Carb Cycling – The Most Effective Fat Burning Technique

Written by Yasar Shahzad Thursday, 01 July 2010 16:54

Carb Cycling – The Most Effective Fat Burning Technique

A low to moderate carbohydrate and high protein diet will cause much faster fat loss than a high carbohydrate diet. However, it may seem like the disadvantages outweigh the benefits. Fortunately, there’s a solution to these problems and it’s called “carbohydrate cycling.” Some people refer to carb cycling as “zig-zag” dieting, “Hi-low” dieting, “carbing-up” or carbohydrate “re-feeding.”

Regardless of what you name it; carb cycling is probably the most powerful fat burning strategy on the planet. Nothing else even comes close. It is the ONLY guaranteed way to outwit the body’s starvation response when calories and carbohydrates are low. Not only do you avoid a negative response, but you also invoke many positive responses that do not occur when holding your carbohydrates and calories at the same low level day in and day out. That’s the main problem with conventional low carbohydrate diets – they suggest that you drop your carbohydrates and keep them low. What I am suggesting is that you drop your carbohydrates for a few days, then increase them again before your body figures out what the heck is going on!

Carbohydrate cycling has been a well-kept secret of bodybuilders and fitness models for decades, but anyone can use it to accelerate fat loss or break a plateau. The beauty of this method is that it allows you to get all the fat loss benefits of low carbohydrate dieting without the low carbohydrate side effects. Most important, it keeps your metabolism elevated and prevents you from going into starvation mode.

Why you shouldn’t stay on low carbohydrates for more than three days in a row

After three days in a row on low carbohydrates, your glycogen levels will be almost completely depleted. If you were to continue on low carbohydrates for a fourth day, fifth day, or beyond, you would notice your energy and training intensity begin to diminish. You would also notice that your muscles would “flatten out” and become softer. Your metabolic rate would begin to slow down and your thyroid gland would decrease its output of thyroid hormone.

Basically, your diet would become less and less effective the longer you stayed on low carbohydrates beyond the three day period. Your body is so “smart,” it simply makes changes in physiology and metabolism to compensate for the prolonged lack of carbohydrates (which it interprets as starvation). That’s why you have to “shake things up” and keep your body off guard by throwing in a high carbohydrate day every fourth day.