Seriously, sorry for the novella but until I get my blog going: If you spend a lot of time working out or reading fitness magazines, you have probably heard of ‘carb cycling’. What does this mean and how does it benefit you? What exactly is it? Carbohydrate cycling is an eating plan that alternates between high carbohydrate days and low carbohydrate days. People use this plan to maintain their muscle but burn fat. Your high carbohydrate days should be on your most intense workout days (leg day, full body workouts, etc.). Your body will have to pull from your stored energy source for power, which will burn fat. Protein: eat about 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. This amount does not need to change throughout the entire process. Protein helps build muscle without losing any muscle mass. Lean protein such as fish, chicken, turkey and egg whites are your best bets. Fats: HEALTHY FATS are imperative to your diet. The general rule of thumb is to keep it at around 20- 30% of your daily calorie intake, less than this on your high carbohydrate days. Healthy fats to go with: olive oil, peanut butter and walnuts. Carbohydrates are a major source of energy for the body, and carbohydrates is what will be manipulated in this diet for it to be effective. You need to eat complex carbohydrates and fiber, think, brown rice, wheat pasta and quinoa. Fiber: Women need 25-30 grams and men need 38 grams of fiber. (WebMD) How does it work? The key is to keep your calorie intake at a level that is optimal for burning fat and losing weight. We all know that 1lb of fat equals 3500 calories, so to lose a lb a week you would need a 3500 calorie deficit. If you are maintaining your weight at 2100 calories a day, your weekly intake is 14,700 calories. To lose one lb a week you would reduce your weekly intake to 11,200. Obviously since you are carb cycling you would not have the same amount of calorie consumption all seven days (which would be 1600 a day) because the high carbohydrates days you will consume more. Say you have 3 high carbohydrates days a week- on the high carbohydrates days you decide to consume 2300 calories, this means you would consume 1,075 calories on low carbohydrates days; that may seem like too little calories for some, but this is how you will get results. Who is this for? Most people who use this method are weight lifters/ body builders. They usually go through a stage where they beef up their weight lifting for a couple months, or in ‘off season’ and lay off the cardio. This will allow them to really build muscle. The downside of this is they will put on fat as well. When they have built the muscle mass they want and are ready to burn fat they carbohydrate cycle, allowing them to burn the fat without losing muscle. Here are some more in depth articles if you are interested in trying this method. bodybuilding/fun/build-muscle-burn-fat-simultaneously.htm webmd/food-recipes/features/fiber-how-much-do-you-need
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 11:04:51 +0000