Carb Cycling for Fat Loss

Once in a while it is very important to go through what is called carb cycling to burn body fat and go through fat loss. When your body goes through a low carb state it no doubt burns a lot of fat. However, if you do this for too long, your body adapts to the amount of food given to it and it becomes less efficient at burning calories, because it knows you don't feed it enough necessary nutrients (yes, regardless of what Atkins says, carbohydrates are necessary for energy). As a natural survival response, it lowers the rate at which it burns calories or what is called the Basal Metablic Rate (BMR). If your body knows that food is coming it will use that food as readily burned energy. When you don’t eat for long periods of time it stores that food as body fat to be preserved for food in a later time in the day. Often times it is not used as energy so the fat accumulates. It almost works like a paradox- when your body knows that food is coming, it can burn the food it consumes to burn that as energy; whereas when it is unaware of when it's next meal will be it holds onto everything it has thereby lowering your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), or the rate at which your body burns calories and expends energy to perform daily tasks and natural metabolic functions. You want your BMR to be as high as possible. In order to trick your body into bruning fat and to not believe that it is in a low-carb state, you need to do what is called carb cycling. carb cycling is a very efficient way of burning fat. What you do is you eat low carb for several days at a time and then you ramp up your carbohydrates for one day and then go back on the low carb diet. It is usually best if you do the carb spike every 5 days; meaning you eat very little carbs for 4 straight days until you get to that 5th day. Your body will be tricked out of ever coming into that starvation response and will continue to burn body fat while keeping your BMR at high rates. However, be sure that on your carb spike day you train with weights on this day so you use the extra calories towards muscle building and make sure to eat very low fat on this day as well to keep your total calories under check.

Here's a sample of a carb cycling day:

Breakfast:
3 Egg Whites
2 Cups of Oatmeal

Bowl of Strawberries, Blueberries, and Raspberries
1 Whole Grapefruit
Pancakes
Glass of Orange Juice

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Make sure you get some protein here and lots of carbs to break the fast and take your body out of its catabolic state. Make sure you get your complex carbs to give you energy throughout the day and some simple sugars to give your body the fuel it needs immediately after starving for 8+ hours. Also, you'll have plenty of antioxidants in this meal to boost your ability to kill off cell-damaging free radicals. Also, grapfruit is a superfood and has been known to burn off tons of body fat throughout the day.

Mid-Morning Snack:
Bagel with Low-Fat Veggie Cream Cheese
You need to eat every 2-3 hours to make sure you provide your muscles with the fuel it needs so it doesn't go catabolic (muscle-wasting) and so your metabolism is stoked so you can be bruning fat all day long.

Lunch:
Grilled Chicken Burrito Stuffed with Rice, Black Beans, Vegetables, and Salsa

Pre-Workout Stack: Cellucor's C4 Extreme, 1 Glass of V8 Fusion, Plus 1 Small Box of Raisins, Plus 2 tbsp. Honey

Remember to take a pre-workout supplement before the gym to help prime your body for muscle growth and fat burning. Your workouts will be close to useless without one. The best one on the market is one that contains 4 essential ingredients: Beta Alanine, Creatine, Caffeine, and L-Arginine- which act together to create snyergistic growth within your body, priming your body for fat-burning mode. The best one on the market that contains all of these 4 ingredients is Cellucor's C4 Extreme. Also, the carbs will help provide you plenty of energy to get through your workout. Raisins are considered to be the food with the most energy for a competition, race, practice, or workout.

Post-Workout Stack: Cellucor Iso Pro Nitro Sport + Plus 1 bag of Sour Patch Kids

This is probably your 2nd most important meal of the day. You need to have fast-digesting sources of protein and carbohydrates in order to prevent further muscle breakdown and replenish glycogen stores. The simple carbohydrates for post-workout are very important because you need to create an insulin spike which will send your muscles into a growth phase. You need the best post-workout protein on the market designed to maintain higher insulin levels, absorb more macronutrients, amplify glycogen storage with greater digestability than traditional protein shakes- you'll build muscle immediately after your workout.

1 Hour after Post-Workout:
Scallops Over Linguini with Marinara Sauce
Chopped Combination Salad
Water with Lemon

This meal is very important. The post-workout meal is designed to spike insulin levels to replenish some glycogen stores and to shuttle protein and nutrients into the muscles to prevent further muscle breakdown. However, this meal is the start of the reparation process to put you on the road to recovery and building further muscle. The lemon in the water will help alkalize the body. An acidic body is very dangerous for your health and not conducive to losing weight. Alkalizing your body with lemon will help you lose weight and maintain radiant skin while preventing cancer cells from forming in your body.

Late-Night Snack: 2 Tsbp. Peanut Butter on 2 slices of Whole Wheat Toast
Bowl of Chopped Pineapple, Melon, Canteloupe, Berries, and Grapes

You need to keep your muscles fed while you sleep for 8 hours so your body's ability to break down precious muscle will be hindered (that's a good thing). The more muscle you have, the more fat you burn.

And please stop brown-bagging it fellas. Carry all of your meals in the 6 Pack Bag Meal Management System. The most convenient lunchbox for bodybuilders ever made.