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DI ET & FAT L O S S > EAT I NG
A Beginner's Guide to Carb Cycling
by Mat t McGor r y ( ht t ps: / / www. t - nat ion. com/ aut hor / mat t - mcgor r y/ ) | Apr i l
15, 2009 ( https: / / www. t- nati on. c om/ di et- f at- loss/ a- begi nner s- gui de- to- c ar bc y c li ng/ ) | 0 Comment s
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I rushed into the venue – a nondescript warehouse in the middle of nowhere called "The Compound
III" – exactly 30 minutes late.
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Dave Tate uses the Compound both as a showcase for his company's products and as a serious
training facility. As such, it's stocked with everything you'd ever want or need to get big and strong
– power racks, monolifts (squat racks that don't require a walkout), a deadlift platform, 20 different
bars, and enough machines to satisfy any bodybuilder.
It's kind of like a warfare museum. Except, instead of not touching the artifacts, you can jump right
into the cockpit and start launching missiles.
Carb Cycling 101
Losing weight is simple. Most people know that burning more calories than we consume will
lead to a decrease in scale weight. Just about anybody who tries it will be rewarded with
moderate, short-term success.
+
But I didn't come here to train. I came for a seminar cosponsored by EliteFTS, Tate's company,
and Troponin Nutrition. Representing the latter were Troponin owner Justin Harris and Shelby
Starnes. Both have competed at high levels in powerlifting and bodybuilding, and their goal was to
reveal some of the inside secrets of their trade – specifically, how to eat to get jacked and
shredded. This is the stuff the American Dietetic Association would be happy to tell you is a waste
of time. Which, of course, is exactly why we need to know it.
Here's something fun to think about: Next time you're in your gym – or any place where people
who care about their appearance tend to gather – take a close look at the ones who, in your
estimation, need to lose some fat. Now try to figure out how many of them are currently
enjoying the moderate, short-term success of eating less and exercising more. Chances are,
at least a few of them are 10 to 20 pounds lighter than they were a few months ago.
And still clearly overweight.
So those of us in search of more than "moderate" success need a better way to lose a lot of fat
without sacrificing muscle, or to stay lean while adding size and building strength.
That's why Justin Harris and Shelby Starnes have used carb cycling with hundreds of clients,
ranging from competitive powerlifters and bodybuilders to average folks. And they mos def
practice it themselves. Harris is an NPC superheavyweight competitor who also attained an
elite powerlifting total in his first-ever meet, with an 875-pound squat, 573 bench, 700 deadlift,
and 2,149 total. Starnes has a decade of experience competing in powerlifting and
bodybuilding, winning his first bodybuilding competition in 2005 as a novice, and since then
finishing twice in the top six in the NPC Junior Nationals.
Which brings us to carb cycling.
Most of us eat pretty much the same way every day – similar foods, similar amounts, similar
timing. Other than post-workout shakes and cheat meals here and there, it would be hard to
distinguish one day from another in terms of macronutrients and calories.
Here's how Starnes described the idea behind carb cycling: "By fluctuating macronutrients on
a daily basis, we can ensure that performance and muscle building can be optimized on the
days when it's most important, while burning fat on the other days."
This applies to virtually everyone who trains hard, from gym rats to competitive lifters and
bodybuilders to athletes in just about any sport that's more physically demanding than a
spelling bee. There are always training days that take more out of you than others. If you never
vary your daily calories or macros, you end up overfeeding yourself on the days you're either
resting or training light, and perhaps eating too little on the days you train the hardest.
For most of us, the damage goes one direction: We eat to support our hardest workouts,
meaning we overeat on the other days. Intentionally or not, a lot of us are in a perpetual bulking
cycle. Over time, we end up with excess body fat, which many of us try to take off all at once
during a cutting phase.
Carb cycling, when you get it right, gives you the best of both worlds and the worst of neither.
You fuel your body on the brutal training days that would ordinarily suck the life out of you, but
treat your body as if it's in a cutting phase on the days you don't need excess energy.
"High days," in which you're giving your body all the carbs it can handle, refill your glycogen
stores and promote an anabolic environment.
Let's say you're doing a body-part split, your legs are your weakest body part, and thus your
toughest workout of the week is leg day. (Especially if this (https://www.tnation.com/training/skinny-legs-cure) is your workout.) So you choose that as your high day
for carbs. You don't need as much protein, since the extra carbs generate more insulin, which
helps you get more protein into your muscles. ("It's not how much protein you take in, but how
much your body can utilize," Harris told us.)
"Medium days" allow you to maintain your glycogen levels with fewer total calories. You'll have
enough carbs to fuel your workout and prevent tissue breakdown, but not enough to be highly
anabolic.
"Low days" are ideal for the days you do cardio only, or don't train at all. Your body, with its low
insulin levels, will be primed for burning fat. With fewer carbs, you'll be eating more fat, which
benefits hormone production and helps keep your body sensitive to insulin on the medium and
high days.
That's the general idea. Here are some specifics:
+
MEN
High day
Carbs: 2-3 grams per pound of body weight
Protein: 1-1.25 grams per pound of body weight
Fat: as little as possible
Low and moderate days
Carbs: 0.5-1.5 grams per pound of body weight
Protein: 1.25-1.5 grams per pound of body weight
Fat: 0.15-0.35 grams per pound of body weight
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WOMEN
+
Christian Dior Sauvage Men 100 Ml...
High day
Carbs: 0.9-1.0 grams per pound of body weight
Protein: 0.75 grams per pound of body weight
Fat: as little as possible
Focus on What Matters
Just looking at the basics, your first thought might be, "That looks really really complicated."
Harris and Starnes had some comforting news: You don't have to worry about a gram of
something here or there. You won't be derailed because your morning oatmeal has slightly
more fat or slightly less protein than you expect.
+
Low and moderate days
Carbs: 0.2-0.5 grams per pound of body weight
Protein: 0.9-1.0 grams per pound of body weight
Fat: 0.1-0.2 grams per pound of body weight
There aren't really any "pure" foods, exactly matching whatever calories and macros their
labels say they should have. The most predictable are the most highly processed, and those
are the ones you want to avoid. The nutrients they remove, add, or process into oblivion to
make the foods conform to their own labels aren't worth the convenience.
The key, Harris and Starnes said, is to choose clean foods and prepare your own meals. You
won't be able to calculate the calories and macros precisely, but at least you'll know what isn't
in the food.
So how do you know if it's working? Harris likes simple photographs, taken weekly in the same
room, from the same angle, with the same lighting. (Use a flash, which is less flattering and
thus more honest.)
Scale weight (which fluctuates with your glycogen and hydration levels) and body-fat
calculations (which are highly dependent on the skill of the person, or the quality of the
machine doing the testing) tell you less than a photo. "If you look like a fat turd and have a
piece of paper saying that you're 6% body fat, I don't care," Harris said. "You have to take
photos."
You'll know you're in competition shape when you take a flash photo of yourself without a tan,
standing in front of a white wall, and look ripped anyway. Or you can use the knuckle test that
Harris described:
"Pinch the skin on the back of your knuckles. That's what your entire body needs to feel like
when you're stepping on stage for a bodybuilding competition. Waist, glutes, low back –
everything."
Everyone in the room pinched the backs of our hands, and we all nodded in recognition. Yep,
that's pretty damned lean.
But what about those of us looking to go the other direction – to pack on more muscle?
"Gaining muscle is a really slow process," Starnes told us. "In four years, I've put on 30
pounds of pure muscle mass. That's less than half a pound of muscle per month."
Getting Started
+
The scale is just as bad an assessment tool for a natural lifter looking to build size as it is for
someone trying to cut fat. Even a reasonable goal – adding two pounds of muscle a month –
can encourage you to overeat and gain more fat than you expect. It doesn't take many months
for that fat to change your physique for the worse.
Harris and Starnes start clients out on a "base plan" to see how their bodies react to carb
cycling. Males typically have six meals on low and medium days, and seven on high days.
Females have five on low and medium days, going up to six on high days.
If you're going for fat loss, plan on one or two high days per week. When gaining, go for two to
four weekly high-carb days.
"I almost always start a person off with two or three high days, just to assess how they respond
to the diet and to give us a lot of room to play with," Starnes said. "If a person has a fairly high
body-fat percentage and they've been on a poor diet, just switching to clean foods will make a
big difference, even with three high days a week.
"Some people can stay with three high days for a while and continue to make progress, but
most people need to drop down to one or two high days within a few weeks to keep the fat
burning going."
It's better to start a little too high than a little too low, Starnes added, for two reasons: First, the
extra calories help you preserve muscle mass. Second, you have something to cut back when
progress stalls.
"For most of my clients, low days almost always end up being under maintenance levels,
medium days are generally right at or slightly below maintenance, and the high days are either
at maintenance or slightly above."
How to Fail the Knuckle Test
At the start of the seminar, Dave Tate asked a simple question: "I'm going to order pizza and
soda for lunch. Is that cool?"
+
Starnes and Harris both warned against cutting sodium out of your diet to speed up progress.
"Sodium can actually help in a diet if you don't have specific conditions that prevent you from
using it," Starnes said. "It's responsible for many metabolic processes, helps to transport
nutrients like creatine, and is required for glycogen storage. Plus, when you're well-hydrated,
your muscles are less likely to get injured."
Like everyone else, I wondered if he was joking. And, like everyone else, I figured the best
strategy was to pretend I knew, keep my mouth shut, and wait to see what kind of food showed
up. No one suggested grilled chicken with steamed broccoli as an alternative.
Sure enough, lunch was pizza and soda. I ate and drank my share, as did everyone else ...
with one exception. Starnes was dieting for his next bodybuilding competition, which was still a
couple of months away. He pulled his lunch from a cooler full of food he'd prepared for the day.
As I left the Compound, hoping that I'd be able to read the notes I scrawled in a notebook, I
realized that the biggest lesson of the day wasn't in the lecture Harris and Starnes presented,
or even in Tate's rambling but entertaining and edifying talk about training. (Sample advice: "If
you've never done a bodybuilding show, do one. You have no idea what it's like to wake up in
the middle of the night when your mouth doesn't work right. You can't even produce saliva. The
last two days of my diet were the worst of my entire life, and I've been through some shit. But
the month after a show is when bodybuilders have the potential to put on the most mass of their
offseason. I put on 12 pounds of new muscle mass after I came back from the diet.")
But the biggest lesson for me was that day was watching Starnes model the type of disciplined
planning and execution it takes to get back-of-the-knuckles lean.
Sure, it would've been nice if the presenters had provided something lean and healthy for
lunch. But it wouldn't have taught us anything. Modern life hits you with easy excess from every
direction. Even at a nutrition seminar, you barely need to chew to get more calories than you
want or need.
If you simply show up and take what life offers, yeah, you might be able to achieve moderate,
short-term success from time to time. But if you want to change your physique dramatically
and permanently, you can't allow the circumstances to dictate your diet.
So, if you're on a quest for single-digit body fat, think about what you've done so far today. If
you didn't pack your own food before you left your house, how much do you really care about
getting shredded?
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