hmmm, wonder is this is zicam Davidson?->"If you do the same workout every day, you're going to plateau. It's the same with your diet," says R. Steven Davidson, who holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Columbia University. "By changing up the amount of carbs you consume per day [while maintaining an exercise regimen], you create an uncertainty that boosts your body's metabolic rate." To make it easy for you, we've provided specific meal plans for both high- and low-carb days." mensfitness.com
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mensfitness.com
Eat Carbs to Lose Fat
That's right. Burn fat fast (without starving) with our easy carb-rotation plan.
Originally featured in:
Men's Fitness April, 2001
Written by: Steve Stiefel Photos by: David Roth/Stone
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Insanity has been defined as expecting different results from repeating the same behavior. Professional athletes take this concept into account when trying to make improvements in their performance. When Andre Agassi's ATP Tour ranking plummeted from No. 1 to No. 110 several years back, he knew he had to do more than just endlessly hit balls across the net if he wanted to regain his previous dominance. After embarking on a cross-training and weightlifting program, he eventually made it back to the top of the tennis world.
Too many carbs make you fat, and too few make you tired. What's the answer? Rotation.
You may have made a similar adjustment with regard to your weight-training or cardio program. However, this acquired sanity tends to take a leap out the window when it comes to nutrition. Many guys go on low-calorie crash diets to shed body fat, only to balloon back up when they revert back to their previous eating mode. If you've been working out regularly but haven't been able to shrink a recalcitrant gut, try the simple strategy of rotating the amount of carbs you eat on a daily basis. Simply put, eat different amounts of carbs on certain days of the week to create an environment in which your body is more likely to tap into body-fat stores for energy.
"If you do the same workout every day, you're going to plateau. It's the same with your diet," says R. Steven Davidson, who holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Columbia University. "By changing up the amount of carbs you consume per day [while maintaining an exercise regimen], you create an uncertainty that boosts your body's metabolic rate." To make it easy for you, we've provided specific meal plans for both high- and low-carb days.
The Low-Carb Depression
Low-calorie diets usually fail for a couple of reasons. First, they tend to reduce your calories so low that you just can't put up with the hunger pangs and withdrawal for very long. Second, such diets actually reduce your metabolic rate, making you burn calories slower than you did before. By drastically cutting calories, you send your body the message that it needs to survive on less, so it reduces the amount it burns. When you return to your normal eating patterns, you've turned your body into a fat-storing machine, and you start to blubber back up in the precise places where you had lost body fat, often surpassing previous fat stores.
"Carbohydrates are the preferred fuel in most tissues of the body," says Lyle McDonald, author of The Ketogenic Diet. "When carbohydrates are available, they're burned first, instead of fat. Basically, the more carbohydrates you eat, the less fat you burn; the fewer carbohydrates you eat, the more body fat you burn."
But low-carb diets have limitations; you may begin to feel sluggish and depleted, especially when you work out, and you may not be able to maintain that level of deprivation. You may also become agitated, anxious and depressed. Carbohydrates give you the physical and mental energy you need to work out, and this creates a Catch-22: If you eat a lot of carbohydrates, you keep your muscles primed for training, but you won't eliminate body fat. If you drastically reduce carbohydrate intake, you deplete your muscle-glycogen stores, which makes for poor progress while training. How do you have your cake and eat it, too? Rotate those carbs, man.
Benefits of Cycling Carbs
To lose body fat and keep it off for good, you must accomplish two seemingly contradictory objectives: 1) reduce calories below the level you need for bodyweight maintenance, and 2) provide your body with all the energy and nutrients it needs to function at full capacity. A nutrition plan that has you cycling high- and low-carbohydrate intake throughout the week helps you do both. "Carbohydrate cycling allows the benefits of fat-burning while still maintaining high-intensity exercise performance and results," McDonald says.
On days when you eat fewer carbs, your body taps into fat stores for energy. On days when you consume more carbs, you'll be refueling your muscles, keeping you primed for your workouts over the next few days. The eating program outlined below provides you with virtually the same amount of calories each day. On low-carb days, increase your consumption of protein and healthy fats; on high-carb days, decrease these foods. The only stipulation is that you must consume 10 percent to 15 percent fewer calories than you need for maintenance, because you can't lose body fat if you're taking in more calories than you're burning.
Real-Guy Rotation Plan
This diet plan is designed for people who live in the real world, i.e., you. We don't expect you to spend all your time counting and weighing every gram of food that passes your lips. The idea is simply to keep your carbohydrates low on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and to elevate them on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. This rotation seems to best fit most people's schedules, but feel free to change up the days to better suit your lifestyle.
On low-carb days, eat no more than 150 grams of carbs. We've outlined full nutrition plans for two days to give you an indication of the types and quantities of foods to consume. On the "off" days, eat around 300 grams of carbs. A little cheating is okay, and even encouraged on high-carb days, because that helps keep your body in a state of metabolic confusion, and keeps fat-burning channels open. Use our sample menus to help create combinations that appeal to you and your lifestyle. If you put particular emphasis on decreasing your carbs on the down days while sticking to your exercise regimen, you'll begin to see that stubborn body fat finally disappear. 1 | p a g e 2
Steve Stiefel orders a protein-heavy breakfast every morning, but the deli never gets it right.
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