Carb cycling question

[husker]

Hi guys.

New member here. Great site BTW.

Tim, I have been reading about your carb cycling program and I think I am going to give it a shot. I have been dropping BF for about 8 months and Im stuck bigtime. I have been following a higher protein, moderate carb/low fat approach. 50p-25c-8f per meal at EVERY meal. Since reading all your articles on MM and here and can tell I have hit a wall do to my body getting wise to my program.

The question I have is this. DO you spread the carbs out over all your meal evenly or do you like to put them into a few of the meals and leave other meals WITHOUT them. I can see the day that has me eating 50 grams, would be hard to spread out, but on the days Im due to eat 200 or more I might want to do that. Also what about fat. do you have a set amount of fat you keep to. I think I say a post that .25 grams x bodyweight is used. Sorry for all the questions. Lots of stuff here to sift through.

Thanks.

I really appreciate the fact that your are willing to put this info. out there for all. When It comes to diet, Its like pulling teeth to get good pearls sometimes.

[youngblood]

Husker-

I'll lend a hand since Tim is away, but my approach may be similar in some areas, while different in others. Here's how I would figure it out and do what I THINK Tim does...

If your eating, say, six meals with 25g of carbs per sitting, that would be a total of 125g daily, correct? So that's what you'd target with your mixing of carbs, but I'd average it out of seven days. So 125x7=875 and that's how many you'd want for the week. So the first day you can have 100g, second day have 200g, third day 50g, fourth day 200g, fifth take in 50g sixth day you ingest 100g and the seventh and final day have 150g of carbs. Doesn't matter, IMO, how you mix it. Be it two days low, one day high. Or maybe 3 days low, and one day really high. Up to you. I've always liked to stagger it from medium to high to low to med low and repeat.
Now, about the meals and what each meal contains...
I'd say Tim probably restricts his carbs later at night. Most competing BBers do this, and I think it works, or at least helps! Read Tim's journal in the "Contest Prep" section and I think he lists his food intake there. Read a few days and you'll get a good idea of what he does.
Maybe one day, you eat all your carbs at evenly spaced time, 25g every 2 hours. Then the next day, have all 50g of your daily total at one sitting. Then the next day have 100g un-evenly over a few hours (25 for breakfast, 50 at 3pm and finally 25 for dinner/pre-bedtime). Then the day after that to really set yourself into a frenzy, have all 200g in one meal or two.
Set your total calorie/carb goal, and be sure to hit it in the end. The body thrives on repetition, and if your trying to lose weight, repetition is the exact OPPOSITE of what you want. You want to fool your body AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.
Good luck. Hope this helps.

[husker]

Thanks youngblood. I think I have a good idea after reading your post.

one more question though. What are you guys doing about fat intake. Is it still pretty low on this plan or is it a bit higher. I know its relative, but I dont see fat discussed as much as carbs.

[youngblood]

Fat intake, if your restricting carbs, I feel it's okay to eat what you want. Really, don't worry about having to trim the beef you eat of it's fat, IF your restricting carbs. But I do also feel that if your ingesting more than 120g of carbs daily, then you should be careful of your fat intake.
Reason, without going off into what I know about it (str8flxed could tell about this stuff all day), but if eating carbs then the fat you eat as well will be stored inside the fat cells. Rather than being burned for energy.
I do NOT think fat is the enemy most think it is.

[Intensity]

I agree with Younblood except for fat. Personally i prefer to keep my fat intake between 25g and 40g (Source: Almond, flax oil, fish, peanut) and keep the other fat source at the minimum!

So at this point i calculate how many carbs and proteins i eat in a day (i calculate an average for a week) and i try to reduce the carbs intake a bit every week with the carbs cycling method! I keep my protein at the desire level every day ( For exemple: Never under 330 for me) and i adjust my carb intake according to my weight: I never want to lose more than 2 lbs per week. So if i lose to much weight... i wont decrease my carbs average to much (i would maybe only decrease 10g of carbs a day) and vice versa.

Good luck

Mo

[husker]

Thanks for the input guys.

This is a totally new concept for me. I understand the keeping the body guessing by "cycling" the carbs up and down. That seems to make total sense. What is a tad confusing is the adding up all the carbs I take in over a week and then figuring out how many to take in over the week per day. Youngblood, when you brought that up in your first post I was like..."WTF." So do you lower the TOTAL carbs taken in over a WEEK each week??? I thought you just manipulated the daily amount. I wasnt aware that you lowered the total amount per week over time as well. I hadn't seen that in Tims posts. I am still going through them slowly, but it is screwing me up a bit.

I plan on asking him to put me on a plan. However, I would rather figure this thing out for myself so I KNOW it cold.


Thanks for all the help guys.

husker

[youngblood]

If your losing weight, don't lower anything. However, if you stagnate, then lower the cals by about 500 total calories (about 40g protein, 40 grams of fat would work, just remember that protein and carbs are 4cal per gram and fat 9cal per gram) and do the math yourself.
I'd keep my calories the same at any cost as long as I'm losing weight. But if you cycle your carbs and keep your activity the same or increase, you'll be fine.