Carb cycling

Sweettart

I have been seeing a lot of people doing carb cycling and thinking about giving it a try. Another thing that caught my eye was calorie zig zag.

What were your results and do you suggest trying?

cajuntank

Carb cycling and "zig zag diet" are the same thing from what I recall. All carb cycling is, is basically structuring your carb intake to attune to your activity. Your days off, less carbs. Your workout days, more carbs. Overall calorie balance over time still dictates weight loss, maintenance, or weight gain depending on your goals.

Carb cycling is considered nutrient timing, which should give you slightly better gym performance. How much better? That's somewhat debatable, but at most, maybe as much as 10% over your lifetime if done for training life (going off of info from Dr. Mike Israetel and Eric Helms). So not much in the scope of things, but for a professional athlete, might be the difference in placing over his or her competitor. For the regular gym goer or someone just wanting to lose weight and get in shape, usually not as much impact and creates complexity to the diet which might cause adherence issues.

If you can adhere to the protocol, give it a try and see if your gym performance improves. But again, its overall calorie balance which will dictate your weight goals.

psuLemon

cajuntank wrote: »

Carb cycling and "zig zag diet" are the same thing from what I recall. All carb cycling is, is basically structuring your carb intake to attune to your activity. Your days off, less carbs. Your workout days, more carbs. Overall calorie balance over time still dictates weight loss, maintenance, or weight gain depending on your goals.

Carb cycling is considered nutrient timing, which should give you slightly better gym performance. How much better? That's somewhat debatable, but at most, maybe as much as 10% over your lifetime if done for training life (going off of info from Dr. Mike Israetel and Eric Helms). So not much in the scope of things, but for a professional athlete, might be the difference in placing over his or her competitor. For the regular gym goer or someone just wanting to lose weight and get in shape, usually not as much impact and creates complexity to the diet which might cause adherence issues.

If you can adhere to the protocol, give it a try and see if your gym performance improves. But again, its overall calorie balance which will dictate your weight goals.

Pretty much. To expand on the philosphy of Eric Helms, but is his priorities:




Overall, if you aren't fairly advanced in nutrition and training, the benefit will almost be nile. Now, if you like to cycle you can, but I would question if there will be a benefit.