I’ve been trying to eat right and have started weight training, but the past few months have not been as successful as I would have hoped. So I’ve been looking into different diets, and carb cycling sounded interesting.
Rousell states plainly in his article “If you need to lose a lot of weight, then carb cycling isn’t for you… If you have a lot of weight to lose, then you’re better off dieting down first.”. Thibaudeau on the other hand suggests that carb dieting can be perfect for losing fat while putting on muscle at the same time, which is what I want to do.
So I’m not sure whose advice to follow. If I need to lose a good 30-40 pounds of fat, should I get on a keto diet for 4-6 weeks and lift as much as I can, and worry about gaining muscle once I’ve gotten leaner?
You shouldn’t be carb cycling. Even though Thib didn’t specifically mentioned in the article, I always got the impression that he thought carb cycling was for those who were relatively lean to being with.
After reading a LOT from both, (especially CT), CT is specifically talking about lean individuals (~< than 12-15% max) wanting to put on mass and lose more fat.
I was on a hypocaloric diet last year and went from 265 to 230 lbs, but then I stopped losing weight after about the fourth or fifth month. However, during that time I don’t think I ate as well as I should have. I just counted calories, didn’t care too much about what the calories were from.
[quote]bmitch wrote:
Yup, read refined physique transformation by CT… that should help you out and give you a lot of info :)[/quote]
Thanks, will do!
Edit:
Okay so what do you guys think of this plan:
Every day I take in no more than 30g of carbs, except for once every 14 days where I take in around 170g that day.
On my non-workout days (3 days a week) I take in 1800 calories. Minus the carbs, half of my calories will come from fat and the other from protein.
On my upper body workout days (twice a week) I take in 2300 calories. Same fat/protein split and carb restriction.
On my lower body workout days (twice a week) I take in 2000 calories. Same fat/protein…
I’ve done these numbers before, but staying away from unhealthy foods should make this a more successful diet, right?
Could anyone help me with this? In CT’s refined physique article he states this:
[i]
When dieting down using a low carb approach, ingesting 1.4 to 1.6g of protein is plenty if your intake of good fats is adequate. Natural trainees do have a limited capacity to build muscle from the ingested protein, so anything more than that will simply be turned into glucose (via gluconeogenesis) and your body will then become good at using protein for fuel. This will both slow down fat loss and facilitate muscle loss.
Every time you consume a caloric deficit you’ll have to bump up calories to prevent muscle loss, but too much protein might very well be as bad as too little protein in that case![/i]
I’m confused about that bolded part, the way it’s worded.
[quote]Madds wrote:
Could anyone help me with this? In CT’s refined physique article he states this:
[i]
When dieting down using a low carb approach, ingesting 1.4 to 1.6g of protein is plenty if your intake of good fats is adequate. Natural trainees do have a limited capacity to build muscle from the ingested protein, so anything more than that will simply be turned into glucose (via gluconeogenesis) and your body will then become good at using protein for fuel. This will both slow down fat loss and facilitate muscle loss.
Every time you consume a caloric deficit you’ll have to bump up calories to prevent muscle loss, but too much protein might very well be as bad as too little protein in that case![/i]
I’m confused about that bolded part, the way it’s worded.
[/quote]
I believe the intended message is that in a caloric deficit you must increase the protien calories to prevent muscle loss. Not calories in general.
But it shouldn’t exceed the number of calories from good fats, right? His article stated that it should be about equal to fat calories.
Now that 1.4g number, is that 1.4g of protein per pound of body weight? If that’s the case then I’d need to be getting a minimum of 2478 calories a day. That’s not quite the caloric deficit that I wanted.
[quote]Evilmage wrote:
You shouldn’t be carb cycling. Even though Thib didn’t specifically mentioned in the article, I always got the impression that he thought carb cycling was for those who were relatively lean to being with.
Lean out, then you can have your carbs.[/quote]
Exactly. Carbs cycling is the best way to gain size while avoiding huge fat gain.
But as a fat loss protocol it should only be used if you are already very lean.
As Coach Poliquin says: ‘‘You gotta earn your carbs by becoming lean’’
After reading a LOT from both, (especially CT), CT is specifically talking about lean individuals (~< than 12-15% max) wanting to put on mass and lose more fat.
Carb cycling is all I did the first time around. I ended up losing about 30 lbs, so yeah, I was a fatty to begin with. I started with Thib’s method and finished up with Joel Marion’s “Cheater’s Diet”. It went slowly, for sure, but I think that’s the idea when you’re just starting to eat right.
If you follow Mufasa’s advice (and I do agree with him), you should consider yourself as starting from scratch (i.e. having never done a keto diet before). Focus on eating the right foods first and foremost. Then start eating less and really dial in the macronutrient timing and ratios (start carb cycling). The all-or-nothing approach right of the bat is a sure way to fail.
[quote]Madds wrote:
But it shouldn’t exceed the number of calories from good fats, right? His article stated that it should be about equal to fat calories.
Now that 1.4g number, is that 1.4g of protein per pound of body weight? If that’s the case then I’d need to be getting a minimum of 2478 calories a day. That’s not quite the caloric deficit that I wanted.[/quote]
You want your major intake to come from fats so that your body prefers them as a fuel source over protein. And yes something that may come as a shock to you is that you have to eat to lose weight. No bullshit 1200 calories fad diets.
No where in this thread have you given anyone your stats. Height/weight/training age/etc. This would help us better understand and guide our remarks. However if you feel you have 30-40lbs to lose (which actually means 50) then yes I could see you needing 2500 cals a day to lose weight.
I’m 6’1’', 230 lbs, 25 years old and I started lifting back in January. I lost 35 pounds last summer through fall by cutting down my calories to an average of 2000 a day but then my body adjusted to that and I stopped losing weight.
So after eating much more calories for about a week in December, I began weight training and began a roughly 2500 calorie a day diet. I added on noticeable muscle and my weight stayed the same. So I must have lost some fat, just not nearly as much as I wanted to. But I wasn’t looking at my overall carb count, just overall calories.
Right now I’m looking at trying to follow CT’s advice in that refined physique article. Since saturday I’ve cut carbs down to 30g and made sure that the remainder of my calories come from about half fats, half protein. And lots of green veggies, which I’m counting for overall calories but not for carbs (am I doing that right?).
To more efficiently lose fat, would a hypocaloric method be a stupid thing to do? I consumed 2500 calories on saturday since it’s one of two heavy workout days for me, but since sunday I’ve consumed only around 1800-2000 a day. I just want to lose a lot of fat as quickly as possible. The only time I’ve ever lost a good amount of weight was when I was on that hypocaloric diet last year.
I have to throw my 2 cents into this discussion. I’ve personally never had any luck with fat loss diets having me take in any more than around 2200 calories. I started at just shy of 300 lbs. at one point, and despite being fairly active (I did about an hour long lifting session three times a week, plus 15 mins of post workout cardio) I didn’t lose anything for 3 weeks. Seriously. My weight stayed within the same two pound area the entire time. I stepped up the cardio a bit, and still saw no change. It wasn’t until I started taking in around 1800 that the weight came off.
Weightwatchers, by the way, is a great program to use to help track your diet, no matter what type of protocol you use.
Sorry to bump my old thread but I thought that creating a new one would be worse.
I don’t know what I need to do right now. Since April when I made this thread, I’ve been on a very low-carb diet with a fat intake a little more than my protein intake. I started out taking in 2000-2500 calories a day, with a carb-up day once every 14 days, and during that time I lost 5 pounds. That was within a few weeks. However, keeping on that plan, staying away from crap foods, getting plenty of green veggies, I stopped losing any more weight. I was stuck. So then I started reducing my caloric intake until I started to lose more, and it took having to go down to 1500-1700 calories for three or four days out of a week to lose any more.
But then I’d regain all of the weight during my carb-up days (I admit on this point that I didn’t follow Thib’s “only good carbs on carb-up days” advice, and did indulge in wheat). For the past couple of weeks I’ve had to stay on a 1500-1600 calorie diet for at least three days each week (with 1800-2000 calories the rest of the days) in order to see any weight loss.
But is this the best way to go about doing this? I’ve been at this for so long but I can’t seem to find a diet plan that works for me in the long-term. I’m willing to do whatever it takes, and I can handle not eating that much. I just want to do whatever will give me the best results.