26 Oct Why I Don’t Like Carb Cycling
By: Tucker Loken
It’s hot, it’s new, it’s super effective, why isn’t it for you?
When I think of carb cycling, I think of those $170 Nike weightlifting shoes. They are useful, fancy, endorsed by a couple big name lifters, and really help with your squats. But some new kid reads “weightlifting shoe” and thinks that since he’s really into it after six months in the gym, it must be for him. This happens all the time, but just because your favorite bodybuilder or IG fitness model (who is probably as photo shopped as Devin Physique) uses carb cycling, doesn’t mean you need to.
[wa-wps]
What constitutes carb cycling?
Carb cycling is where you have multiple days of high and low carbs, with the main purpose being fat loss. If you only workout 3 days a week and they are epic workouts, you’re going to be eating more carbs on those days, that is not carb cycling, that is called being smart. Lots of powerlifters do this, so don’t confuse this with what an actual scheduled carb cycle routine looks like and its goals.
Carb cycling can come in several forms, below are examples of the two basic ones, but there are plenty of other types people have come up with over the years.
1) Regardless of workout or non-workout day, you are eating X amount
Day 1 – 125 carbs, day 2 – 100 carbs, day 3 – 75 carbs, repeat
2) Depending on the workout day, you are eating X amount
Leg day – 200 carbs, shoulder day – 100 carbs, rest day – 75 carbs, chest day – 150 carbs
Unnecessary
Personally, I think carb cycling is over rated and complicated. It’s another fancy gizmo and whirly-gig in the fitness industry that makes people think they’ll never be able to do it on their own. I’ve had people who have completely unclean diets ask me about carb cycling, fitting their junk macros into the confines of a carb cycling plan. It would be 10 times easier for that person to just get on a consistent diet of clean food and continue like that until their fat loss slows, and then take a little bit of food out again, and continue like that.
Too many moving parts
I hate not knowing what’s going on. Even when a diet is working, if I can’t pinpoint the reasons it’s going well it will bother me. Carb cycling is a good example of the spaghetti method – throw a bunch of noodles at the wall and see which ones stick. If you’ve got client A on a new workout program and a new diet that has 3-4 different levels of carbs each day and they start getting over trained, how are you going to know what needs to change? Do you only change their lowest carb day and give them some extra food? Is the training program too much to handle and the diet is fine? You’ve already gotten to the worst case scenario of overtraining them, and now you not only have to let them rest until they get back to normal, but also diagnose where the problems are. Not fun for you or the client.
What’s it good for
Carb cycling is GREAT for busting plateaus. This is the only time when I use it. Some people make it through a prep no problem and consistently get leaner as we decrease food and increase exercise, but some people’s bodies get to a point where it doesn’t want to lose weight with the methods I’ve been using. Rather than go lower and lower in calories and higher in exercise, sometimes a switch up is all that’s needed. If a woman has been trimming up well on 125 g carbs daily, and I move her down to 100 carbs, but her body doesn’t lose much, I may choose to not continue downwards and risk her metabolism slowing down. She might just need something as simple as a three-day plan of 150, 125, 100 grams of carbs each day, respectively. Overall her weekly intake will be the same, but the high carb day will help spike her metabolism and keep it revving through the low carb day when her body will gobble up all the food and tap body fat as an energy source. This way, she doesn’t get weaker, doesn’t feel like crap, and actually gets to eat more than she was on one of the days.
Be nice to your body
The gentle carb cycling I wrote above is no big deal, but when I see people doing several zero carb days followed by medium carb, then high carb, then low carb, then back to zero over and over I just can’t help but feel sorry for not only them, but their bodies as well. I actually don’t have a big problem with zero carb as long as plenty of fat and protein is being taken in and the person’s body agrees with it, for some people it does work great. What I do have a problem with is the massive inconsistency and the toll it takes on the body. They are basically in full alert mode constantly and their body thinks its fighting to stay alive every day. Not good. Before people start these rough workout and diet plans, I always ask them to ask themselves this – would you like it if someone did that to you? If you had to work a 9am-5pm shift one day, then a 5pm-1am the next, and a 1am-9am the day after, would you be happy? Absolutely not. You wouldn’t put yourself through those kind of ups and downs, and that’s why you shouldn’t do it to your body.
If it works….
Everyone has their own style, and the proof is in the finished product. If a coach has a lot of success doing carb cycling from the get go, then who am I to say he or she is doing something wrong? You’ll see a handful of big names really endorse carb cycling and swear by it, but what you don’t see are the 90% of other coaches who don’t even use it and don’t like it for the same reasons listed above. Their diet style just isn’t sexy enough to promote – “exercise combined with consistent, steady meal plan with small changes over time helps people lose weight”. Not exactly headline material right?
Keep it simple
Carb cycling is common in bodybuilding and can be very useful towards the end of a prep when the body is stubborn, but even then a lot of people don’t need it. For 99% of the dieters out there who just need to trim up and aren’t looking to get on stage, carb cycling is unnecessary, complicated, and difficult to do correctly. The most effective way to lose body fat without diminishing performance, is still to just eat plenty of clean food, and decrease your intake by small amounts over time. It’s not new and fresh, but it’s easy and it works.
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