Need help figuring out carb cycling for fat loss!

Mars Bar

Hi all,

I've been eyeballing my food lately rather than tracking and my recent biosignature test showed that I increased my body fat by 1%. Not a lot at all but I've worked too hard to start slipping.

Up to a couple of months ago I'd been keeping a food diary and not actually tracking calories. I've gone from 26% bf down to 20% bf doing it this way and now I'm up near 22% again. I stayed in and around 8 stone the whole time.
My workout routine had been 3 strength classes and 1 bootcamp each week. I saw increases in all my lifts apart from RDL's (weak ass grip...) and squats (picked up a quad strain).

I'm trying to work out a carb cycling routine. I understand that it's essentially calories in should be higher than calories out. That's fine.

My goal isn't to lose weight. It's to lose fat. This is why I'm asking should I go for 10% below by TDEE (which seems to vary depending on the calculator) and re-arrange my macros according to activity or should I change my calorie intake depending on activity?

A few stats:
26 y/o female
147cm (4ft10)
50.5 kg (8 stone)
22% bf

Current Activity
Monday: Bootcamp which is a mix of strength and cardio
Tuesday: Bootcamp or HIIT (may change to soccer training from next week)
Wednesday: Rest (may become strength class from next week)
Thursday: Strength
Friday: Bootcamp or HIIT
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Rest

My job is soccer coaching from Monday to Wednesday (3 hrs each day) so I'm fairly active when we're not rained off. I also do another hour coaching on Thursday and an hour and a half on Saturday.

I tend to use Saturday as my cheat meal (takeaway) but it has turned in to a bit of a cheat day. I'm almost thinking of moving the cheat meal to Friday night after a workout. At least my body would use those carbs in some form!

According to http://www.1percentedge.com/ifcalc/, my TDEE is 1,679 calories. That's using lightly active as the activity.

Should I cycle low, medium and high?
Should I go low carb on non workout days and keep the same medium carb for all of the workout days?
Should I change the amount of calories I eat depending on activity?

What percentages should I use? Using 40/40/20 as the moderate carb and being -10% of my TDEE (1511 cals), 40 percent carbs is 151g. That seems like an awful lot!

Any opinions would be greatly appreciated. I think I know what I need to do but I need to hear it from others. I think.

Mars Bar

Alf Veedersane

Good blog from Sigma Nutrition in it here:

http://sigmanutrition.com/refeeds-macro-cycling-non-linear-dieting/

Hope that proves useful.

Just to add that the moderate carb intake of 2.6g/kg BW gives you a touch over 131g so 150 isn't particularly excessive

Mars Bar

That's very handy. I think doing the way he has it done on the chart with targeting the same calories and changing the macros is what I will do.

I'm going to start at 15% below my TDEE so that's 1,426 calories. That puts me at -1,000 calories per week. My BMR is around 1,200 and my TDEE is coming in at 1629 calories.

Does that sound like a decent platform to start on? I can change depending on my lifts, energy and hunger over the next few weeks. I've got my protein set at 130g per day. After that, I'm adjusting the carbs and fats according to low/med/high.

Alf Veedersane

I've never done carb cycling - my diet is pretty standard and nothing changes bar quantities - so I'm certainly no expert but it appears to be a solid basis from which you can make changes as needed.

Mars Bar

Now I've got to figure out what level of carbs I'm assigning to which days. Saturday and Sunday should be low carb from now on. I'm thinking high carb on Friday so that will make it easier to get through the weekend. 4 days of moderate should be fine if I'm playing soccer on Tuesday. If not, Wednesdays will be rest days and I'll do that as low carb.

Mars Bar

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

I've never done carb cycling - my diet is pretty standard and nothing changes bar quantities - so I'm certainly no expert but it appears to be a solid basis from which you can make changes as needed.

Yeah, that's what I needed. Just writing it out helped! That chart really helped to be honest.

Alf Veedersane

Sigma is always my starting point if I'm looking into anything nutrition-related