[Bi]cycle Race

~ Queen ~

I couldn't find any cool photos about calorie cycling, so opted for the next best thing...

There are so many methods of dieting to loose fat without losing muscle and calorie cycling is just one of them. Instead of just eating less constantly every day, you have a mix of high calorie days (normally in conjunction with exercise) and low calorie (or rest) days.

It is said to speed up fat loss, helps reset your hunger hormones, improves insulin sensitivity and gives you a mental boost.  However, this requires a fair amount of self-discipline, as well as a willingness to measure food and count calories with a great deal of precision. 

An example that is used is the following.  Let's take 1500 calories per day, 7 days a week. So a sample week will look like this:

M - 1400  / T - 1400  / W - 1650  / TH - 1450  / F - 1450  / S - 1650  / S - 1500

That equals 10 500 calories for the week.  10 500 / 7 days = 1500 calories. So effectively you are still getting the same amount of calories in for the week, you're just shaking things up a bit.

Normally you'd have your high calorie days when you need more energy for your workout and recovery & you're lower calorie days on “rest” days. It's a pain in the ass to keep track of everything you eat, but it forces you to take a hard look at what you put into your body.

If you want to lose fat you basically have to force your body into tapping your stores of energy and the only way to do this is to put yourself in a calorie-deficit. If you reduce your calories enough you’ll start losing fat, eat more calories than your body needs, and it will start to store the excess energy as fat. There are two challenges tho, when you reduce your calories below your maintenance level for any extended period of time:

Catabolism:  The body doesn't always just burn fat, it also burns carbs & sometimes lean tissue. So you might be losing weight, but it may be muscle along with the fat.  

Homeostatis: Eventually your body will catch on that you’re eating less food than you need, and it will interpret this as a sign that it might be in for an extended period of food scarcity.  So it will start to slow down your metabolism in order to conserve energy, since it interprets your calorie deficit as a sign of “famine.”

Calorie cycling tries to trick the body into thinking that you are not actually dieting.  And because you are alternating between higher calorie days and lower calorie days, you may be less likely to lose lean tissue and less prone to developing fat loss plateaus. 

That's the theory anyway. Apparently most of the evidence around the effectiveness of calorie cycling is anecdotal, although calorie cycling devotees often swear by the results. You can have a further read here.

It's still early days, and a hell of a lot of food, but I'm sure in a couple of days I'll be back into the swing of things.

Food good, water bad.

Double Unders are getting easier - my new record is 22! And handstands away from wall is up to 4 seconds...whoo, yeah...small steps. I still suck at the overhead squat press.

Remember to follow K&C on Google+ | Facebook | Pinterest | Bloglovin. Night all!