Carb Cycling for Fat Loss vs Cheat Day/Fast Day
Posted by Brad Campbell
8
Jul, 2010
How Does Carb Cycling for Fat Loss Differ From a Cheat Day/Fast Day? By Brad Campbell
When it comes to achieving extreme fat loss, how does traditional carbohydrate cycling stack up to my cheat day (followed by a fast day) method? That’s the topic of today’s post, but before I tell you which dieting strategy takes the cake (get it?), I’m going to make like the maid I wish I had and do some housekeeping…
If you haven’t downloaded your FREE bodyweight workout videos yet, make sure to get on that before the offer expires. Check out this post for details: Get Ripped Without Weights and learn more about this hardcore bodyweight-only training system right here: Tacfit Commando Review.
Next up, I received this email the other day from a relatively new TopFatLossTrainer reader and thought it was straight fire (that’s Brad talk for: it made my day)…
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I’m not sure if these messages actually get to you Brad, but I want to say thanks for publishing this blog. I have only recently discovered it and what I like most is the fact that you speak (or write) plainly and bluntly. You don’t try to overwhelm us with science, and you clear out the BS and hit us with the facts. You write in a conversational tone as opposed to a text book.
Anyway, I have found your tips refreshing. I was beginning to succumb to information overload from all the misinformation out there but I like your no-nonsense approach best. I’m 42 and my journey began just this year 1/1/10. I was 6′ 0″ and 265 lbs with 40% body fat.
As of today (7/6/10) I have cut that to 223 and 21% using virtually all of the techniques you describe. I still have a long way to go but I have accepted that patience is the key. Once I get lean, I’ll try your tips for adding mass. I’m looking forward to it. Thanks! Kraig
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Just wanted to say congrats to Kraig for his impressive transformation so far and I hope you keep that momentum going until you reach your end goal. The reason that made my day was because he hit the blogging nail on the freakin’ head–everything he pointed out is exactly what I set out to do when I first created this puppy.
I know that my bluntness, less than professional atmosphere and laid back personality won’t vibe with everyone, but I’m cool with that because (in my opinion) the last thing the Internet needs is another prim and proper boring-a*s weight loss site, where the author lectures to his/her readers and spits out the same old safe and rehashed crap that’s been known for decades.
Okay, so most fitness knowledge has been known for a long time, but hopefully you get my point. I guess that was just a really long-winded way of saying that it’s satisfying to know that my decision to be a little more unique and real is being noticed and is being appreciated…so GRACIAS to Kraig and others who’ve left similar comments.
Okay, now that the place is looking spotless, let’s see if I can focus on the original topic long enough to spill some fat burning knowledge. Here’s the exact question I received…
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Hey man, I absolutely LOVE the site and your dedication to helping people out. Truly awesome and inspiring!!
I have a quick question about the cheat day, I’ve read up quite a bit on carb cycling and it seems somewhat different to your notion of the cheat day, yet you likened the two. Others seem to talk about carb cycling, spread out over a week with high carb days, medium carb days and no carb days.
I much prefer your idea of the single cheat day followed up by the full days fast, which I did for the first time the other day, no problem.
What I was wondering was is there much difference between your “cheat day” and conventional carb cycling? As I can’t seem to find out much else regarding the cheat and fast day apart from your site. Sorry to be so long winded.
Thanks again for all the great work!!
-Grant
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Carb Cycling for Fat Loss…
Alright, so another good question there from Grant. As you probably guessed, carb cycling is just that–simply varying or rotating the amount of carbohydrates consumed throughout different days of the week. You’ve probably heard the terms refeeds, carbing up, zig-zagging, etc–all of which are used to describe carb cycling.
There are many different ways to use carb cycling in your fat loss diet plan. For example, some plans alternate between high carb, medium carb and low carb diet days, while others use only two ‘types’ of days. From there, you can obviously use different intervals in terms of how often you cycle carbohydrate intake, plus specific dieting days can be paired strategically with certain workouts to enhance desired results.
Carb cycling is generally thought of as strictly a weight loss tactic, but can also be used for muscle building or to promote maintenance of lean muscle mass during a fat loss phase. For the purposes of rapid fat loss, it’s effective (and I’d go so far as to say essential) for the exact same reasons the cheat day is so clutch:
1) High carb days boost slipping leptin, thyroid and other hormone levels that have fallen due to consecutive lower carb days. This hormonal bump is KEY to keeping metabolism high during a weight loss diet.
2) By cycling days of lower and higher carbs, we can manipulate insulin levels and maximize muscle building and muscle sparing (preventing lean muscle breakdown) effects according to your overall body transformation goals.
3) Because higher carb days follow several days of lower carb intake, most of the added carbs consumed will be put to good use by refilling glycogen stores in liver and muscle, rather than being stored as fat.
4) Carb cycling offers a huge psychological upside as well. Besides all the internal benefits, you get to look forward to days where it’s not only okay to eat more carbohydrate-rich food, but it’s required by the diet plan. This scheduled ‘break’ from lower carb dieting can be a game changer when it comes to staying on track the rest of the week.
This should all sound very similar to the benefits I’ve talked about with using the cheat day/fast day approach. However, the carb cycling method generally has two major differences:
1) Carb cycling usually calls for higher carb days that consist of complex (healthier) carbohydrate foods, whereas the cheat day recommends you enjoy any of your favorite not-so-healthy carbohydrate foods.
2) The intervals and magnitude of the high and low carb days are much more extreme with the cheat (then fast) day diet strategy…meaning you’ll go longer without cycling and when you do cycle, both the high and low carb days are much more exaggerated, as compared to carb cycling protocol.
Hopefully that points out the similarities and differences between standard carb cycling and the cheat day, fast day madness. So which one works the best? The politically correct answer is that they both work well and it depends on who’s asking and what their goals, preferences, habits and experiences are…
Assuming the person asking has no preferences and just wants to shed fat as fast as possible (and assuming they have no underlying conditions that would make them a poor candidate for an all-out cheat day and a 24-hour fast day), I’d give the edge to the cheat day, followed by a fast day.
It takes extreme measures to achieve extreme results and this is far and away the best game plan for torching body fat quickly, without sacrificing lean muscle mass (and in many cases, allowing you to make small GAINS in lean muscle) and without forcing you to give up all the foods you love to eat.
My main beef with the traditional carb cycling method is that it basically calls for 100% clean eating and it’s just not likely that the average person is going to avoid temptation each and every meal for the duration of the diet, let alone forever.
The Xtreme Fat Loss Diet allows you to indulge strategically, so you don’t have to feel guilty about giving in to ‘forbidden foods’ or worse yet, become that antisocial person who has to make excuses every time an event or activity revolves around tasty food.
That’s just my preference though. Although I do think tit for tat, this approach is more powerful and more capable of lending greater weekly fat loss results…as I said before, the major determinant of which approach is best has to do with WHO we’re talking about, as no single diet strategy or workout principle is generalizable to everyone.
The ironic thing is, after copying and pasting that email about how my site is less scientific fluff and more in your face “meat,” I just realized that was probably the most serious and bland post I’ve written in a long time. Sorry, hope I didn’t geek out too much on you guys…
See ya on the flip side.
Your Coach,
Brad Campbell
PS – See my top rated diet plans for fat loss, muscle building or both right here: Diets
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