Anyone familar with carb cycling or similar diet plans?

[HHR]

I'm trying to modify the Ultimate Diet 2.0 idea of carb cycling to match my own 6-day lifting schedule.

Basically, instead of 2 power days and 2 "depletion" days, I'm do 3 power days and 3 hypertrophy days.

Since the idea is to carb load before/on the power days, I think I can adjust enough.

M-W are power days (chest/back/legs), so starting Sunday night, I'd carb load/refeed

Thurs is an off day and I'd eat at a maintenance level, but no carbs after lunch.

Fri-Sun are hypertrophy days (chest/back/plyo), so I'll eat at a marginal deficit overall, but limit carb intake pretty significantly.

........
Thurs Night thru Sun Morning will be low carb, like 75-100g carbs and 1500-2000 cals a day.
*this is well below maintenance for me, as I play baskeball 4-5 times a week and am I active otherwise.

My question is how high should my high carb/refeed days be?

Sunday night/Mon morning....should I aim for like 1000g carbs and 4000 calories over these 24 hours?

What about the 2 days after?

I'm probably overthinking all of this

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

U wanna lift 6 days a week on a UD level cut

 

[HHR]

U wanna lift 6 days a week on a UD level cut

It's not much of a cut overall

I'm more intrigued by the idea of carb cycling and matching it to a power/hypertrophy style lifting split. I could do 5 days I suppose...but I just like lifting 6 days a week

 

[Spliff]

FUBAR a perfectly fine advanced diet, brehs

 

[HHR]

FUBAR a perfectly fine advanced diet, brehs

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

It's not much of a cut overall

I'm more intrigued by the idea of carb cycling and matching it to a power/hypertrophy style lifting split. I could do 5 days I suppose...but I just like lifting 6 days a week

Carb cycling is a good idea. Lifting 6 days a week generally isn't, unless you have Help Getting Huge. Growth happens outside of the gym bruh

 

[Exiled Martian]

The ideaology might seem far fetched & it might even contradict your 'current' understanding of diet & training but look into Lean Gains Breh.... Intermittent Fasting (Google Martin Berkhan Lean Gains Guide).... concept is SOLID....very insightful & backed by Science herself. IF entails heavy carb cycling & places emphasis on meal timing frequencies.....it goes against the orthodox dogma of eating 6 meals a day that is religiously preached to be the only way to eat

 

[HHR]

I'm tinkering...probably going to scale back to the 4 lifting days. Trying to read up on how to adjust for a more active schedule.

 

[diggy]

You can find some good info online by Shelby Starnes on this topic...I have a e book of his if you need it

 

[HHR]

You can find some good info online by Shelby Starnes on this topic...I have a e book of his if you need it

Sure, I'm interested in anything on the topic.

I'm going to do the book version of UD 2.0 starting Sunday....do it right for a month and see what kind of changes happen

 

[TheReal_Broke_88m3_13]

it goes against the orthodox dogma of eating 6 meals a day that is religiously preached to be the only way to eat

not really most of the "dieticians" I know will tell you it doesn't matter when you eat...

It's calories in vs out, what does matter is the transition period over 24 hours. And from week to week....

 

[Exiled Martian]

not really most of the "dieticians" I know will tell you it doesn't matter when you eat...

It's calories in vs out, what does matter is the transition period over 24 hours. And from week to week....

To a certain degree I have to disagree with your take based on said 'dieticians' words. This is merely to do with my own personal research into diet & nutrition through various thesis like studies that have been conducted to show just how effective intermittent fasting is & the whole carb cycling agenda coupled within this protocol of eating seems to be more benenficial especially when undergoing a body recomposition or a Cut to get leaner & reduse body fat %...bear with me while I try & break it down (metabolically speaking) without sidetracking too much......

Basically when you eat a meal, looking at post-prandial glucose levels, you get an insulin response from your pancreas, which breaks down the extra glucose into glycogen (stored in liver and muscles) and triglycerides (stored in fat cells). Once the glucose levels are low, the pancreas lowers it's amount of insulin until it's no longer needed. Since muscles act as direct stores of glycogen, for a quick fuel source, this explains why people that are very muscular generally can eat a much larger amount of food; their muscles are snatching up the glycogen directly and using it straight away when lifting.

When energy is needed, which generally is 8-12 hours after the insulin stops being secreted (glucose becomes too low), then glycogen phosphorylase is released, along with glucagon, whereupon the glycogen stored in the liver is broken down and re-converted over to Glucose to be used by the body (glycogenolysis).

This is why the intermittent fasting technique works; because unless you have that 8-12 hour period after insulin is no longer being secreted, then the glycogen stores will never be broken down unless you exercise like crazy, and then you just continuously replete your glycogen stores when eating, with the rest getting dumped into triglycerides, which gets stored in adipose (fat tissue).

To not trigger the starvation process, the leptin levels have to be kept above a certain value, and as long as that's done, the conversion of glycogen to glucose should occur without the mechanisms of starvation taking place. For the triglycerides to actually leave the fatty tissues, the insulin levels have to be low; this is why working out at the end of a period of not eating (e.g. a short fast) is more effective than eating and then working out a little bit later (in which case you just burn off the energy you eat, without tapping into your reserves at all).

Since leptin itself is created from fatty tissues, then that means the more fatty tissues there are, the higher the levels of leptin that would be created during times of high insulin levels. This would imply that the more fat you have, the more hungry you will get during times when insulin is low / not being emitted and triglycerides are being converted from existing fat tissue deposits.

This explains why people that are really fat actually get more hungry, quicker, than people who are skinny, over a period of time with lower levels of glucose in the blood stream. So basically the more fat you are, the more used to high leptin levels you are, which flood the hypothalamus after eating and tell the brain that it's not hungry. Which means that it's actually harder to lose weight (mentally speaking) for fat people than it is for skinny people, because responding to the hypothalamus is instinctual in nature.

To sum it all up; if you're specifically trying to burn into the fat reserves without triggering a starvation response, you have to wait at least 8-12 hours after your last meal, and then work out. After figuring out all this in my head, intermittent fasting makes total sense to me now, at least the variety of 8 hrs where you eat all the food in a day and 16 hours of not eating any food.

 

[The ADD]

To a certain degree I have to disagree with your take based on said 'dieticians' words. This is merely to do with my own personal research into diet & nutrition through various thesis like studies that have been conducted to show just how effective intermittent fasting is & the whole carb cycling agenda coupled within this protocol of eating seems to be more benenficial especially when undergoing a body recomposition or a Cut to get leaner & reduse body fat %...bear with me while I try & break it down (metabolically speaking) without sidetracking too much......

Basically when you eat a meal, looking at post-prandial glucose levels, you get an insulin response from your pancreas, which breaks down the extra glucose into glycogen (stored in liver and muscles) and triglycerides (stored in fat cells). Once the glucose levels are low, the pancreas lowers it's amount of insulin until it's no longer needed. Since muscles act as direct stores of glycogen, for a quick fuel source, this explains why people that are very muscular generally can eat a much larger amount of food; their muscles are snatching up the glycogen directly and using it straight away when lifting.

When energy is needed, which generally is 8-12 hours after the insulin stops being secreted (glucose becomes too low), then glycogen phosphorylase is released, along with glucagon, whereupon the glycogen stored in the liver is broken down and re-converted over to Glucose to be used by the body (glycogenolysis).

This is why the intermittent fasting technique works; because unless you have that 8-12 hour period after insulin is no longer being secreted, then the glycogen stores will never be broken down unless you exercise like crazy, and then you just continuously replete your glycogen stores when eating, with the rest getting dumped into triglycerides, which gets stored in adipose (fat tissue).

To not trigger the starvation process, the leptin levels have to be kept above a certain value, and as long as that's done, the conversion of glycogen to glucose should occur without the mechanisms of starvation taking place. For the triglycerides to actually leave the fatty tissues, the insulin levels have to be low; this is why working out at the end of a period of not eating (e.g. a short fast) is more effective than eating and then working out a little bit later (in which case you just burn off the energy you eat, without tapping into your reserves at all).

Since leptin itself is created from fatty tissues, then that means the more fatty tissues there are, the higher the levels of leptin that would be created during times of high insulin levels. This would imply that the more fat you have, the more hungry you will get during times when insulin is low / not being emitted and triglycerides are being converted from existing fat tissue deposits.

This explains why people that are really fat actually get more hungry, quicker, than people who are skinny, over a period of time with lower levels of glucose in the blood stream. So basically the more fat you are, the more used to high leptin levels you are, which flood the hypothalamus after eating and tell the brain that it's not hungry. Which means that it's actually harder to lose weight (mentally speaking) for fat people than it is for skinny people, because responding to the hypothalamus is instinctual in nature.

To sum it all up; if you're specifically trying to burn into the fat reserves without triggering a starvation response, you have to wait at least 8-12 hours after your last meal, and then work out. After figuring out all this in my head, intermittent fasting makes total sense to me now, at least the variety of 8 hrs where you eat all the food in a day and 16 hours of not eating any food.

 

[Exiled Martian]

That was as simple as I could put it...glad you find this dietary black magic insightful breh!