Research suggests there is no significant difference in weight loss between diets that restrict one form of macronutrient, such as protein or carbs, over another. A study suggests diets that allow people to tailor food consumption and the type of food to their individual needs and preferences tend to experience better diet adherence and weight loss.

Some people may find this approach more suitable for their needs and therefore may find this diet helps them with weight loss. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases offer a free body weight planner, which may help people plan how many calories they consume in their carb cycling diet.

There is some evidence that low carb diets, such as carb cycling, may be beneficial for muscle gain and sports performance.

A study suggests that competitive bodybuilders who utilize carbohydrate refeeds, which are periods of times where they consume more carbs, do so because they believe it enhances fat loss.

Participants in the study stated that carbohydrate refeed days increased glycogen stores. They also noticed that these days aided their training performance and helped them mentally recover from their exercise regimes. However, researchers need to conduct more studies to investigate the safety and effectiveness of carb cycling within the sports fitness community.

It is also vital to consume enough macronutrients and micronutrients. Without sufficient quantities of these nutrients, an individual puts themselves at risk of developing undernutrition.

There are many variations to carb cycling, with people practicing programs on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. The amount of carbs that individuals eat per day will depend on whether they are consuming a high, moderate, or low carb meal. Examples of daily carbohydrate loads include :.

An example of a weekly carb cycling diet, based on a person who needs 2, calories a day, is below. Each gram g of carbohydrates contains 4 calories. People can eat whichever healthy and balanced food they want on a carb cycling diet, as long as they do not exceed the amount of carbs their plan allows.

While many foods contain carbs, there are some that people should eat more than others. Sources of complex carbs include :. This eating program may be beneficial for certain health and fitness goals, such as helping people lose weight, improve sporting performance, and increase insulin sensitivity.

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Medical News Today. Health Conditions Health Products Discover Tools Connect. How carb cycling works and how to do it. Medically reviewed by Jillian Kubala, MS, RD , Nutrition — By Veronica Zambon on March 31, Carb cycling Benefits How it works Scientific evidence For weight loss For muscle and sports Other benefits How to do it Meal plans Carbs to eat Summary Carb cycling is a diet where people consume more or fewer carbs over alternate days.

What is carb cycling? What are the benefits? How does carb cycling work? The science behind carb cycling. Can it help you lose weight? Carb cycling for muscle gain and sports performance. Other benefits of carb cycling. How to carb cycle. Day Carb intake Fat intake Amount of carbs Monday High carb Low fat g Tuesday Moderate carb Moderate fat g Wednesday Low carb High fat 75 g Thursday High carb Low fat g Friday High carb Low fat g Saturday Low carb High fat 75 g Sunday Low carb High fat 75 g.

Example meal plans. Recommended carb sources. How we reviewed this article: Sources. Carbs especially refined carbs raise blood sugar, resulting in the body producing extra insulin to bring that blood sugar down. Insulin is a hormone that triggers fat storage—so more carbs means more insulin which means more conversion of carbs to fat stores.

As a fuel source, carbohydrates replenish glycogen stores in the muscle and liver. They also maintain blood glucose concentrations as fuel for the body, but also for the brain. When following a keto diet, lower carb intake is necessary like 25g of carbs per day—the amount in a single banana.

This encourages the body to burn fat and also to convert fat to ketones. Consuming carbohydrates causes insulin release, which inhibits ketone production in the liver. What is carb cycling, and why is it beneficial? Looking at the science can provide some clarity.

Maybe a more accurate definition of carb cycling is carb manipulation. High-carb days are usually matched with workouts when you might need more glucose—like high-intensity interval sessions or a long day in the weight room. When you exercise at a high intensity, the body makes most of its energy from carbohydrates, either breaking it down aerobically with oxygen , or anaerobically without oxygen , forming lactic acid.

This would be the optimal time to introduce a higher amount of carbohydrates into the diet because the body uses more carbohydrate during the workout itself, and then after the workout to make glycogen to refuel and decrease muscle breakdown.

When looking for your highest possible power or speed output, carbs are often necessary for the body to produce its best results during intense training sessions. But further investigation by scientists have shown some of the advantages of training on these low carb days, which has two main benefits: it helps to speed up general adaptations to aerobic training, and it increases fat burning and thus improves endurance.

One of the key, groundbreaking experiments in this field was conducted using single-legged cycling exercise. Athletes had to cycle using just one leg at a time; the left leg cycled one hour straight, and the right leg did two half hours with a few hours in between where no recovery fuel was given.

This means that the right leg was training in a carb depleted state during the second session. Muscle biopsy samples revealed that the twice-trained leg saw bigger gains in the enzymes that are key for aerobic respiration. This led to the conclusion that low-carb training could accelerate aerobic gains.

Strategic low-carb days focus on switching the body back to using fat as energy and increase aerobic capacity.

Research is continuing on this topic, but athletes are looking to boost the ability of the body to tap into fat as a fuel source, since we store more fat than carbohydrates.

Training in a low-carb state has been shown to increase the ability of the body to burn fat over the long haul, improving metabolic flexibility. Kunces There have even been studies noting keto-adapted athletes can use fat in preference to carbohydrates for moderate intensity endurance exercises, in which carbohydrates would usually be used as fuel.

But it takes time. He's a bodybuilder on the keto diet; backstage at events, he receives inquisitive looks from competitors when they find out he's keto. But the results speak for themselves and after events, he'll even get asked about he's able to train with such little carb intake.

Play the long game. Be diligent with hitting macros and eating wholesome foods. By controlling carbs, and the types of carbs consumed, there also may be a benefit in manipulating insulin and insulin responses. Reaven,Gower This would likely help with improving metabolic health.

It is becoming widely accepted that athletes should adopt carb cycling or periodization of carbs based on training needs. The benefits are carb cycling are measured against personal goals. Do you want to improve body composition? How about improve training or recovery?

As with most diets, a major goal is usually weight loss. Because we consume such a high amount of calories as carbohydrates in Western diets, limiting those calories and carbs will ultimately lead to fat loss.

The process aligns with most other diets: consume less calories than the body burns, enter a calorie deficit and promote weight loss. Though specific research on carb cycling is limited, generally studies show that limiting carb intake works well for weight loss.

One study analyzed overweight women who had a family history of breast cancer. Three groups were randomly assigned different diets: calorie-restricted and low-carb diet, low-carb but unlimited protein and healthy fat, and a standard, calorie-restricted diet.

Women in both low-carbohydrate groups showed better results for weight loss. Training in a low-carb state can help with weight loss, boost fat burning capacity, and can speed up aerobic adaptation to training.

However, athletes face a compromise when employing low-carb diets; they need the carbohydrates to perform at the highest intensity especially in a race , and want to keep that energy system working well, but still want the benefits of carb restriction.

Making sure the body has carbs for tough training can help performance. The body needs fuel for the most difficult exercise days. Pizza Interestingly, even the presence of carbohydrates in the mouth meaning, not actually ingested can lead to increased performance, because they activated brain regions believed to be involved in reward and motor control.

Carbs can also help accelerate recovery. After exercise, consuming carbohydrates can lead to glycogen resynthesis and protein synthesis after resistance training. Carb cycling means those big training days can be high quality.

By cycling carbohydrate consumption, you may be afforded some of the benefits of both higher-carb and lower-carb diets—and avoid some of the common negative side-effects. Metabolic Health: The combination of two types of diets may help you become metabolically flexible. The days with low-carbs may have a positive impact on insulin sensitivity; this study showed the benefits of a low-carb, high-fat diet on glucose metabolism, lowering fasting glucose and insulin values.

Gower And when compared to a low-fat diet, a low-carb diet led to greater weight loss, which in turn led to a decrease in triglyceride levels Yancy —high levels of triglycerides have been associated with cardiovascular disease.

Hormone Health: There are some concerns that hormones might be negatively affected by a badly put together low-carb diet, but this could be mitigated by strategic carb feeding.

High-carb feeding periods can potentially boost the levels of some vital hormones, like cortisol. There are some concerns that cortisol can decline when following a low-carbohydrate or ketogenic diet although not much research supports this fear. To combat this possibility, either make sure your keto diet is well-formulated with enough calories and nutrients, Volek or cycle periods of carbohydrate feeding to give your body a break.

In men, testosterone concentrations were higher after a ten-day high-carbohydrate diet, while cortisol concentrations were consistently lower on the same diet, suggesting the power of diet specifically the ratio of carbohydrate to protein as a factor in hormone regulation.

Thyroid hormones are essential to regulating metabolism, Chidakel being crucial determinants of resting metabolic rate. But they themselves are in turn regulated by diet and metabolism because glucose fuels the production of those thyroid hormones.

The thyroid produces a large amount of T4 hormones, which are then converted into T3 hormones T3 is the active thyroid hormone influencing many body processes. When carb intake is reduced, conversion of T4 to T3 reduces. Bisschop People worry that this might lead to a lower metabolic rate and thus slow down weight loss with a low-carb diet.

This might be increased further by taking a cyclical approach to the diet: alternating high-carb and low-carb weeks. One study fed a ketogenic diet to mice every other week.

Results showed avoidance of obesity, reducing midlife mortality, and prevented memory decline. Anyone from ametuer dieter to serious athlete can carb cycle. There are different options for how carefully you implement carb cycling, depending on training and recovery needs as well as your overall goals.

Creating a schedule, tracking your progress and targeting carbohydrate intake can help develop a well-formulated plan to succeed cycling carbs. Before a single carb touches your lips, think about your goals. These will formulate your carb cycling plan.

Do you want to lose weight, or maintain weight? Do you want to boost aerobic fat burning capacity or target a lean body composition? Then consider your typical training week. Which days are your most intense workouts? Which days can you recover, even without carbs? Do you meal prep to make sure you get enough quality, low-carb foods?

Serious athletes might want to take it one step further and consider carb cycling over a longer period, to keep up with training or competition cycle. Instead of breaking up a single week into high-carb and low-carb days, each week would have a different carbohydrate goal.

Your answers to these questions will determine how you go about cycling carbs. To gain weight, you can multiply your bodyweight by 15 to garner a ballpark daily calorie target. Tracking your macros in a food journal or an app will help keep you accountable.

Taking note of everything you eat will let you make sure you get enough calories from the right type of macronutrients while giving you a better understanding of how diet impacts your training output. High-carb days should accompany your toughest training sessions of the week, such as intense intervals or prolonged weight training.

Note that you might want to eat high-carb the night before a heavy morning workout to make sure that you are fueled up and ready to go, even if the training on that day was not that intense. Low-carb or medium-carb days can be used to fuel less-intense workouts or recovery days. On low-carb days, be sure to prioritize other macronutrients such as good quality protein and fat.

High protein intake is important for post-workout recovery and the development of muscle mass. When cutting back on carbs, make sure you get enough calories, and the bulk of these should come from fat. There are a few strategies that you can use to control your carb intake around your training sessions.

Training low: start your training having limited your carb intake beforehand. Implementing this strategy is simple. You may wake up and workout in the morning without eating before. You may even increase the effect by limiting carb intake the night before.

If you workout during the evening, you may limit carbs from morning until that evening training session. On low-carb days, be clever to ensure quality training and recovery. Performing on a low-carb day can be difficult, so consider taking a low-carb or keto energy source.

Another way to get a boost is to mouth rinse with carbs; this can improve performance without needing to actually eat carbs. You can also use caffeine before your workout, which is another reliable, carb-free way to get your body ready to perform.

What about recovery? BHB found in ketone ester drinks is a carb-free alternative for recovery on low-carb days. BHB could be a great way to help protect your recovery but also keep carb intake low.