Is Carb Cycling the way to go?

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LuckieSunday
LuckieSunday Posts: 1 Member
in Introduce Yourself
Hey all. Long time free user and just pulled the trigger on a Pro membership.

I’ve hired a PT and he’s got me on a carb cycling routine. I’m a 46 yr old generally healthy man looking to gain more strength and lose about 20 lbs.

What are your thoughts on carb cycling combined with strength training?

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  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
    edited September 2022
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    LuckieSunday wrote: »
    What are your thoughts on carb cycling combined with strength training?

    For most people it's an irrelevance and an unnecessary complication. (if someone is following a very low carb diet benefits may be greater compared to someone following a "normal" diet.)

    You have far bigger carb stores compared to the relatively small calorie burn from strength training and even a hard workout isn't going to deplete muscle glycogen significantly.

    Although this article is mainly about fasted training there's a couple of very relevant paragraphs about carb usage during strength training and studies linked.
    https://biolayne.com/articles/nutrition/training-fasted-can-you-still-make-gains/

    Main takeaway is that if it makes you feel better it might have some benefit in training better but that's more a feeling than a physiological need.




  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,166 Member
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    Good advice from sijomial, IMO, and the source he links is very well-regarded, science-based.

    For myself, I prefer the simplest routine that can get me to my goals. Therefore, for me, there was no explicit carb cycling, even though I'm pretty active athletically. I strive to get good overall nutrition on average, hit my calorie goal, and that seems to work fine: I lost 50-some pounds a few years back, have stayed at a healthy weight the same way since, no obvious degradation in exercise performance or body composition from any of that.

    I do use the MFP standard method of having a base calorie goal, then logging exercise and eating those calories on the days I work out (i.e., most days 😉). That works extremely well for me, because my main exercises are seasonal and weather dependent so variable . . . but it also does implicitly cause some nutrient cycling, because there are more calories on days with more workout activity. It isn't as structured as carb cycling, though.

    Best wishes!

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