When done properly, carb cycling is a great way of making the body more efficient at fat loss and in some cases building muscle.
It creates the ideal environment for manipulating your metabolism by stimulating the thyroid through planned high and low carb days. Typically I do it when I hit a plateau in my fat loss due to my metabolism slowing down, even when I’m burning a lot of calories doing full body circuits and fasted cardio.
The amount of carbohydrates you should use varies from person to person, according to body composition. The leaner you are, the more insulin-resistant you are to carbohydrates, which means you can getaway with higher amounts. By contrast, a person with more body fat is less insulin-resistant and therefore needs fewer carbohydrates.
The goal is to first spike your metabolism to allow for a higher calorie turnover and then switch to low carb days to further ignite your metabolism and keep it firing. On planned high carbohydrate days, I increase the amount of carbohydrates I take in, starting with 50g in each meal to start with.
So let’s say I typically take in around 400g of complex carbohydrates.I up this this to 600g for a day by increasing my intake of complex carbohydrates, such as oats, sweet potato, white potato, white or brown Basmati rice and wholemeal pasta.
I find slow digesting carbohydrate better than fast acting, high sugar carbohydrate because you can control the rate they are absorbed much better, which means you gradually fill up your body’s glycogen levels.High carbs days leave me feeling energised and my muscles look much fuller. It’s a great feeling when you’re dieting for a competition and feel drained and depleted.After a high carb day, I follow the opposite approach by reducing 50 g of carbohydrates from each meal. This sudden reduction of carbs makes my body a lot more efficient at burning calories but the downside is I feel tired because carbs are the body’s main fuel source. I’m effectively running on a low tank.To counteract this I consume more salmon and mackerel for more essential fatty acids and more red meat and whole eggs for more naturally occurring saturated fats. Also included are walnuts and almonds , the foods will enable the body to look to this as a secondary fuel to maintain consistent energy levels whilst still keeping my body firing on all cylinders for optimal fat loss.
