Hey, so I'm trying to break through a plateau, and I have decided that I will either go with carb cycling or calorie cycling. I did a few searches for these topics and I didn't get much information on how I should be using these diet plans relative to my maintenance level of calories.

I have read the article about carb cycling on bodybuilding.com, where it says to go with high/low/no carbs in 3 day cycles. However, I never see it mention how many calories should be consumed overall. If anyone has input on calories and where they come from for carb cycling, I would really appreciate it.

Also, it was suggested to me that calorie cycling might be a good option, with a scheme as follows for my maintenance level of between 3000 and 3200:

mon - 2700
tue - 2200
wed - 3000
thu - 2100
fri - 2600
sat - 1900

Has anyone used either carb cycling or calorie cycling, and if so, what kind of scheme did you use and how did you like it? Thanks!

There interchangable to me because i manage carbs.

So, i usually only eat starchy carbs post workout and veggies and fruit for my carbs sources outside the post workout windows. Following this simple method will change both your calorie intake and carb intake.

Keep the fruit moderate thou but you can eat all the veggies you want on off days. :) Try getting fat on veggies! :D

You can also eat on veggies for 4-5 days and have a carb day with starchy carbs, oats, potatos, bread etc. There's many models.

Hey, so I'm trying to break through a plateau, and I have decided that I will either go with carb cycling or calorie cycling. I did a few searches for these topics and I didn't get much information on how I should be using these diet plans relative to my maintenance level of calories.

I have read the article about carb cycling on bodybuilding.com, where it says to go with high/low/no carbs in 3 day cycles. However, I never see it mention how many calories should be consumed overall. If anyone has input on calories and where they come from for carb cycling, I would really appreciate it.

Also, it was suggested to me that calorie cycling might be a good option, with a scheme as follows for my maintenance level of between 3000 and 3200:

mon - 2700
tue - 2200
wed - 3000
thu - 2100
fri - 2600
sat - 1900

Has anyone used either carb cycling or calorie cycling, and if so, what kind of scheme did you use and how did you like it? Thanks!

If I'm assuming correctly you are still trying to cut?

Usually the rule of thumb I've used on Calorie cycling was high cal days = maintenance, low cal days = roughly 1500 under maintenance, and moderate days = 800-1000 cals under maintenance. I would usually cycle through 2 high, 2 low and the rest moderates.

Actually used this schedule to lose about 25lbs while training/ playing football this past spring. The cycles generally went around my training cycle. Fridays were high to prep the body for fuel for Saturdays game, Saturdays would be moderate (Game day), Sunday was low, since I was pretty much a couch potato recovering. Monday's high (practice night), Tuesday and Wednesday moderate (Workout and practice night) Thursday low.

If I'm assuming correctly you are still trying to cut?

Usually the rule of thumb I've used on Calorie cycling was high cal days = maintenance, low cal days = roughly 1500 under maintenance, and moderate days = 800-1000 cals under maintenance. I would usually cycle through 2 high, 2 low and the rest moderates.

Actually used this schedule to lose about 25lbs while training/ playing football this past spring. The cycles generally went around my training cycle. Fridays were high to prep the body for fuel for Saturdays game, Saturdays would be moderate (Game day), Sunday was low, since I was pretty much a couch potato recovering. Monday's high (practice night), Tuesday and Wednesday moderate (Workout and practice night) Thursday low.


Do you really mean 1500 under maintenance? for a woman whose maintenace is say 1800 this wd have her at 300 cals??

Do you really mean 1500 under maintenance? for a woman whose maintenace is say 1800 this wd have her at 300 cals??


With such a low maintenance, I would imagine you'd have to tweek the numbers a bit and expect the results to come a bit slower. My maintenance during football season was around 2700-2800 cals. So my low days hit around 1300 cals, high days were around 2700 and moderate days hit at about 2000. The first time I tried a much shallower cycle (about 1000 cals between my high and low days and it really didn't do much for me, so I made the cycle bigger and started steadily losing about a lb a week. Which made sense mathmatically as it usually takes about a 3500 calorie deficit to lose a pound and that gave me roughly a 4000 calorie deficit for the week.

Though you're right, I've never really seen it do anybody good to get much lower then about 1200 cals a day though, so in your case maybe just cycle high and low days between 1800 and 1200. Probably a ratio of 3 highs to 4 lows to get a good deficit going. This should set you on a schedule of about a half a pound a week. It's slow, but at your weight and activity level, I think getting any more aggressive then that and you're setting yourself up for failure.