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CARB CYCLING DIET
🕑 Added 2023-05-26 11:51:10 +0000 UTCCarb cycling diet or rotation diet. This method of getting rid of subcutaneous fat has many names. But the meaning is always the same - “floating” calories. For several days in a row you get the minimum caloric value practically without using carbs in your diet (you use mainly proteins).
All this time your fat is actively burning as a source of energy, but at the same time it is increasing weakness and slowing down metabolism due to lack of energy. After a few days you arrange the nosh-up by adding a lot of carbs to your diet in order to speed up the metabolism and improve your health. After saturation, you're going down again. This cycling of "starvation rations" and "global nosh-up" allows for more efficient burning of subcutaneous fat than a traditional low-carb diet.
CARB CYCLING DIET
The Carbon Cycling Diet is a modified version of the regular low-carb diet. Why did it get that name? It's simple: the main role in this diet is to constantly variate the amount of carbs consumed.
- First you consume SMALL AMOUNT OF CARBS = fat is burning + metabolism is slowing down
- Then you consume HUGE AMOUNT OF CARBS = fat is not burning + metabolism is accelerating
Why does it work well? Because you get all the advantages and minimize the disadvantages. ADVANTAGES: lack of carbs, required for weight loss. DISADVANTAGES: metabolism slowing down (fat burning slowing down).
Everything in the body is CONNECTED and LOGICAL. There is a basic energy source that is very cheap and therefore best suited for processing into energy. These are the CARBS that are stored as GLYCOGEN in the muscles and cells of the liver. And there are emergency energy sources, which are very expensive and therefore spent last (when there are no more carbs). These are PROTEINS and FATS. Including the ones that are stored under the skin.
CYCLING drains glycogen (carbs) reserves and thus forces to use FATS (you lose weight). A few ZERO-CARB DAYS maximally drain glycogen reserves (the body starts burning fat). And when the body is ready to immediately turn on the emergency slowing down of energy consumption (to slow down the metabolism and fat burning), we start CARBING. By filling the muscles and liver with glycogen in a day or two, we block the “dangerous ricochet” upon our metabolism. After stabilization, we go back to ZERO-CARB days, and then start CARBING again. Two steps forward after we took a step back. Two advantages after one disadvantage. We're moving in a wave, cycling lack and excess.
On the first day of carbs limitation the body loses glycogen reserves; on the second (third) day of carbs limitation the body starts to burn fat; during the following days, while maintaining a low level of carb consumption, hunger stress adaptation is activated, which is aimed at weight preservation (this is a deterioration in the work of thyroid hormones, increased secretion of catabolic hormones, reduction of insulin secretion, slowing down the transformation of fat into glucose, etc.) In general, if you do not add carbs during this time, it is possible to slow down or even stop the fat burning process completely.
APPROXIMATE PATTERN
- 1-5 DAYS = ZERO-CARBS (2-4 g of protein + 0.0-1 g of carbs per 1 kg body weight)
- 1-2 DAYS = CARBING (1-2 g of protein + 3-5 g of carbs per 1 kg)
- CYCLING
The cycle should be repeated many times. The result in theory should be as follows: weight is reduced due to fat deposits, the percentage of muscle tissue remains the same.
For the first couple of days, the body behaves like during normal zero-carb diet. Namely, it switches to self-support and starts using the most convenient fuel - its own glycogen. Having quickly exhausted its reserves in the liver and muscles, it starts splitting the fat, and by the end of the second day it is accelerated to the maximum. But we can not continue in the same rhythm, otherwise the metabolism and the process of fat discharge will slow down too much in a couple of days.
This is because the body perceives the situation of carb deficiency as life-threatening and keeps the "necessary" fat reserves flowing "into the furnace" of less valuable muscle cells. So when you sit on a "starving" diet, the weight drops sharply at first and then suddenly freezes for a long time. But if you limit the metabolism on the 6th day with an additional infusion of carbs, the body continues to consume the existing fat, and the consumed carbs go to replenish the glycogen.
A four-day or five-day carb diet cycle is not a rule at all. . . Many people have successfully modified this pattern, for example, five days in a row, from Monday to Friday, they don’t eat carbs, and then at the weekend they are feed up with carbs. You must experiment to find the best pattern for you. Zero-carb diet combined with the principle of cycling is the most effective tool I've tried. It really works.
COMPLEXITY OF CARB CYCLING DIET
This diet can be very effective. As a matter of fact, it’s not surprisingly, I was the “driest” due to this diet. But it requires INDIVIDUAL ADJUSTMENT! It's very easy to make a mistake. IT'S A VERY COMPLEX DIET, BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO PICK TWO THINGS UP INDIVIDUALLY:
- NUMBER OF ZERO-CARB DAYS (by days)
- AMOUNT OF CARBING (by days and by amount)
First, the number of days may be excessive or insufficient. One person can actively slow down the metabolism for 3-4 days and will need to start eating carbs, and another person can follow the starving diet for a week, continuing to actively burn fat. If you give it a lot of carbs in this situation, the fat burning process will stop completely.
Secondly, carbing may be too big or too small. It is enough for one person to eat a large portion of rice for breakfast, and his/her metabolism will go as fast as before the diet. And the other one needs to feed himself a lot of food for that within two days. It also matters whether you eat fast or slow carbs. All these aspects are very difficult to adjust, as your wishes will try to influence the choice of a more "sweet" strategy. Under these conditions, I wouldn't recommend such a cyclical diet to a beginner.
CONCLUSION. EXPERIMENTALLY REQUIRED TO:
- SELECT NUMBER OF ZERO-CARB DAYS
- SELECT AMOUNT OF CARBING
I can't tell you the exact numbers, because an ectomorph may need carbing in two days, and an endomorph may need a whole week. You have to experiment and see the result.
I can only give a rough guide with which to begin these experiments. To start with, I would try 2 days of ZERO-CARB + 1 day of CARBING
I'd look at how I feel and look in the mirror. If I feel good (no weakness, my working weights do not decrease much), I would increase the ZERO-CARB duration up to 3 days + 1 day of carbing. I would work in this mode for 1-2 weeks watching how I’m feeling and of course how do I look in the mirror.
- FEELING GOOD = you can deepen zero-carb nutrition (add days)
- FEELING BAD = you should reduce the duration of zero-carb nutrition or increase carbing
- YOU SEE THE PROGRESS IN THE MIRROR = you can change nothing
- YOU DON’T SEE THE PROGRESS IN THE MIRROR = zero-carbs and carbing must be changed
Ideally, you should find a balance of zero-carb nutrition and carbing, so that you see lose weight in the mirror and feel good (metabolism does not slow down).
Somewhere for 50% of people it will be about 4 days of zero-carb nutrition + 1 day of carbing. And on the day of carbing probably makes sense not to eat the whole day, but to eat only the first half of the day.
It also makes sense to experiment with the glycemic index of carbs that you use during the carbing. You can try to eat simple carbs (something sweet) or complex carbs (porridge) depending on the duration of the carbing. In theory, it is better to eat complex carbs on a diet; in practice I have noticed that if you have a short "gap" for feeding (for example, only the first half of one day), then simple carbs work better. Maybe you won't have it that way. You need to experiment.
CARB CYCLING DIET EXAMPLE
STAGE 1: ZERO-CABS (2-5 days)Day menu (protein + fiber, minimum of carbs):
- Chicken breast (500 g)
- Eggs (10 whites + 3 yolks)
- Non-fat quark (300 g)
- Vegetables (300-500 g)
If you are hungry, you can add breasts or fish (animal protein source)
STAGE 2: CARBING (1 day)
- Oatmeal (200 g)
- Buckwheat or Rice (300 g)
- Protein and fiber without restriction
That's the day we get the excess carbs. I gave an example with oatmeal and rice. It's not a dogma, it's just an option. Perhaps you like buckwheat or pasta more. Or you might even want some honey. On this day, you can experiment with carbs. But remember that this is not a day for nosh-up. Carbs are not for pleasure. First of all, it’s a tool to prevent the metabolism from slowing down. So you choose products not in terms of taste, but in terms of efficiency for further fat burning.
CARB CYCLING DIET AND KETO DIET
CARB CYCLING DIET is often confused with KETO DIET as both diets have a ZERO-CARB PART that forces fat to be used as energy. This process itself is called KETOSIS. However, these are two different diets, because in CARB CYCLING DIET carbs are periodically included into the system and used as energy, and in KETO DIET the body is deprived of this pleasure and forced to completely "switch" to the use of "emergency reserves" (fats).
- CARB CYCLING DIET = ZERO-CARBS + CARBING
- KETO DIET = ZERO-CARBS without CARBING
Keto diet is very dangerous. The load on the body is quite substantial, because you force it to do what the body is not used to do (get fast energy from "long" fats and proteins). In addition, you will make your gastrointestinal tract suffer from the unusual load. As you'll have to replace the usual carbs. With what? With FATS of course.
But okay... ...health hazard. The danger to the effectiveness of loosing weight is also very high in keto diets because you completely deprive the body of the opportunity to use the main source of energy and leave only emergency ones. Your body under these conditions can trigger an emergency protection - slow down your metabolism and then the fat burning rate will slow down to a minimum with general weakness at workout. The scales and the mirror won't show anything good. ... On the other hand, if you are able to adjust the keto mode in your body, you will completely switch to using fat and be able to eat fatty foods.
