Once in a while, it is very important to go through carb cycling to burn body fat and increase fat burning capabilities in your body. 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, your body lowers the rate at which it burns calories or what is called the Basal Metabolic 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. In contrast, when the body is unaware of when the 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 burning 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 carbs for several days at a time and then you ramp up your carbohydrates for one day and then go back on a low carb diet. It is usually best if you do the carb spike every five days, meaning you eat very little carbs for four straight days until you get to that fifth 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 so you use the extra calories towards muscle building. In addition, make sure to eat very low fat on this day as well to keep your total calories under check.

Sample Carb Cycling Day

Breakfast: 3 Eggs + 2 Cups of Oatmeal + Bowl of Fruit + 1 Whole Grapefruit + Pancakes + Glass of Orange Juice
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Make sure you get some protein 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 when sleeping. Also, you’ll have plenty of antioxidants in this meal to boost your ability to kill off cell damaging free radicals. You should also have grapefruit, a superfood that 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 burning fat all day long.

Lunch: Grilled Chicken Burrito Stuffed with Rice, Black Beans, Vegetables, and Salsa
During this time, you will continue to ramp up your metabolism and provide precious nutrients for the body.

Post-Workout Stack: Whey Protein Shake + Two Tbsp. of Honey
This is probably your most important meal of the day after breakfast. 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 to send your muscles into a growth phase. You also need whey protein designed to maintain higher insulin levels, absorb more macronutrients and amplify glycogen storage with greater digestibility. Stay away from fats immediately after your workout so that your body can maximize its nutrient absorption.

1 Hour after Workout: Scallops Over Linguini with Marinara Sauce + Chopped 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 more muscle. The lemon in the water will help alkalize the body. An acidic body can have negative effects on 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 Tbsp. Peanut Butter on 2 slices of Whole Wheat Toast + Bowl of Fruit
You need to keep your muscles fed while you sleep at night 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.