Week 3

Another loss of 2.2lbs! That makes it 16.8lbs to go in the next 9 weeks. Which turns out to be exactly 1.87 lbs per week…it’s going to be really hard to keep it up but I really want to reach this goal so I have to focus, focus, focus.

I’m always reading about how to move beyond a weight loss plateau, I’m not at a plateau this moment but I was for about a year and to be honest I’m scared to death about having it happen again. I was reading an article about carb cycling. It almost seems crazy but even my Fitness idol, Jamie Eason agrees with it so it must be okay 

The basic idea is to cycle your carbohydrate grams throughout the week. For example:

Monday – low carb; Tuesday – low carb; Wednesday – low carb; Thursday – high carb
Friday – moderate carb; Saturday – moderate carb; Sunday – moderate carb

It all seems easy to do but there is some math you have to do to determine the amount of grams per day.

Low Carb: Your body weight (lb) divided by 2 = grams of carbs
High Carb: Your body weight (lb) x 2 – 3 = grams of carbs
Moderate Carb: Your body weight (lb) = grams of carbs

Low Carb day you would eat more fibrous vegetables and healthy fats and less starchy Carbs. On a High Carb day you would eat more starchy carbs and simple carbs and less fibrous vegetables and healthy fatty foods. On the Moderate Carb day you would go back to eating your regular clean eating diet of lean protein, vegetables, whole grains and healthy fats and avoid the refined carbs, processed foods, drinks and candy.

You must however continue to eat 5 – 6 balanced meals with your daily caloric and protein intake the same. Holy crap this is going to be really hard to tackle. My day already is consumed with planning.

The article went on to say that this way of eating is all about restoring your fat-burning hormone levels, Leptin is a hormone the keeps our metabolic rate up and hunger down. So staying on a low carb diet depletes this hormone and causes our metabolism to decline and increase our hunger and we don’t want that to happen or would could not see any changes to our bodies. So in alternating the carb intake we can prevent the leptin levels from dropping and continue increasing our body’s ability to burn excess fat.

My friend Kristen is going to start trying this method today and I’m going to start playing with my numbers and plan my menu so I can start this upcoming Sunday. I figure I can try it for a few weeks and see what happens. The fat loss benefits of carb cycling have been the best kept secret of bodybuilders and fitness models and NOW Kristen and I. I only hope I see the benefits:0.

So begins another week of eating clean, exercising and planning my next week of carb cycling.