Tuesday 12 April 2016

Carb Cycling

I've been doing a lot of research in to Carb cycling lately, Carb cycling a process using high carb days, low carb day and moderate carb days. This allows you to build up your glycogen stores (the preferred source of energy used by the body) on high carb days and then deplete these stores on low carb days, once your body has used up all the glycogen for energy, it will begin to burn fat for fuel instead. 
This is a great way of boosting your metabolism and therefore becoming a fat burning furnace! Giving you great results. It is very popular method of many body builders these days.
 You may read this and think, 'great i'll eat low carb every day and that'll just burn fat and i'll look amazing' No!, A purely low carb diet may work to begin with, but it is not sustainable. You''l body will soon get used to the lack of carbs and adjust, your metabolism will slow down and you won't burn as much fuel, not to mention the lack of carbs will make you tired, grouchy, do i need to go on.. Thats why long term, these low carb, atkins diets or whatever you call them don't really last.
You need to mix your carbs up, keep your body guessing, keep it working hard, keep it burning fat!

So... Im going to give it a go. I've hit a bit of a platau fat loss wise. My diet is balanced and healthy, i hit my macros, with a deficit and i hit it hard at the gym 5 days a week.

Im going to do 2 high carb days on my busiest most active days of the week, I'll do 2 low carb days on my rest days from the gym or where my workout perhaps isn't as gruelling (definitely not on leg day!) and then the other 3 days of the week i will have moderate carb days - normal day of eating.

My protein will remain the same each day, regardless of what day it is, i eat just over 1g per lb of bodyweight.
I'm going to eat higher fat on my low carb days and moderate fat on my moderate & high carb days. Only my amount of carbs will change on these days.
My low carb days will be low calorie(1347kcal) and my high carb days high calorie (2000kcal).

This sounds like a lot of hard work, but once you've worked out your macros, its pretty plain sailing- well hopefully! I haven't started yet.

Im going to use myfitnesspal for a few weeks to work out what sort of food intake i can have on each day then once I've got a rough idea, i probably won't track my macros.
I pretty much hit my macros each day without tracking and I'm not that bothered if they're not exact, as long as they are around about. 
I don't want to track to the point where it stops being fun.

Im probably going to start on monday, will give me time to plan some meals for low carb days and high carb.

I shall track my progress and keep updating.



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