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I have doing some reading on this idea and wanted to get some input from you guys and possible ideas. There have been a lot of discussion flying around lately about caloric and carb cycling and this got me thinking about this topic more in depth.
I am going give you guys the basic lowdown on what I am talking about for those of you who don’t know. The theory behind caloric and carb cycling is that that after a short period of extreme caloric depletion (2 weeks or less) there is a rebound effect of sorts. What this supposedly does is open up a several week window after the caloric restriction where you can consume ungodly amounts of foods without fat gain. This plays on the principle that your body always is striving for homeostasis and this is an effect of that. An example of this theory in practice is seeing someone who week after they did a show and they actually look better than they did at show time. This is probably due to the fact that they have been gorging themselves with food during this period. We have all seen this in action a million times. This window of opportunity is only suspected to last about 2 weeks or less, but it has also been speculated that with the use of super supplements and thermogenics that this period of time could be extended to 4 to 6 weeks.
With all this out of the way what I am going to say sounds obvious now. Why not eat like a horse for 5 weeks or so during your blasting period and go on a low to 0 carb restricted calorie diet on your 2 week cruise. This would make sense if these theories are true. The speculation behind this is that you can actually gain more muscle mass this way since it reduces the gain of body fat when bulking.
Now the question is does this really work? I want to get ideas and input from all of you guys on this topic. If it sounds like something that may be reasonable I may consider using myself as the lab rat to test this theory.
I am going give you guys the basic lowdown on what I am talking about for those of you who don’t know. The theory behind caloric and carb cycling is that that after a short period of extreme caloric depletion (2 weeks or less) there is a rebound effect of sorts. What this supposedly does is open up a several week window after the caloric restriction where you can consume ungodly amounts of foods without fat gain. This plays on the principle that your body always is striving for homeostasis and this is an effect of that. An example of this theory in practice is seeing someone who week after they did a show and they actually look better than they did at show time. This is probably due to the fact that they have been gorging themselves with food during this period. We have all seen this in action a million times. This window of opportunity is only suspected to last about 2 weeks or less, but it has also been speculated that with the use of super supplements and thermogenics that this period of time could be extended to 4 to 6 weeks.
With all this out of the way what I am going to say sounds obvious now. Why not eat like a horse for 5 weeks or so during your blasting period and go on a low to 0 carb restricted calorie diet on your 2 week cruise. This would make sense if these theories are true. The speculation behind this is that you can actually gain more muscle mass this way since it reduces the gain of body fat when bulking.
Now the question is does this really work? I want to get ideas and input from all of you guys on this topic. If it sounds like something that may be reasonable I may consider using myself as the lab rat to test this theory.
It's one of those things that sounds pretty iffy to me, but like I said I will be more than glad to let you know if I decide to try it. Now when you say very low calories or 'starvation' mode, how low do you really mean? I know you still mean high protein, but how much and how much of the other macronutrients too? Would you say to still do cardio during the cruise period or forego it to decrease muscle loss?
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