Carb cycling? (long winded)

sweetteadrinker2

Hey guys! I've been mostly missing for awhile with finals and new baby goats arriving on the daily.

Here's my latest quandary, carb cycling. I've become rather listless and tired lately(medical condition rearing it's ugly head because of allergies and weather) so I'm not up for cooking much right now and have found that being lowcarb to keto levels does not jive well with my job and my current situation(needing to get up multiple times per night to check on pregnant animals). I seem to do much better with some carbs when I'm feeling very tired and strung out. So I've had some higher carb days (not logged-given up on that till the does are done with having babies) and some of my normal low carb days.

It comes to mind that this is in effect unintended/unplanned carb cycling. I like it. But for this to work out long term it needs to be more deliberate than my drinking of oj and munching of nut bars.

So, explain like a for dummies book how carb cycling is supposed to be done. I've looked at articles and they're all just so confusing to my poor little wrung out brain. Is it as simple as eat 50grams these days and some higher amount the others? How many days of each? Stuff like that.

Thank you in advance.

lowjax75

A lot of people use carb cycling for building muscle, but many people also use it for weight loss. There are many different opinions out there and many different ways to do it. You do have to find what works for you. I've done it a bit in the past and just simply ate VLC (>10 carbs) for a few days and then higher carb (~50 carbs) for a couple days, and then back to VLC. I've done similar things with calories (1,200 on low days and 2,500 on high days). I just usually did 3 days lower, 2 days upper, 3 days lower, etc. Some people like to do 2 down, 2 up, 2 down, 1 up (7 days).. so they can have the same up and down days the same day of the week.

It pretty much is as simple as you described it. Your up and down counts will be what you want your limits to be. For me, very low carb (VLC) works great. For other people, it doesn't. Find your low limit and use that for down days and then go higher for the other days.