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Originally Posted by alessa
When you guys carb cycle, how low and high do you go in carbs and calories?
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It’s about creating an energy deficit while depleting your body of carbs/glycogen. In other words, more activity means you can eat more. But don’t just starve yourself, you need activity to push out the glycogen and oxidize released fats. So low intensity and long endurance training is needed to keep things humming along. Strength training too, obviously.
What I usually do while depleting: eat nuts to fill in between meals (not peanuts, a legume, but nuts; such as pistachios, almonds and cashews). The nuts are the first thing I start to decrease as the diet moves along – that and increasing cardio sessions. While depleting, diet is strictly meats, eggs, seafood, green veggies (no root veggies like carrots, potatoes or yams!), onions, mushrooms… even mozzarella cheese as a garnishment.
During carb loads I eat a lot – so much I fill out and feel strong the next day. In fact, if I don’t take in enough water, a dry carb load can cause serious cramping during a power workout. I am usually sick of food by the time the carb load is exhausted and welcome a return to depletion.
Carb loading is where men and women will differ some… you’ll need to play with the total calories you can take in. But trust me, it tends to be a lot. Perhaps Natalia can fill us in on how high she took her carb loads.
When your body is fully depleted, it will shift focus on replenishment before fat gain. So you are able to basically overeat during a carb load and still lose fat. Studies suggest that the first 12 hours are actually really difficult to gain fat – after that, its best to stick to high-carb, low fat food choices until you return to depleting again.
Again, its all about keeping a training log and maintaining an expected fat loss tempo - each week you should expect to shave off a routine amount of bodyweight. Since your weight will change a lot, it's best to weigh in during the same phase - I like to judge weight changes after carb loading but I do track them daily to monitor fluctuations. If I notice I sudden increases while deplteing - something went wrong... poor food choice, salty meal, something. While deplting your bodyweight should consistently drop...