Carb Cycling or Clean Bulk

Right now I have 2 options for my diet, I am aiming to put on lean muscle mass with a minimum amount of fat gain.

My two options are:

Clean Bulk

with calorie intakes of:

3329
3828

On non workout and workout days respectively.

And

Carb Cycling

My base caloric intake was : 2954.85 (BASE)

It says 1.5x my bodyweight(165) for protein/carb intake and rest fat.

so my macro nutrients ratios would be:

3545.82(calories for gaining mass, says add 20%)
250
250
171

However, this seems like quite a high amount of fat. did I calculate every right?

So which one would be more effective?

Thanks in advance.

-Zach

You really can’t tell until you try it. Everyone is different, so you have to find what works for you.

Pick one, and stick with it for a while.

Is the Carb Cycle done correctly?

You mean the 171 grams of fat? (I assume I’m reading that correctly.)

171 * 9 = 1539 (fat)
165 * 8 = 1320 (protein + carbs)
----
2859 cals

That seems right, maybe even a little low. Don’t be afraid of fat, it is a necessary nutrient, so eat up!

Just make sure that your fat intake isn’t skewed . . eat some animal fats, some plant fats, and some fish oil every day. You’ll be golden.

[quote]ZSebag wrote:
Is the Carb Cycle done correctly?[/quote]

Well, for the carb cycling you would just increase carbs on workout days. On your off days, based on your numbers, you would be getting 28% protein and carbs with 44% fat.

For workout days just pick a percentage of your diet that you want to come from carbs; it will obviously be higher than the number of grams for off days. So for off days you have 28% carbs, maybe make this 40% carbs for training days.

At 20% increase, your cals would be 4254. 40% of that is 425 grams of carbs roughly.

Try it out, but take this for what it’s worth since i’m no expert but at 165lbs i’m not sure you need that many carbs.

Like the other poster said, try them out and see.

You know what? After reading MeinHerzBrennt’s post, I think that if figuring out a CC diet is difficult for you, maybe it’s a sign that it’s a liiitle too advanced.

And at 165, I don’t think that there’s any real reason for you to be stressing yourself out with a fairly difficult diet like that. Go with the “Clean Bulk.”

The 500 kcal difference should come from your PWO shake. So the only difference in your WO vs. non-WO days is the addition of a PWO shake to make up the difference.

It wasn’t to difficult, I just like to double check things, look for holes and what not.

Thanks for the help guys, I appreciate it.

I did the carb cycling calculations a little bit ago @ 162. I used 1.5g/lb bw protein and 1.25g/lb bw carbs though, with the rest fat. I’m trying to lose about 5 more lbs though so I’m at -20%. My fat calculation was at 50g. I’ve been consistently going over though by close to 30g, and cutting back on the carbs except for lift days.

From the above calculations, you are about 28% protein, 28% carb, and 43% fat. It looks like you did the fat calculation right, but you might want to try upping your protein a bit.

[Edit: I just realized the Mein did the same calculations.]

I’ve been doing the carb cycling and I think I will use it when I start focusing on adding weight. Like Brant said, the only difference for me is the PWO shake + either oatmeal/rice/sweet potatoes with my veggies and meat for dinner or just a salad with some olive oil with my meat and veggies.

I whipped up an excel spreadsheet that calculates everything out and I thought the same thing: the fat seemed too high.

It has me eating 293g protein, 293g carbs, and 172g fat based on a 3889 calorie moderate bulking day.

I tried the CC for about 4mo at the beginning of LAST summer…and was very detailed and anal about what I ate.

I got a bit bigger; but took on more fat then I thought I would.

It comes down to what Brant said; its all different for different people.

I’m 6’-1" and (was) 194 then and it didn’t work.

I’m starting a clean bulk right now at 180lbs to see how THAT works.

If I strike out there; I’m gonna bulk/cut.