Carb Cycling / Calorie Cycling

[Sherriperoni]

Can someone explain their process of carb cycling? I currently calorie cycle, if that's even a term. On the days I workout I enter the calories I burned (I use a HR monitor) into MyFitnessPal and end up eating that many more calories instead of my regular 1400.

I have no clue if this is the right thing to do or if I should be focusing more on just eating more carbs but not actually more calories (so changing my macro ratio) on those days.
Thoughts?

 

[shortz]

Calorie cycling is more work than it's worth. It adds yet another variable that can mess with you when you're re-evaluating your situation. Carb cycling does not alter your calories. You increase fats and protein, and decrease your carbs on non-training days. There doesn't have to be a set amount. You do what you want. When I carb cycle, I get between 100-150 on non-training days, and 300-350g on training days. Some people like to go down really low, but it wipes me out when I do that.

There is a methodology of dieting that calls for counting up your weekly calories instead of daily. I don't care for that because it leaves too much room for messing up and calculation errors.

 

[BrotherIron]

You find out by trying... whether or not this will work for you. Personally, I'm a BIG fan of carb cycling. Like Shortz said on your high days, your carbs are high while protein and fats are low. Medium are just that medium amounts of each. Low days have high fats and protein while carbs are low. I have my high days on my squat and deadlift day. Med day for my bench and pressing days and my low days are for my conditioning. I find this method works well for me to keep my strength/size while actually leaning down. Shelby Starnes and Justin Harris wrote a lot about carb cycling. You can run a search for them and find quite a bit of info on it.