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Zigzag Dieting - Article
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Posted by: Prince
Zigzag Dieting
This six-step calorie-cycling plan keeps your body guessing -- and losing fat continuously.
Originally featured in:
Men's Fitness March, 2002
If you’ve been on a diet before, you’re all too aware of the standard outcome: You cut back on your food and you lose weight … at least initially. But then your progress slows to a crawl, before stopping altogether. At this point, no matter how strict you are with your calories, no matter how much you work out, the pudge won’t budge.
What gives? Your body’s natural instinct to preserve itself at all costs kicks in. Sensing a calorie deficit, your body shifts into starvation mode, shutting down all fat burning as it hoards calorie stores.
Even if you’re successful at losing a few pounds, your body often reacts by adjusting your energy expenditure in order to revert to your previous weight, known as your “setpoint.” A 1995 study out of the Laboratory of Human Behavior and Metabolism at Rockefeller University in New York measured both obese and non-obese people who either increased or decreased their body weight 10 percent to 20 percent. In both cases, metabolism shifted—at a lower weight, the subjects began burning less energy throughout the day, while at a higher weight they burned more, an effort by their bodies to return to that setpoint.
These metabolic shifts, meant to preserve you in times of starvation, were great in prehistoric days, when men didn’t know when or from where their next mastodon steak was coming and paid no mind to crafting a six-pack. But if you covet beach-worthy muscle, these annoying physiologic mechanisms will quash your efforts every time—unless you learn to make them work for you. That’s where calorie cycling comes into play.
The following diet alterations are built to take advantage of the normal metabolic process: When your body wants to return to your setpoint, you jolt it with a surplus of calories. From there, you cycle your eating patterns, which will ignite the pilot light in your fat-burning furnace and help you forge a chiseled physique.
Why Cycle?
First off, a warning: Although bodybuilders, and others interested in a toned, muscular build, have successfully applied some form of calorie cycling to their diets for years, the approach does not have much research to back it up. Most studies on the subject of manipulating calorie intake center on obese individuals; none focuses on the use of calorie cycling to get lean. That said, scientific evidence which can be gleaned from the available research shows that altering calorie intake can lower fat while preserving muscle.
If you’ve dieted for a while now with no discernible fat loss, the plan we present is designed with the available research in mind and will blast you right off that plateau. It begins with a 10-day period of eating more calories than your body actually needs, a step designed to kick-start your metabolism into using fat for fuel. From there, you’ll go into a weeklong cycle of five days of eating 500 fewer calories than your body needs, followed by two days of eating above your maintenance calorie level. These five-days-low, two-days-high stints may not have any additional effects on your metabolism, but they will help you stay the dietary course, says Kristin Reimers, M.S., R.D., associate director of the International Center for Sports Nutrition in Omaha.
“The benefit of cycling rather small calorie swings over short periods of time probably helps more by making the diet easier to stick with, not so much by tricking the metabolism,” Reimers says. “Short-term cycling can provide a dieter some cheat days without guilt, and quite frankly, that is very important. One mind-set that thwarts many weight-loss attempts is the black-and-white thinking that dieting is an all-or-none deal; if you go off for one day, you’ve blown it, it’s over. The cycling provides higher-calorie days to overcome that mind-set, and can work for fat loss so long as a long-term calorie shortfall is achieved.”
Small Changes for Big Results
Another piece of good news is that manipulating your calorie intake does not mean you’ll have to keep detailed records—you’ll merely log what you scarf down for the first few days—or meticulously measure out your foods. This six-step plan doesn’t involve grand-scale changes to your current eating plan, but just some simple cleaning up, some additions and subtractions of foods depending on where you are in the cycle and a touch of discipline to eat every three hours instead of cramming your eating into two or three Jethro Bodine feedings.
The plan does assume you are hitting the gym regularly, working every muscle group at least once a week over two or three sessions. Although it would be nice to skip the workouts so you can spend more time at home doing the usual—avoiding chores while watching SportsCenter—without the stimulus of weight training and cardio, you won’t be able to achieve the results you’re looking for on this or any other diet.
The challenge is yours: Are you ready to beat your caveman genetics and pitch your paunch? Six steps, with a few trips to the gym for good measure, and a sliced-up midsection can be yours.
SIX STEPS TO CALORIE CYCLING
You can use the following eating plan two ways. If your dietary habits are relatively the same day-to-day, and your weight has been steady for at least a month, you can skip to Step 3. Continue to eat as normal, but add 500 calories on “high” days and cut about 500 on “low” days. If, however, you’re ready to take some additional steps to ensure success, start at Step 1.
1. Determine your baseline calorie level. For three days, record the foods you eat and when you eat them. Eat as you normally would, as the results will serve as your base diet; if you change your eating habits, you’ll skew the diet and, thus, your results. This program assumes that you’ve hovered around the same body weight for at least a month or so; if your weight has been fluctuating up or down of late, wait until it stabilizes before trying a cycling approach. Before these three days are up, you’ll also want to get hold of a book that lists calorie values for foods. If you’d rather look up foods online, you can go to the U.S. Department of Agriculture site for nutritional data (www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/cgi-bin/nut_search.pl). You’ll need access to this type of information for Step 2.
2. Build your diet. Here’s where you have to use some of those dormant math skills—no calculus, just simple addition and subtraction. Of the three days you recorded, take the one that is closest to your normal consumption and turn the foods you ate on that day into a five- or six-meals-per-day plan (eating three hours apart, with your last meal no later than 8 or 9 at night).
You may also want to substitute out egregious dietary blunders so you’re not repeating them day after day. For instance, one slice of cheese pizza, at 370 calories, can be replaced with a ground-turkey burger at 235 calories and two slices of whole-wheat bread at 69 calories apiece. The overall calories stay the same, but the “health quotient” shoots up.
One other rule: Get at least four or five servings of protein into your diet. Try to trade calorie for calorie as best you can, replacing cola with skim milk, or a candy bar with a protein bar.
3. Cycle up 500 calories above your baseline for 10 days. This tactic is designed to break your metabolism out of its fat-hoarding rut by flooding your body with energy and nutrients. If you don’t know it already, you’ll soon realize that 500 calories really isn’t that much food. To get there, you can double up on a main portion in a meal and perhaps add a protein bar somewhere in the mix (for instance, an extra five-ounce chicken breast at 235 calories and a 280-calorie protein bar would put you at 515). You can also tighten up your feedings to about two hours apart and add a seventh meal.
4. Cycle down 500 calories under your baseline for five days. For the first five days of the week, cut 500 calories out of your base diet by making minor modifications. Removing something here or there from a meal or two—not entire meals—will do the trick. Take a look at how we do it in the sample diet on page 80. Although doing so is optional, we suggest writing down the foods you eat to keep you honest. When you’re trying to lose weight, you tend to underestimate the actual amount of food you do consume, which will likely leave you short of your goals at the end of the program.
5. Cycle up 500 calories over your baseline for two days. For the last two days of the week, add 500 calories to your base diet by using the same types of tactics outlined in Step 3.
6. Continue pattern for one month, then evaluate. Perform this cycle of five days low, two days high for four weeks. When you reach the end, assess your progress. Did you lose fat while keeping muscle? Let the mirror, and the comments of friends and intimates, be your guide. If you don’t see a change, be honest about your dedication. Did you eat a lot of foods you shouldn’t have? Did you skip or combine meals? If so, redouble your efforts, and jump back in for a second four-week cycle.
SAMPLE CALORIE CYCLE
The following diet is based on a 175-pound man with a daily calorie-maintenance level of about 3,000.
Baseline Diet:
Meal 1
Time: 7:30 a.m.
Food: Special K Cereal (2 cups, 220 calories); skim milk (1 cup, 90 calories); banana (109 calories)
Meal 2
Time: 10 a.m. Food: Protein bar (280 calories)
Meal 3
Time: 12:30 p.m.
Food: 2 turkey sandwiches: sliced turkey breast (8 slices, 184 calories); wheat bread (4 slices, 276 calories); Swiss cheese (2 slices, 214 calories); light mayo (1 tablespoon, 25 calories)
Meal 4
Time: 3 p.m.
Food: Chicken breast (5 oz., 235 calories); white rice (1 cup, 200 calories)
Meal 5
Time: 6 p.m.
Food: Porterhouse steak (5 oz., 427 calories); baked potato (220 calories); light butter (1 tablespoon, 50 calories); steamed mixed vegetables (1 cup, 140 calories)
Meal 6
Time: 8:30 p.m. Food: Protein-shake mix (110 calories); skim milk (2 cups, 180 calories)
Total calories: 2,956
On your high-calorie days: Add six egg whites to Meal 1 (102 calories), a protein shake to Meal 2 (290 calories), and an extra half-serving of chicken breast to Meal 4 (117 calories) to achieve your 500-calorie boost.
On your low-calorie days: Remove one sandwich from Meal 3, but maintain the same amount of turkey breast (258 calories) and the baked potato and light butter from Meal 5 (270 calories) to achieve your 500-calorie deficit.
High-Protein Foods
Egg white (one egg): 3 protein grams per serving
Skim milk (one cup): 9 protein grams per serving
Turkey breast (4 slices): 19 protein grams per serving
Porterhouse steak (5 oz.): 32 protein grams per serving
Tuna (1 can): 37 protein grams per serving
Chicken breast (5 oz.): 44 protein grams per serving
Protein powders & bars: Varies (see Nutrition Facts label)
Posted by: mikah
How does this plan work for someone who has been on 1400 cals a day for 3 months?
5'3 117 lbs..
I hope Im not missing a step - it seems that there would be no place to reduce 500 cals from? Or maybe I read it wrong ...
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Zigzag Dieting - Article
