Prior to the past couple weeks, I had never done any type of carb cycling before. Since I’m so close to my next fitness shoot, my coach had me carb cycle a little bit to prep for the big day.
What is “carb cycling”?
Carb Cycling is a term where you manipulate your carbohydrate intake. You will change the amount of carbs you have each day from high ranges to lower ranges. This technique has been proven successful to speed up your metabolism and to keep your body guessing.
How do I carb cycle?
There are many different programs you can try but all of them share the same concept. You will have some high carb days, some low and maybe some medium level days. Here are some examples:
- Day 1: High Carb Day
- Day 2: Medium Carb Day
- Day 3: Low Carb Day
- Day 4: Low Carb Day
Then you would continue to cycle in this order for as long as you’d like.
Here are a couple other variations…
- Monday = No Carb
- Tuesday = Low Carb
- Wednesday = High Carb
- Thursday = No Carb
- Friday = Low carb
- Saturday = High Carb
- Sunday = Low Carb
Or….
- Monday = Low Carb
- Tuesday = No Carb
- Wednesday = Low Carb
- Thursday = High Carb
- Friday = No carb
- Saturday = High Carb
- Sunday = Low Carb
Here is a great chart to figure out how much carbs you should be having for each day. This is based on body weight. If you’re 130lbs, for a high carb day, you would have 182 grams (130 x 1.4). For a low carb day, the same woman would have 78g.
Women:
Day | Protein | Carbohydrates | Fat |
High Carb | 1.4g | 1.4g | 0.3g |
Low Carb | 1.2g | 0.6g | 0.5g |
No Carb | 0 |
** All recommendations shown in grams per pound of body weight
Some people will even add in a NO CARB day, but that’s something I’m not interested in. I feel like I need SOME carbs to function throughout the day!!!
I have found that through just two weeks of carb cycling, it has really leaned me out. Even though I may not be the happiest person in general when I’m on a low carb day, it seems to work!!!!
For more information on carb cycling, view this article, written my my coach, Team Bodybuilding.com sponsored athlete, Brandan Fokken.
What do you think? Have you ever tried carb cycling? How do you like it?
Thanks for the info, I’ve been curious about this.
I tried carb cycling once and I reallyoved the way it made me feel and def saw results. I even incorporated a no carb day and surprisingly felt great. It was just a pain planning for. Eating the same thing every day is much easier to prep for!
I agree!!! It’s a lot harder to switch it up so much every week 🙂
I’m about to try carb cycling for the first time, and I’m wondering if you count the carbs in veggies? I’ve heard conflicting info about this and am not sure quite how to calculate carbs (I know that fibre matters when thinking of “net carbs”). Can you offer any tips/info? Thanks!
When I carb cycled, I was manipulating my complex carbs and not as much veggies. I’ve heard people cutting out veggies but I didn’t go that extreme 🙂