Carb Cycling?

[bigselfishme]

I've had a tremendous amount of success in the past using an extremely low carb diet. I generally would eat little to no carbs through out the day, and then a normal meal @ night as specified by the Carbohydrate Addicts Diet. This worked miracles for me for years. I was able to drop a ton of weight and had plenty of energy to follow a strict plan of 6 days a week of cardio, free weight training, and toning exercise.

After an injury I gained a significant amount of weight back. I've recently started hitting the gym again but suddenly am unable to consistently maintain my workouts which I can only assume is due to a changing body that now requires a different type of diet to sustain daily workouts. My workouts consist of 45 minutes to 1 hour of cardio on either the elliptical or bike daily, and an alternate day regime of separate upper body free weight training, and lower body toning and ab work.

This puts me in the conundrum of "I don't lose weight when I eat carbs but I can't work out when I don't." I'm also hyperinsulinemic so when I eat certain carbs or high fructose fruits, (peaches, nectarines, over ripe bananas, etc) my blood sugar goes all out of control and I get extremely weak and plagued with a sudden insatiable hunger.

Can anyone recommend some kind of plan that will allow me to lose weight relatively quickly while still being able to sustain my workouts? I've looked into carb cycling and that seems promising but there's a lot of conflicting information.

Again, my goals are to lose weight and gain muscle, which I do tend to develop rather easily. I don't want to be ripped up (I'm a female) but I do like having my toned muscles and cuts and what have you.

Thanks for reading!

 

[summer123]

The only thing that will make you lose weight is cutting back on calories. All diets that work do this at the end of the day- even carb cycling. The idea with that diet being that as you cut carbs, you unconciously cut calories: think burger without bun, spagetti without pasta, sandwich without bread! Its hard to replace a staple food like that for most people so they eat less. They may have one day off a week but its going to be limited as theres only so much people can eat. Fact is, it messes with hormones and blood sugar and could cause you problems which are irreversable- your issue sounds like something on the diabeties spectrum, I'd be very careful with messing with carbs.

Mess with your hormones, things like cortisol which shoot up when you eat too little. Cortisol is a hormone which appears when your body feels stressed. This can be as a result of your job, of arguements with others, a stressful lifestyle or things like dramatic dieting or poor sleep. Cortisol makes fat reside around your middle, and not in a nice way! Whats also worth remembering is that a natural side effect of dieting is that your body becomes super efficient at burning calories- it thinks your starving and wants to save every last calorie. It slows its burning right down, makes those calories last. If you suddenly flood your body with extra calories (eg a carb day) guess what your body is going to do with all those extra calories... Thats right, spare tire!

There are mahy stickes on calories and how much you need on the site, take a look and go from there but eating a healthy balance is a far more sustainable way to go and easier to live with- how fun is it going to be when all your mates want to go out for a meal and your response is "sorry, can't do, its not my carb day today...". How would you be able to manage once you reach your goal weight? as you would need fewer calories at a reduced weight, how would you know what to eat? if you went back to what your eating now, you'd simply gain weight, eventually land back where you started: a good diet lets you know what your body really requires to maintain and allows you to work on things like portion control, eating at sensible times and eating a good balance. It prepares you for when you do reach the goal you set yourself.

Really, fad diets just land you in hot water, they mess with your hormones, they mess with your idea of healthy and balanced eating, they mess with your social life and they do not prepare you for the long term effects of being at a lower weight.

My best advice would be to find a sticky, things like dailyplate or fitday can help too, work out what your body needs to survive each day and maintain (if your already maintaining your weight quite easily your one step ahead). Next cut back on the calories. I'd say aim for 25% max, any more you risk binging or cortisol issues. If you feel you can do more, by all means, but remember this: when dieting/cutting back/however you want to term it, eventually your weight will plateu. It will stop falling, then you'll be faced with cutting something else out and if you've already cut back alot in the first place, its going to be that bit harder when you come to cut back again and again. Little steps can feel tedious but at least it means you get there! The amount of people who drop out of a "diet" and gain back more then they lost in the first place is amazing.