Success with weight lifting and carb cycling?

Uhmanduh

I'm looking into carb cycling and weight lifting to help get my weight down and hormones under a little better control. Has anyone has success with either of these? I've been doing just low low LOW carb and need to switch it up a little bit.

Dragonwolf

Carb cycling has never been something that appealed to me to intentionally do, but it works for some people. I don't know whether it works for PCOS, though I'd suspect that it's rather counterproductive if you have insulin resistance.

That said, weight lifting is great in general, and in my experience, doubly so for PCOS. It seems that, as long as you're lifting sufficiently heavy (none of this 5lb weights for a million reps kind of thing, get a barbell or some dumbbells that are heavy enough to do compound lifts for 5-10 reps for 2-5 sets), it can help balance hormone levels and encourage things to start working properly again. That's been my experience, anyway.

And no, weight lifting doesn't require the carb cycling, before you ask. You can lift on low carb as well, so you don't need to worry about that if you end up deciding to just stay low carb. That said, the two do go together fairly well, and it's fairly easy to time high carb days/meals with lifting days/times and have higher carbs on lifting days, in the food times just before and just after the lifting session.

A_Dabauer

I agree with Dragonwolf, if you have Insulin Resistance, carbs may totally derail your efforts to lose weight.

It's lean protein you need to build muscle not carbs. Carbs are an easier form of energy for you to use but once you are low carb, your body learns to burn fat instead. I only use carbs as fuel on days I want to preform exceptionally, race days and such. Even then I choose carbs with a low Glycemic Index (means they break into sugar slower). If you are having a hard time with low carb and you need some mental relief I'd suggest adding a few carbs that are low on the Glycemic Index on your high activity days. This means you shouldn't spike your blood sugar as badly (avoiding the Insulin response) as well as the excess glycogen in your body from the carbs should be burned off having less of an effect.

There is no one magic way to lose weight, it's about experimenting and finding what works for both your body and your mind. Good luck!