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7. Carb cycling and refeeds
There are a few reasons why people may start to choose refeed days or carb cycling. The principle
however is to lose more fat at a time where body fat percentages are abnormally low.
How does this work?
You can’t force the body to lose fat; you must coax it. In most cases simply staying in a calorific
deficit will work fine. But what happens when fat levels become low and the body starts to panic? It
will hold onto fat and look to other sources of mass to use as energy. Remember we weren’t
designed to have extremely low body fat percentages. Fat is there for survival and to regulate
hormones etc. for women it also helps to protect the reproductive organs. So, at some point the
body will fight back and adapt.
What we then do is start to carb cycle or refeed.
What we need to do is influx the system with carbohydrates. This tricks the body into thinking it has
a new energy supply. It switches back over to fat for energy. So, you may have 3-4 low carb days
which will give the body a limited supply of glucose then suddenly increase the carbs on the fifth so
the body has a new energy supply. It no longer panics about low body fat and energy reserve and
starts to use the carbs and fat as energy for your workouts. A refeed day works on the same
principles. A five-day cycle may look like this:
Determine how many carbs to eat by figuring out the highest day. So, 1 – 1.5g carbs per lb of body
weight is sufficient. So, for myself I weigh 170lbs therefore I’d start off with 1.5 x 170 = 255g so…
Day 1 - 175g
Day 2 – 125g
Day 3 – 75g
Day 4 – 125g
Day 5 – 225g
Then repeat. Monitoring your weight and body composition as you go along.
As you can see I’m manipulating my carbs by 50g at a time.
I would advise that the high carb days would be placed on heavy training days not on days of your
training for example.
Some people may like to increase fats on a low carb day and lower them during a high carb day.
However, depending on your calorie intake will depend on whether you wish to do this.
One problem I’ve found though is that a lot of people use the system too early in a fat loss phase.
When you start a cut a simple calorie deficit as discussed earlier is more than sufficient. Only use
these systems when the deficit ceases to work anymore.
Essentially these little tricks should be kept in the back pocket until you really need them.
If you want more info about how to go about this style of programming, please feel free to get in
touch.
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