Thanks so much man. Justin Harris has some great stuff on carb cycling, and I know the article archives here go into it as well. Cycling nutrition just makes so much sense to me: we don’t live stagnant lives, we shouldn’t have stagnant nutrition. And since the body is so good at adapting, it’s better to keep it guessing. You starve the body at 1400 calories and it drops a little fat and then settles in to a nice baseline…and then what? How are we going to lose any more? But you keep changing things up and it never figures out how to adapt.
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Speaking of carbs, I think I need to be more diligent about eating them.
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Like you, I eat pretty much the same thing every day.
Cutting cals is definitely easier, but seems to have drawbacks. It seems to me that evolution has made some of us really good at conserving energy when cals get low. You’re a big, strong guy–weren’t you eating, like, 1700 cals at one point last year without the scale moving?
I like @kleinhound 's idea of adding a bit of activity, then, maybe, cutting cals a bit, alternating between small adjustments in activity and food.
All humans. When cals drop, we move less. We’ll fidget less, walking speed will drop, be more inclined for rest, etc. And, in turn, often those skinny guys that want to gain and will only eat like 1 girlscout thin mint on top of their normal caloric load will find themselves just tapping their foot more and wiggling around and burning off calories to reach a balance.
This was me last year. Reading through training logs, it seems a lot of people get caught in the trap of continuing to cut cals with little to show for it, and nowhere to go but keep cutting.
I’ll see how my fellow Eternal Warrior @TrainForPain does with carnivore and keep it in my back pocket, if I need it, for the final push.
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Yeah, it’s worth noting that carnivore is ultimately an elimination diet. If fat loss happens, that’s cool too, but it’s really there just to eliminate sources of inflammation/food intolerance and reset a baseline in the guts. But that trap you discuss is real. Justin Harris and a few other nutrition dudes have talked about how their goal in the off season is to “build the metabolism” of their clients, trying to use that adaptation to their benefit. They slowly and gradually ramp up the calories so that the metabolic baseline is high enough that, when it comes time to diet, there is room to cut cals without getting drastically stupid. If you’re eating 3500 calories a day and it’s time to lose some fat, you can cut down to 3200 and not be suffering. If you’re eating 1900 and it’s time to cut down…you don’t have much room.
On the cycling front, I’ve also been having success with the “feast/famine/ferocity” style of nutrition. 2 week protein sparing modified fast/4 weeks of focused gaining. We saw something similar with the “ABCDE diet”
Basically, just always throwing something new at the body.
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To that very point, I dumped a lot of weight the first two weeks (coming from a higher carb norm). This third week, however, I am absolutely finding I can eat through it and make up every calorie!
Meadows used to do that, too, where the goal was to get you up to about 16 calories per lbs. Losing weight becomes almost effortless at that point, because you won’t even notice (and will likely be glad) to drop 500 daily calories. I think that’s where we hear the disciplined bodybuilders talk about getting so tired of the eating; it’s a lot to meticulously manage that upward with quality nutrients.
Somewhat unrelated, but I always thought it was silly to slowly work your calories back up in a meticulous reverse diet after cutting… but now I think it’s a pretty smart way to keep your hunger cueing where it should be while you get to a higher baseline. I was kind of missing the forest for the trees in terms of only thinking about where your calorie setpoint would be, but it’s more whole picture. @jskrabac always impressed me with how detailed he was here. I guess my point of that is it’s not just whether you can gain or lose weight at a caloric target, it’s also can you get that target to a point where your next phase will become easier.
Felt like a ramble, but that last sentence brought it back to the purpose of the carnivore diet, so I’m pretty confident I nailed this sermon.
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This is HUGE. People only live in the now, and never think about setting up the next phase of training. I brought up “feast and famine”, and it happens all the time there: people look at the famine phase and just think it’s about fat loss. Not at all: it’s about priming the body FOR the feasting phase. Getting it so that it’s so efficient at maximizing calories and nutrients that, when you bombard it with nutrition, it REALLY maximizes it. When we focus too much on what we’re doing now vs what we’ll do next, we end up UNABLE to do what it is we want to do next.
Hell, we see it with lifting programs. Dudes will start a new program and try to make workout ONE be an absolute and total soul crusher. Well what the hell are you going to do on workout five? We need to have some room to grow.
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I have zero doubt that this is a true statement.
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I suppose while we discuss body chaos and added activity for weight loss, it’s worth appreciating that this guy lost weight eating nothing but Costco hot dogs for a week AND eating nothing but skyline chili for a week, and in both cases was walking around 10-15 mile per day.
So I guess ya’ll have some alternative plans now…
…hey, maybe for a deload week? Haha
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Yes, but i wasnt eating the exact same foods and quantities every day. I’m doing this now and watching things move in the right direction - without being in as steep a deficit.
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I just decided (starting yesterday 4/1) to drop added sugars. My diet has so much elimination it’s ridiculous but i really should get close to Keto again.
I haven’t been trying to drop fat so far this year but this change should be enough of a lever. I’m not concerned about getting shredded, but losing 5 lbs at this stage would probably be good for me.
A friend yesterday offered to bring cigars to smoke when we meet next. I said no thanks i don’t smoke. He says OK, you don’t drink, you won’t smoke, what can i bring - a bag of Twizzlers?
Imagine how i felt saying “no thanks, i don’t do candy” hahaha.
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Tell him you’re totally down for a 2 pound bag of baby carrots. 
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Baby carrots are the worst carrots.
There’s a lot in the last several posts that I’ve read but not processed.
There was a picture this weekend that has me thinking I should lean up/clean up a bit.
I have a thing in mid-June and was already planning a slower mid-May to mid-June deficit. I’m now wondering maybe I want to do something about that now rather than wait.
I guess I’m not really sure how to decide whether to use something like a 2 week “mini-cut” vs just continue gaining for now. And should mini-cuts be done more aggressively than, say, a more normal 1-lb a week?
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Answer:
“It depends”
Lol
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If you actually want to be leaner, you likely need to actually diet. Mini-cuts, in my admittedly inexperienced opinion, are best served to set you up to grow again.
So if you feel like you can’t eat another bite, hate the sight of food, are bloated all the time, you aren’t getting good pumps in the gym, etc., but still want to gain weight because you’re not where you want to be, a mini-cut might give you enough of a reset to use your calories for good again.
@T3hPwnisher has been using a feast/ famine protocol that’s a very planned periodization of the concept.
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I see what you’re saying. Seems like maybe I should keep on the current plan and then just start dieting a week or two earlier than I initially planned.
And then maybe consider something more feast/famine or abcde-ish on the other side.
