I wanted to have this up earlier, but it actually took me quite a long time to write! I’m sure I missed some things out, and I’ll add to it as different issues are brought up. I’m not a professional writer, so bear with me!
I’ve tried several different diets so I could get an idea of how they worked, and how they effected me. I’ve done Ketogenic Diet (CKD) for years on end, since the early 2000s, when people thought it was ‘absurd’. I did it when I was weight training and I did it when I couldn’t. I felt great on it, and I love eating meat. My favorite thing about CKD, is that when I felt like ‘cheating’ I would go to Burger King and have a whopper with cheese and bacon, and not eat the bun.
Every year, I would get to about 10-11%, and hit a plateau. It was very frustrating. I talked to personal trainers, National competitor bodybuilders, National strength coaches, anyone I could think of. Often it was do more cardio, or fix the diet.
That advice really bothered me. For one, I hated cardio. If I had to spend an hour a day doing cardio, plus doing weights in the gym, I would have to think about how important getting ripped really was for me! Two, my diet was perfect, to a T.
I would even weigh and measure everything to make sure I wasn’t messing it up at all. In the end, I realized, most people don’t really know what they are talking about, and just repeat everything they’ve read, which has been reworded and reprinted for the last three decades.
One year, I told myself I was going to get to single digits body fat, no matter what. I started dieting in January. I tried higher carb, lower carb, carbs only in the morning and preworkout, everything. Each diet worked for a week or two, very slowly, than it would stall. I would add some low intensity cardio, try high intensity interval cardio, fat burners, but nothing worked consistently, and I wasn’t losing as much fat as I should have been losing.
Lastly, I went to carbohydrate cycling, or better yet, calorie cycling. This worked fairly well for me. I should also note, I was doing cardio at the same time. I finally got down to about 10% body fat, and was fairly happy where I was. No, I didn’t get single digit body fat, but I’ve been dieting for six months, I needed a break.
This is where things changed. I stopped doing cardio. I also upped my daily fat total (by adding 5-8g of fat per meal), because I felt my calories may have been a bit low. When I made these two changes fat started melting off me. I mean, I was losing about three pounds a week, and I’ve never in my life lost that much weight in a week, I was actually getting worried about losing too much too fast. I don’t even think I lost more than one pound a week in any of the previous weeks since January! But what prevented me from worrying too much, was the fact I kept getting stronger. I was stronger than I’ve been in years.
I always said to myself, “There has to be a better way they doing cardio for hours on end.”
I don’t think it has to be carb cycling in particular to be successful and limit cardio, but I think everyone is too quick to say ‘do more cardio’.
I have put up my complete diet up. You can see the link at the top of the page, or you can click here – Carb cycling.
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