Anabolic burst cycling of diet and exercise (ABCDE method)

K

Karky

2
Anyone heard of it? tried it? thoughts?

Short summary of what it's about:
eat a lot for 2 weeks, then eat little for 2 weeks, keep cycling like that.
Apparently, overfeeding shoots up our anabolic hormones, but they start to decline after a while, so only 2 weeks. Then you go on 2 weeks with low cals to reset the system and to lose the fat you gained.
I've been reading up on it, and from what I can gather from different forums, most people who have tried it have been very pleased.

A Swedish dude called "Akerfeldt" came up with it. IF you google it you'll read stuff like going extremely low on the low cal phase, but apparently, some dude changed what Akerfeldt said when he quoted him in his article. And apparently, Akerfeldt only says to go maintenance or a 10% deficit.

I'm thinking about trying it out to see what happens
 
I wouldn't go for that diet even if i was a 120 lbs ectomorph. Something like with "refuelling" breaks "smells" a lot better to me.

What is carb cycling and why do we use it?

Carb cycling is basic enough to explain. The daily intake of CHO is varied from day to day in a cyclical manner to give high, low and no CHO days instead of having a static daily intake over the week.
If you were to say “I eat 300g of CHO every day” that would be a static intake. With RO-CHO you may well eat 300g one day, in fact two days, 150g for 3 days and near no carbs on the remaining 2 days of the calendar week. This gives us the structure of high, low and no CHO days. Cycling carbs is beneficial for those dieting down offering both anabolic and catabolic environments. This is not a license to cut and bulk in one, it simply means the body is more efficient at burning fat for periods whilst other periods its more efficient aiding repair, recovery and dare I say it growth which leads to strength and hypertrophy (depending on training goals), whilst maintaining a negative energy balance.

so periods on abalosim and catabolism within the same week = better body composition
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The problem with the ABCDE method IMO :-

- what are you supposed to do on the 2 weeks that you are on low cals? Cardio or will you be able to do squats, deads etc?

- for those who have high body fat levels to start with, overfeeding in the first 2 weeks is just adding more fat.

- Going on low cals (even for those with low body fat) does not mean your body will automatically let go of the extra fat - it could go into starvation mode.
 
Well you don't go that low on cals, just a normal deficit, a normal cut, really.

On low cals you'll lift weights

The overfeeding is supposed to be stopped before you start gaining a lot of fat, that's the idea behind the short cycles. They did cite a study where people overfed and they saw hormones go through the roof, but peaked at 14 days and started to decline, thus they decided that around there you need to back off. You'll probably add some fat anyways, yes.. as for the whole if you have a high BF, I don't have a high bf.
 
T-Nation did a piece on it :-

A better name for this diet might have been the Arthur Murray diet:

Two steps forward, one step back.
Two steps forward, one step back.
Cha cha cha.

It had one big drawback, though. It didn't really work. People picked up additional muscle mass, but they also got fatter — way fatter.
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It is just as i expected, someone super-thin to start with on this diet might get away with it (not put a lot of fat). For anyone else, this might be a "new" fattening method.
 
yeah, that's what tmag says about it. Some others have said it too, but a lot of people have also reported that it works great, and yes, people of varying BFs. (though not as fantastic as some of the articles about it claims)
 
All i can say Kark, is f**k what any comments you've heard (good & bad)...

Try it for yourself and make your own mind up ;)
 
yeah, that's what I'm planning to do. I'm also looking into protein cycling. It was mentioned in an article on the ABCDE. I've been thinking about protein cycling ever since I read about how the body adapts to higher and lower protein intakes. Basically, with low protein intake the body is very efficient at metabolising amino acids, nothing goes to waste. This is mainly because of enzymes that are either incresed or decreased on a low protein diet. Now you can go low protein to get these enzymes to adapt to it, then go high while the enzymes are still adapted to low and really pack protein into muscle. But I dunno how valid that theory is, I don't know how long the body takes to change the enzyme levels.. I might make a thread on this soon.
 
Couldn't that have a counter effect though?

Say when you change to the high protein diet, and enzyme's start to adapt and become 'LESS' efficient again, when you switch to the low protein diet, wouldn't that really have a negative effect for a while since the enzymes would be less efficient with a low protein diet.
 
yeah, that's true. I don't know enough about it to answer that. I just found it interesting, but I'm nowhere near convinced it actually works.
 
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I'm still a little confused on the matter. Is the goal to reduce BF? or gain mass? or increase active performance? If I have an understanding on what the goals of this type of system are, then I can have a better, more thorough answer for you.
 
the goal is to gain mass and take advantage of the acute hormonal response to overfeeding (the hormones drop after about 2 weeks). So you overfeed, but stop before the anabolic hormones start dropping, that way you take advantage of the best part of bulking. Then you cut for 2 weeks to take off the fat you gained and to reset your system so that your body will increase its anabolic hormones on the next bulk. So the goal is to gain lean mass and little fat (considering how you take the fat off during the cutting phase)
 
This diet works if tweaked slightly. I used it years ago and I'm just starting back on it now, cutting from 210 to 198 in 12 days and then rebounding to 206. Over 4 weeks I will lose approximately 4 lbs and will continue through the summer. I'll reverse things this winter (gain 10, lose 5).

The object to this diet is to cycle just about everything....constant confusion of your body/horomones. When you overeat, do not pig out like a hog trapped in the refridgerator. Eat clean and pay attention to your body.

At 200lbs, I will start bulking 200g protein per day for 6 days and 300g protein for last 6 days. This shakes things up and finishes the bulk cycle on high protein, lower carbs. The first 6 days is fluid/creatine loading. The last 6 days is stretching/bag enlargement and high protein for repair/overtraining starting to set in. Use 10g creatine a day on bulking cycle.

At 206lbs, I will start cutting at 200g protein for 6 days with moderate carbs and lower fat since my TEST will still be high and need to cycle to lower protein a few days. The next 6 days will be 300g protein, higher "good" fats in the morning with no carbs and then moderate clean carbs at night to replace carbs lost during workout. Morning cardio each day to keep metabolism high. Add L-Tyrosine/Glutamine/ALCAR/Ephedrine for at least the last 6 days of the cycle to maintain high metabolism. You want to drain almost all carbs from your body during the last 2-3 days of cutting cycle so the first 3 days of carb loading doesn't turn into fat. No creatine during cutting and cut back on salt last 6 days of cutting cycle.

The key to this diet is muscle confusion and cycle everything. Get creative with your mini-cycles and understand your body enough to see why cycling works. Lift lighter during the cutting phase and heavier during the bulking phase.

Don't be afraid to gain 10 lbs in 12 days and lose 10 lbs the next 12 days. Your metabolism won't crash in 12 days unless you're sitting on the couch and you will gain a lot of muscle when you bulk up 10 lbs assuming you are lifting very heavy those 2 weeks.
 
if you think you can con the human body into growing,by trying to trick it into releasing more hormones or any other such way,i think you are mistaken somewhere along the line it will take back what it has given,the human body is the most efficient machine in the world,and isnt so easily tricked.
 
So far my first 12 days on ABCDE diet worked perfect. I went from 210 to 198 and actually got stronger in most lifts performed at 8-10 reps. I'm on day 10 of the bulking phase at 205 lbs right now and I'm stronger than I've ever been. I set personal records benching, leg press, shoulder press and lat pulldowns. My bodyfat is slightly lower than when I was at 210 3 weeks ago and my strength/energy is much higher. During the last 6 days of the bulking phase I'm at 350g of protein a day which helps keep overtraining from setting in. I look forward to cutting in 2 more days. 12 days of overeating gets to be just as hard as 12 days of cutting calories.
 
buzz said:
if you think you can con the human body into growing,by trying to trick it into releasing more hormones or any other such way,i think you are mistaken somewhere along the line it will take back what it has given,the human body is the most efficient machine in the world,and isnt so easily tricked.
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That doesn't make any sense at all. We do it all the time by exercising and eating right.. we get the body to grow. This is just another method.
 
I'll have to agree with Karky on this matter. It is done all the time. Also, the human body is greatly ineffective, especially when it comes to calorie burning.
 
Karky said:
That doesn't make any sense at all. We do it all the time by exercising and eating right.. we get the body to grow. This is just another method.
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the body grows through exercise and eating right because it has to,that is the nature of hypertrophy.
IMO trying to make the body release more hormones by overeating for a couple of weeks isnt going to do much in the long run,the human body has adapted to feast and famine for thousands of years,as i said before whatever it gives it will take away when needed.

I'll have to agree with Karky on this matter. It is done all the time. Also, the human body is greatly ineffective, especially when it comes to calorie burning.
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thats because the body is so effeicient,it doesnt want to let go of energy,energy is its life source so it will hold onto any form of energy for as long as it can,this is why losing fat is so hard for most people.
 
I think what FunctionalTrain means by inefficient is that a lot of the energy from nutrients ends up as heat instead of ATP.

And if it's right that anabolic hormone levels decline after 2 weeks of overeating (as some studies suggest), then it could be cool to take advantage of that and bulk in small 2 week periods with cutting in between instead of doing long periods. it's not like you're gonna eat everything you see if you try it, a regular 500kcal surplus should suffice.

And if what you're saying about overeating is true, then it would apply to the long (regular) bulking and cutting cycles aswell
 
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