A Quick Guide to Carb Cycling

Carb cycling is a relatively new form of diet manipulation, one that promises to provide the weight loss benefits of low carb dieting without the effects on performance, concentration, or mood. But what is carb cycling? What are the benefits? And what is the best way to implement it into your diet? This quick guide to carb cycling aims to help you find out.

What is carb cycling?

The idea behind carb cycling is to manipulate the amount of carbohydrates you have during the week. Some days will have little to no carbohydrates, while others will have medium or high levels. There are several different variations of carb cycling, with different ratios of carb and non-carb days.

One of the most common versions of carb cycling is to stay low carb on non-training days, and then to consume carbs around your training sessions. This theoretically gives you the benefits of low carb diets (weight loss and weight maintenance) without the common drawbacks (a drop in performance).

But carb cycling doesn’t have to be a weekly thing, it can also be long term. Carb cycling could refer to dropping carbs for 6-12 weeks during a cut, then reintroducing them during maintenance, before increasing them further for a bulk.

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What are the Benefits of Carb Cycling?

One of the biggest benefits of carb cycling is that it allows you to have a lot more freedom while sticking to a low carbohydrate diet. If you were following a traditional low or no-carb diet and your friends invited you out for pizza you would either have to cancel or order a salad! With carb cycling, you could schedule the meal into a high-carb day and eat your pizza guilt-free.

There are psychological benefits to following a diet this way, you are given more variety, more flexibility, and you feel more in control of your diet. Eating cake is no longer “cheating” on your diet, it is part of your long term strategy and not such a big deal. You can add in an extra low-carb day if you feel the need. However, remember how calorie dense foods like cake and pizza are. You still want to eat methodically in accordance with your goals. So even if it’s a high carb day, over eating is still over eating, so remember to enjoy yourself but stay mindful.

There are also physiological benefits to carb cycling. One of the biggest downsides of restricting carbohydrates is that it can lead to glycogen depletion. Glycogen is crucial for exercise, and it is stored in the muscles ready to be used during your workout. The main source of glycogen are carbohydrates, so it doesn’t take long for you to use up all of the stored glycogen in your muscles.

Luckily, your body is incredible at adapting to situations, and when stored glycogen gets depleted it can create an enzyme that helps you convert glucose into glycogen more efficiently. This means that the next time you eat carbs (on a high carb day) your body will store more glycogen than usual.

This means that your workouts will be better, and you’ll be able to work harder even on low or no-carb days.

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What are the Downsides of Carb Cycling?

Carb cycling doesn’t have too many downsides, it is an improvement on most low-carb diets. The biggest downside of carb cycling is the extra effort required to track your calories and macros. If you are planning on spending 5 days out of the week eating low or no carbs then you are going to have to spend quite a lot of your time double-checking food labels, typing foods into myfitnesspal.com, and carefully picking recipes.

This is all a lot of effort, and for many people it is enough to put them off dieting altogether. The question here is whether carb cycling is actually worth the effort? For bodybuilders, athletes, and physique models, carb cycling is absolutely worth considering. For a regular guy who just wants to lose a bit of weight and lift some weights in the gym, carb cycling may be unnecessary. There are quite a few habits that should be implemented into your lifestyle to improve nutrition BEFORE you decide to introduce carb cycling.

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How to Incorporate Carb Cycling into Your Diet

Let’s assume that you are considering carb cycling as a way to lose some excess body fat while preserving muscle mass. If this is the case, then your best bet is to restrict (but not remove) carbohydrates from non-training days, and then add them in on training days. If you workout 4 days per week, then that would be 3 days of low carb intake and 4 days of medium or high carb intake.

Remember, the ultimate goal is to lose weight, so you still need to stay within your calorie deficit. If you have worked out your calorie target as 2,200 calories per day. Then you have two options. You can either consume 2,200 calories every day and change the macros. Or you can consume 2,400 calories on workout days and 2,000 calories on non-workout days. With the extra 400 calories coming from carbohydrates. For example, those extra 400 calories on workout days could be a half cup of white rice the meal before you workout(100cals), a half a cup of oats in your post workout shake(150cals), and 1 sweet potato with the meal after you workout (150cals). The days you don't workout you would eat those same meals without the added carbs.

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What are Re-feed Days?

Re-feed days are days where you increase your carbohydrate intake quite a bit. They are very popular in bodybuilding and physique competition training. The idea is that you would follow a low carbohydrate fat loss diet for 12 weeks (or however long). Then every 3 weeks or so, you would have one day where you eat a load of carbohydrates, sort of like a cheat day.

A typical week would look like this:

Day	Calories	Carb Intake
Monday	1800	200g
Tuesday	1800	200g
Wednesday	1800	200g
Thursday	1800	200g
Friday	1800	200g
Saturday	3600	600g
Sunday	1800	200g

The calories and carb intake numbers are just examples by the way. Re-feed days are similar to the traditional cheat day; in that you are able to eat a lot more “junk” food. But they are planned in advance, require you to stick to macro and calorie targets, and serve a purpose (increased glycogen storage).

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Should You Carb Cycle?

This really depends on what your goals are. If you are looking to lose weight, then there are easier ways to achieve this. Just follow a simple calorie-deficit diet. But if you are prepared to put in the extra work and want to train at 100%, then carb cycling is a great option. Hiring a nutrition coach is a great way to reach your goals and oftentimes finding out what the heck your goals even are. You can schedule a consultation with me here if you are ready to create a plan and stick to it.

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