Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Advanced Fat Loss - Part II: Carb Cycling

Just as with a normal fat-loss routine, your body can achieve homeostasis even when you're calorie-cycling.

The good news is that you can make little tweaks to your calorie-cycle routine to prevent the dreaded weight-loss plateaus you're working so hard to avoid.

One of the best adjustments is called carb cycling.

With carb cycling, you'll essentially set the amount of fat and protein you're going to eat every day, and keep that steady for a few weeks. The difference is, on low-carb days, you'll eat a max of 50-75 grams of carbs per day. On high-carb days, you'll spike that intake significantly (and have all of the extra calories from a mix of simple and complex carbohydrates). This will kickstart your pancreas and hypothalamus into producing a bunch of insulin and leptin for your carbohydrate-starved body.

Carb cycling is a great introduction to calorie cycling - it can give you immediate benefits if you're not yet ready for the major planning around dramatically dropping calories for days at a time. Basically, you'll still end up doing calorie cycling too, but it won't "seem" as difficult or time-consuming to set up. Just eat less carbs on your "low" or non-workout days. Simple. 

Just like with calorie cycling, I recommend 3 days low carb followed by 1-day high carb (or a "carb up", which is similar to the leptin reset phase that we've discussed.) You can also try alternating low/high carb based on your workouts.

Figures for a carb-cycling routine

Day
Percentage
Notes
Low Carb Days
50-75 grams of carbs daily (men and/or heavier people can eat closer to 75 grams)
Do lighter workouts or cardio on low carb days (or, no workouts depending on your plan)
High Carb Day
30% of your TDEE as carbs
Save your biggest, hardest strength workouts for these days.
2-week outline for a 3-day low carb, 1-day high carb program

A
Monday
Tuesday
Wed.
Thursday
Friday
Sat.
Sunday
Week 1
Low Carb
Low Carb
Low Carb
High Carb
Low Carb
Low Carb
Low Carb
A
Monday
Tuesday
Wed.
Thursday
Friday
Sat.
Sunday
Week 2
High Carb
Low Carb
Low Carb
Low Carb
High Carb
Low Carb
Low Carb

Reminder: Make sure to schedule your heaviest workouts (usually involving major use of the chest, back or legs) for high-carb days.

WARNING: Both of the cycling strategies above are for advanced or highly-dedicated trainees only. They will produce amazing results if done correctly. But do them wrong, or slip up occasionally, and you will not be happy with your results. (I personally half-assed calorie/carb cycling the first time around, and spent 2 months with ZERO progress.) 

Interested in losing weight? Then click below to see the exact steps I took to lose weight and keep it off for good...

Read the previous article about "Advanced Fat Loss - Part I: Calorie Cycling"

Moving forward, there are several other articles/topics I'll share so you can lose weight even faster, and feel great doing it.

Below is a list of these topics and you can use this Table of Contents to jump to the part that interests you the most.


Learn more by visiting our website here: invigoratenow.com
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Monday, February 4, 2019

Advanced Fat Loss - Part I: Calorie Cycling

Calorie cycling is essentially a zigzag routine - you eat a very low number of calories for three days, then spend one day cramming your face full of a huge amount of calories (or two days, if you're already pretty lean.) On the day that you eat a lot, you also want to have a really heavy strength-training day to benefit from the extra calories - this is usually the best day to work out either your back or your legs, since these are the two largest muscle groups in your body.

The idea behind calorie cycling is pretty simple - you want to lighten up the caloric load on a non-workout or "light" workout days, ramp up the caloric load on "tough" workout days, and all the while, maintain healthy levels of the "nutrient transport" hormone known as insulin.

Why We Need To Manage Insulin On A Zig-Zag Routine

We've already discussed insulin in-depth, but there are a few points that need to be rehashed here.

Most people know that insulin is the chemical released by our pancreas that helps us break down sugars. Most of us also know that diabetics don't make enough of this chemical (or their body isn't sensitive enough to it) which leads to potentially life-threatening surpluses or deficits of sugar in the blood.

But insulin does a lot more than maintain sugar.

It also has huge anabolic and energy benefits, provided your body makes enough of it, and that your body is sensitive enough to it that it can actually use the insulin it's making (which is why most us start on an "insulin reset" phase).

When you calorie-cycle, you put your body through intense periods of low insulin, making your body starved for the chemical (and thereby radically increasing your sensitivity to it.)

And then, on the day when you eat a high amount of calories again, your body will be so sensitive to the amount of insulin produced by your now well-rested pancreas that you'll get all of the chemical's muscle-building and energy-giving benefits.

How to Do A Calorie-Cycling Routine For Fat Loss & Some Muscle Gain

     You already know how to determine your BMR and find your TDEE, so when calorie cycling, you can use these metrics to know how low to go (and how high to pop back up on high-calorie days.)

     If you're looking for the most possible fat loss, while still gaining some muscle, I highly recommended having 3 straight "low" days, followed by 1 "high" day, followed by 3 more "low days".

     If you're below 15% body fat, you can do 3 "low days" followed by 2 "high" days, followed by 3 more "low days".

     Note: You can also test out eating high or low calorie based on whether you workout or not. This is a more advanced method and especially for fat loss, requires you to be in varying levels of a deficit throughout the plan. That said, I personally find that a simple "3 low, 1 high" program is easiest to adapt to and far more convenient.


Interested in losing weight? Then click below to see the exact steps I took to lose weight and keep it off for good...


Moving forward, there are several other articles/topics I'll share so you can lose weight even faster, and feel great doing it.

Below is a list of these topics and you can use this Table of Contents to jump to the part that interests you the most.


Learn more by visiting our website here: invigoratenow.com
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Sunday, February 3, 2019

Advanced Fat Loss - Calorie Cycling, Carb Cycling and Intermittent Fasting

You've done everything right.

You've cut out the worst foods from your diet (except for the occasional, understandable cheat meal).

You've replaced simple sugars and refined foods with "clean" carbs.

You've upped your protein intake and started sourcing your fats from healthy, natural sources instead of the trans-fat laden, hydrogenated, high Omega-6 junk lurking in every aisle of the supermarket.

And you're even in the gym on a regular basis, with a good mix of strength-training anaerobic exercises and occasional cardio.

But the scale just isn't moving anymore.

Sure, depending on how much you had to lose to begin with, you may have already lost a substantial portion of your body fat.

And you should definitely be proud of that.

But now you've hit a plateau and you can't go any further, and you're frustrated. All that hard work, week after week, and it's just not working anymore.

Welcome, my friend, to a state called homeostasis. I like to call it "ahhhh this suckss!!"

The dictionary definition of homeostasis is "the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, relatively constant condition of properties."

In layman's terms, your body has adjusted to your diet and workout routine, and it's not dropping any more pounds or adding any more muscle - even though you're continuing to maintain (what you think) is a calorie deficit.

Here's the bad news: Your body can get used to anything.

Understand that we're still programmed to hold on to as much fat as possible, because our bodies evolved to survive through long periods of starvations, while still maintaining enough energy to run away from a hungry saber-toothed tiger.

Any chance your body gets, it will add fat, or fight your best efforts to continue losing it. We're not made for abundance; we're made to just push our way through deprivation and suffering.

This is a good thing biologically, from a long-term, evolution context. But it's a bad thing if you're trying to lose your gut and tone up your muscles.

You've got to break out of the rut!

Luckily, the other thing we as human beings evolved was an infinitely clever brain, so you can learn to force your body out of homeostasis and back into a state where you're burning fat at a rapid rate.

This is advanced fat loss, and be warned: It ain't going to be easy.

There are three major components of advanced fat loss we're going to cover here today: Calorie cycling, carb cycling, and intermittent fasting. You'll need to master one, or all, of them to bust out of your plateau and get back on the road to the body you've always dreamed of. 

Parts I and II below will cover the breakthrough nutrient cycling strategy that unleashes the fitness "holy grail": stripping off fat, while packing on lean muscle (this advanced strategy can transform your body from "decent" to "lean and irresistible" in as little as 6 weeks)


Interested in losing weight? Then click below to see the exact steps I took to lose weight and keep it off for good...


Moving forward, there are several other articles/topics I'll share so you can lose weight even faster, and feel great doing it.

Below is a list of these topics and you can use this Table of Contents to jump to the part that interests you the most.


Learn more by visiting our website here: invigoratenow.com
at No comments:
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