mediterranean salad drizzled with extra virgin olive oil
Mid pm- 3pm:
High protein, low carbohydrate, high fat – eg. Turkey, cashew nuts, celery, aspargus
Workout – 6pm:
Post workout shake- 7pm (Protein shake with a 2:1 ratio of carbohydrates:protein)
Evening meal- 7:30pm:
High protein, high carbohydrate, low fat – eg. Chicken/ Turkey/ Fish, mixed vegetables, brown rice
Overall it should be noted that nutrition programmes can/ should be fairly flexible when carbohydrate cycling is being used, however there are a few simple rules to follow when carbohydrate cycling for fat loss:
- You earn your carbohydrates, so keep them for meals 1-2 hours after training.
- On low carbohydrate days ensure that your keep your healthy fat intake high
- For high carbohydrate meals use starchy carbohydrates, such as sweet potato, brown rice and potatoes. Pizzas and other starchy junk meals are off the menu!
- Have a least 3 menus for your weekly plan reflecting ths differing needs of high carbohydrate, low carbohydrate and mid carbohydrate.
- Further accelerate fat loss by an increase in the number of low carbohydrate days and reduce the number of high carbohydrate days. Remember that at least 1 high carbohydrate meal is needed to avoid the body going into starvation mode.
- Measure your progress so that you know if the cycling is having the desired effect. Using fat measurement scales and/ or callipers should be done at a consistent time, e.g. morning before breakfast, and should allow for food intake.
Carbohydrate cycling is a great way to accelerate fat loss so use it correctly and expect to see your fat loss reach new levels!