Thread: Hitting Ketosis whilst carb cycling

Your posted hi / med / low meal plans look fine for your body weight for a carb cycle.

Carb cycle and keto are different primarily because the purpose of keto is to get into ketosis, whereas carb cycling isn't intending to switch your energy source over to ketones. It is intended to use carbs as the energy source, but to vary the amount based on specific rules - could be like you have - specific to your training schedule (e.g. hi carb when you can use them on heavy days, low carb on cardio / no lifting days when you don't need them to fuel anything). Or you can follow a strict sequence (e.g. hi-med-low-repeat) regardless of your training. You can keep a constant total cals/day but vary the macros (i.e replace the dropped carb cals w/ equivalent fat cals) or make it also a calorie cycle like you are doing. Lots of different ways to vary a carb cycle - but it is still intended to keep you on this side of ketosis.

Why your program is stalling? What did you start at and what has been the week to week drop in bodyfat or weight? Did you stall cold this past week? Generally "progress" isn't going to be linearly constant over time -sometimes it goes in spurts. I'd just keep to your schedule and dont' get hung up on things. This looks like it should produce results. If you stall more than a week - you can try some simple changes like a scheduled cheat meal one day - like blow out your high carb day, or throw in some extra cardio (e.g. 20 min every day), etc.

I would also look at how you FEEL on this diet - tired? hungry? anything that would indicate you're coming up short somewhere in this diet?

Originally Posted by sassy69

Your posted hi / med / low meal plans look fine for your body weight for a carb cycle.

Carb cycle and keto are different primarily because the purpose of keto is to get into ketosis, whereas carb cycling isn't intending to switch your energy source over to ketones. It is intended to use carbs as the energy source, but to vary the amount based on specific rules - could be like you have - specific to your training schedule (e.g. hi carb when you can use them on heavy days, low carb on cardio / no lifting days when you don't need them to fuel anything). Or you can follow a strict sequence (e.g. hi-med-low-repeat) regardless of your training. You can keep a constant total cals/day but vary the macros (i.e replace the dropped carb cals w/ equivalent fat cals) or make it also a calorie cycle like you are doing. Lots of different ways to vary a carb cycle - but it is still intended to keep you on this side of ketosis.


Why your program is stalling? What did you start at and what has been the week to week drop in bodyfat or weight? Did you stall cold this past week? Generally "progress" isn't going to be linearly constant over time -sometimes it goes in spurts. I'd just keep to your schedule and dont' get hung up on things. This looks like it should produce results. If you stall more than a week - you can try some simple changes like a scheduled cheat meal one day - like blow out your high carb day, or throw in some extra cardio (e.g. 20 min every day), etc.

I would also look at how you FEEL on this diet - tired? hungry? anything that would indicate you're coming up short somewhere in this diet?

1. Thanks for the explanation. When you say 'this side' do you mean not in ketosis?

2. I'm assuming im stalling as the numbers on the scales arent changing. I'm into my fourth week and ive been at ~160 lbs for the last week and and a half. I started at ~167lbs. First two weeks were great but I put that to water weight loss. Im doing cardio (hills and HIIT) 3-4 times a week x20mins a session after lifting (Built's baby got back routine).

A little scared of 'cheat' meals as I'm worried about taking a step backwards. I'm pretty much eating the exact same food every day (within daily calorie limit). My diet is also pretty clean. I can post if need be.

Funny thing is my waist line has defiitely shrunk ~1.5 inches?

3. I feel fine on the diet, albiet a little hungry some times but i've always had a big appetite.

...No youre not going to be showing ketones with that much carb intake...and even lower ketostix only shows excess keytones so you could be in ketosis to some degree and not darken the strip much. Ok, yea, just carb cycling you look good from what I can see just see what happens over the next few days. Don't forget your lean body mass changes during this time, you may need to adjust your intake to match your NEW lbm, etc.