- Joined
- Jun 3, 2003
- Messages
- 126,466
I have chosen a diet and exercise routine I found to be very good and less extreme than my original proposal. Kingsnake has posted a very good exercise/diet and I wanted to make this an option to those who are participating:
What I have been doing for the past 5 months is a carb cycle diet. This is a great way to diet off bodyfat while retaining as much hard earned muscle as possible after the bulking up phase is done with. You see the thing is once you go on any diet that puts you in a caloric deficent you will lose bodyfat for 1 to 4 weeks but after that your body's metabolism will slow down in an effort to hold onto bodyfat. Hence the dreaded fat loss platueo. By carb cycling you are actually tricking the body into thinking that it's not on a diet when it actually is. Studies show that after the first 3 to 5 days of doing a low carb diet your leptin levels will decrease and your thyroid and T3 levels will aslo decrease to slow down your metabolic rate which is bad since the goal is to lose bodyfat.
The body does this as a starvation response to protect it's self. You see the human body doesn't care about being muscular and ripped with low bodyfat. The only thing the human body cares about is survival. In all actually the human body actually sees extra muscle mass as a threat since muscle mass is metabolicly expensive. Combined this with low bodyfat reserves, the body doesn't like this enviroment at all. So by carb cycling we are avoiding the body's emergency response in the pressence of low calories and low carbs coming in.
So to carb cycle effectively one would have a few low carb days to allow the body to tap into it's stored bodyfat for energy. After a 3 to 5 days the body will catch on to what you are doing and start down regulating your metabolism. After 3 to 5 days of low carbs you throw in a high carb day to trick the body. The high carb day will boost T3 levels and leptin levels which will keep your metabolism nice and fast and avoid the body's starvation response. After the high carb day, you will have some weight gain but it's just water weight and glycogen storage from the carbs. Once the high carb day is over you go back to your low carb days in which the water weight gained on the high carb day will shed off along with additional bodyfat on a weekly basis.
I personally like to have three different days which for me is low carb day, medium carb day and high carb cheat day. One could be successful with just low carb days and high carb days but this is just my personal preference so I have more energy to train heavy in the gym.
So heres how saiyan22 aka kingsnake does it.
Monday: chest and biceps training ( Medium carb day)
150 grams of carbs
256 grams of protein
30 grams of fat
Total calories 1,962
Tuesday: Legs training (Low carb day)
90 grams of carbs
300 grams of protein
27 grams of fat
Total calories 1,862
Wednesday: Cardio and Abs training (Low carb day)
Same macros as Tuesday
Thursday: Shoulders and Triceps training (Medium carb day)
Same macros as Monday
Friday: Back and rear delts training (High carb cheat day)
eating all kinds of high sugar junk foods but protein isn't as high
estimate to about 300 to 600 grams of carbs
estimate to about 200 to 250 grams of protein
estimate to about 50 gram of fat. 100 grams of fat if I have lemon pepper wings while pussy hunting with my friends Mike and Brian
Saturday: rest day (High carb cheat day)
Same macro estimate as Friday
Sunday: rest day ( Low carb day)
Same macros as Tuesday and Wednesday
That's my diet in short. I've been doing this plan for 5 months with great success. I started at 220 to 225 pounds big but holding fat and water and now I'm at 193 pounds. I have lost s little bit of strength but strength lost has been minimal since I kept the weights heavy. When I weighed 220 to 225 pounds I could incline benchpress 315LBS for 6 to 8 reps. Now I can only hit 315 lbs on incline benchpress for 2 to 4 reps. So reps went down but strength loss was very minimal since I kept my protein intake high to avoid muscle loss, even though some muscle loss in inevitable while in a caloric deficent. The key is to keep the weights heavy to minimize muscle loss while dieting off bodyfat.
I find that carb cycling is a better diet then even the anoblic diet that I did last summer. The problem with the anobolic diet is that by going 5 straight days of no carbs your metabolic rate takes a nose dive. Even with the carb up days on the weekends, your body eventually catches on to the pattern and fat loss stalls. I platueod hard on the anoblic diet last summer do to my body going into starvation mode.
You see the body needs carbs to to keep that metabolic signal to the thyroid to keep the metabolism going. With the carb cycle diet I haven't hit any fat loss platuoes and reached my goals of rippness.
To see the fruits of my labor on the carb cycle diet just go to my picture thread and look at my lastest pics.
If anyone has any questions on my diet plan, let me know.
What I have been doing for the past 5 months is a carb cycle diet. This is a great way to diet off bodyfat while retaining as much hard earned muscle as possible after the bulking up phase is done with. You see the thing is once you go on any diet that puts you in a caloric deficent you will lose bodyfat for 1 to 4 weeks but after that your body's metabolism will slow down in an effort to hold onto bodyfat. Hence the dreaded fat loss platueo. By carb cycling you are actually tricking the body into thinking that it's not on a diet when it actually is. Studies show that after the first 3 to 5 days of doing a low carb diet your leptin levels will decrease and your thyroid and T3 levels will aslo decrease to slow down your metabolic rate which is bad since the goal is to lose bodyfat.
The body does this as a starvation response to protect it's self. You see the human body doesn't care about being muscular and ripped with low bodyfat. The only thing the human body cares about is survival. In all actually the human body actually sees extra muscle mass as a threat since muscle mass is metabolicly expensive. Combined this with low bodyfat reserves, the body doesn't like this enviroment at all. So by carb cycling we are avoiding the body's emergency response in the pressence of low calories and low carbs coming in.
So to carb cycle effectively one would have a few low carb days to allow the body to tap into it's stored bodyfat for energy. After a 3 to 5 days the body will catch on to what you are doing and start down regulating your metabolism. After 3 to 5 days of low carbs you throw in a high carb day to trick the body. The high carb day will boost T3 levels and leptin levels which will keep your metabolism nice and fast and avoid the body's starvation response. After the high carb day, you will have some weight gain but it's just water weight and glycogen storage from the carbs. Once the high carb day is over you go back to your low carb days in which the water weight gained on the high carb day will shed off along with additional bodyfat on a weekly basis.
I personally like to have three different days which for me is low carb day, medium carb day and high carb cheat day. One could be successful with just low carb days and high carb days but this is just my personal preference so I have more energy to train heavy in the gym.
So heres how saiyan22 aka kingsnake does it.
Monday: chest and biceps training ( Medium carb day)
150 grams of carbs
256 grams of protein
30 grams of fat
Total calories 1,962
Tuesday: Legs training (Low carb day)
90 grams of carbs
300 grams of protein
27 grams of fat
Total calories 1,862
Wednesday: Cardio and Abs training (Low carb day)
Same macros as Tuesday
Thursday: Shoulders and Triceps training (Medium carb day)
Same macros as Monday
Friday: Back and rear delts training (High carb cheat day)
eating all kinds of high sugar junk foods but protein isn't as high
estimate to about 300 to 600 grams of carbs
estimate to about 200 to 250 grams of protein
estimate to about 50 gram of fat. 100 grams of fat if I have lemon pepper wings while pussy hunting with my friends Mike and Brian
Saturday: rest day (High carb cheat day)
Same macro estimate as Friday
Sunday: rest day ( Low carb day)
Same macros as Tuesday and Wednesday
That's my diet in short. I've been doing this plan for 5 months with great success. I started at 220 to 225 pounds big but holding fat and water and now I'm at 193 pounds. I have lost s little bit of strength but strength lost has been minimal since I kept the weights heavy. When I weighed 220 to 225 pounds I could incline benchpress 315LBS for 6 to 8 reps. Now I can only hit 315 lbs on incline benchpress for 2 to 4 reps. So reps went down but strength loss was very minimal since I kept my protein intake high to avoid muscle loss, even though some muscle loss in inevitable while in a caloric deficent. The key is to keep the weights heavy to minimize muscle loss while dieting off bodyfat.
I find that carb cycling is a better diet then even the anoblic diet that I did last summer. The problem with the anobolic diet is that by going 5 straight days of no carbs your metabolic rate takes a nose dive. Even with the carb up days on the weekends, your body eventually catches on to the pattern and fat loss stalls. I platueod hard on the anoblic diet last summer do to my body going into starvation mode.
You see the body needs carbs to to keep that metabolic signal to the thyroid to keep the metabolism going. With the carb cycle diet I haven't hit any fat loss platuoes and reached my goals of rippness.
To see the fruits of my labor on the carb cycle diet just go to my picture thread and look at my lastest pics.
If anyone has any questions on my diet plan, let me know.