Carb Cycling

You just avoid carbs, or try, to eat as little as possible on days you don't work-out due to belief that it taps into your fat stores faster.

Personally.... I think it's stupid. You can lose weight just as easy and fast if you eat at a caloric deficit and track ALL of your food you consume.

Now, however, I do believe in carb back-loading. Back-loading is when you eat your daily carb allowance LATER in the evening, preferable after you workout for the day. Since doing this I've noticed my strength and energy go up a significant amount and I don't feel so.... sluggish is a good word. And if you like to eat later on in the day, when you're at home, relaxing, this is a good lifestyle for that. My wife thinks I have a problem when I come into the room to watch a movie with 2-3 bowls full of popcorn, ice-cream, and about 5 yogurts, lol.

kalamitykate83 wrote: »

Oh ok, I've not heard of doing it that way ... so basically, sticking to protein and fats during the day then in the evening having a carb heavy meal, i.e. rice, vegetables, yogurt?

At the moment I'm averaging about 70-90g carbs, 50-60g fat and 125-140g protein per day. It's not much weight loss that I'm after, more fat loss and toning up / building muscle.

Yep. Or you can "fast", and not eat at all until later in the evening. It's all personal preference and how you feel / preform in the gym.

Your protein is a small amount over what you actually need, but, it's fine if you prefer more protein over fats / carbs. You only need 0.8g of protein per lb. of bodyweight. Anymore more is overkill / personal preference / or if you use steroids (you need more protein for the hormones)

You won't build muscle eating in a caloric deficit, but, you will lose some body-fat which in return will make you look bigger / ripped since more raw muscle is showing now.

And I can't stress this enough, weight loss comes from eating less, not avoiding carbs or a candy bar.

Sure, there will be days where your body-weight will fluctuate like wildfire, especially since you're a female, and if you take in a lot of carbs one day as compared to barely any the day before.

I have a few people on my friends list who are very focused on being carb free... I think its silly to do something to have a healthy lifestyle if you can't stick to it long term. I've lost over 50 lbs in the past year just counting calories and fueling my body with healthy choices.

You do understand though, that at the end of the day; whatever protocol you follow, whether it be intermittent fasting, or carb cycling, or low carb, etc... that your weight loss is still 100% bound to calories in vs calories out. If doing one of those modalities helps you achieve your deficit (if trying to lose) or surplus (if trying to gain) and you better adhere to that modality, then that's the one that will give you success. There is no bio-hacking the body from a weight-loss perspective by doing one over the other. Now from a gym performance perspective (aka...nutrient timing), there is evidence that timing your carb intake more heavily around your training will have a positive effect, which makes sense as if you have more energy to devote to training, you will train better. More carbs available after training, you will be able to train again quicker.

Not in any way dismissing Martyqueen52's experience, but thought you might like to know that men and women actually process carbs differently.

There has been some research on carb loading and such in sports medicine, but when one of the main researchers heard from a number of female athletes that they weren't experience the same benefits that were shown in the studies (which were only done on men), he went back and did the same studies on women, partly to prove that the results would still be present.

Turns out they aren't. Women do not experience the benefit from carb loading that men did, and in fact it often led to poorer performance the next day, physically. We don't seem to be able to process carbs as well as men do - no research has been done on why, as yet.

We also don't experience the benefits of a higher protein diet when it comes to building muscle either (the same researcher re-did another study, after the first results were so different).

I mention this because from what I remember, carb cycling is something that was started by a man, involving both protein and carbs as part of it, and so while it might work for him, the effects for a woman are not going to be the same, in all likelihood. :-/