A coworker told me that she just bought a book by Chris Powell about carb cycling. This is the book Susan and I skimmed before going to dinner last Thursday. I also read up on his blog.
http://chrispowell.com/carb-cycling-101/
It has a lot of rules but here are the basics:
What is Carb Cycling?
Carb cycling is an eating plan with alternating high-carb and low-carb days. It’s that simple. It also has built-in reward days or reward meals (depending on the plan you’re following), so you can still eat your favorite foods on a regular basis. Sounds pretty much perfect, right? You can eat healthy foods, enjoy foods you love, and still lose weight.
While each plan has a different mix of high-carb and low-carb days, each day works basically the same:
- Eat five meals—no more, no less.
- Eat a high-carb breakfast that includes both protein and carbs within 30 minutes of waking.
- Eat your remaining 4 meals—either high-carb or low-carb, depending on the plan you’re following—every 3 hours.
- Choose approved foods (Sign up here to receive a FREE printable food guide!)
- Drink a gallon of water.
He has several different plans. I decided on the Classic:
Basically you alternate low carb and high carb days with one day off each week. I was hoping that after the first week I would feel comfortable enough to switch to the Turbo Cycle (2 low carb days for each high carb day) but after two days I feel like that might not happen.
Ok so since most of you won't click on the link to his blog... here is why this works (supposedly)
So why do we alternate high-carb and low-carb days in carb cycling? On high-carb days you’re stocking your calorie-burning furnace so that on low-carb days your furnace burns fat, and lots of it! This pattern tricks your metabolism into burning a lot of calories, even on those low-carb days. It’s an amazing and well-proven process.
So the basic idea is that on Low Carb days your meals are just a protein and 2 servings of veggies. Then on High Carb days you can have fruits and whole grains. Breakfast everyday is supposed to include carbs.
I sat down to meal plan yesterday and came up with this:
Sunday (Low carb day)
Breakfast: Eggs, turkey sausage, toast with PB and grapes
Snack: Nothing, we were out on an 8 mile hike and didn't get home until lunch
Lunch: Protein shake (milk and protein powder), grilled chicken, celery, hummus
Snack: Peanuts
Dinner: Garden Salad with grilled chicken from a carry out place. Really yummy. Ate half and am having the other half for lunch tomorrow.
Monday (High carb day)
Breakfast: Whole wheat toast with peanut butter, apple
Snack: Yogurt with granola
Lunch: 1/2 Tuna sandwich on whole wheat bread, Parmesan cheese, apple (planned on the apple... didn't end up eating it)
Snack: Fruit smoothie (blueberries, mango, banana, coconut water)
Dinner: Tilapia, salad with grilled chicken*\
*I had a low carb dinner tonight bc I am going to a friends house tomorrow before a kayak rolling class and know that I will have carbs for dinner tomorrow...
Tuesday (Low carb day)
Breakfast: Whole wheat toast with peanut butter, apple
Snack: Protein shake
Lunch: Leftover salad
Snack: Almonds and dark chocolate (I know dark chocolate is not low carb, but I don't care)
Dinner: Salad, chicken, brown rice*
*High carb dinner, swapped with Monday nights dinner
More on the meal plan for later this week later....
It's day two and I am already having trouble. I definitely ate some dark chocolate yesterday. And today I REALLY want some of the Ben and Jerry's frozen yogurt in my freezer. I've been logging all my calories into myfitnesspal and I know that I am under for the day (not under my 1200 calorie goal, but I worked out and burned about 500 so I still have a couple hundred for today). I was 800 calories under yesterday! I didn't starve myself I swear, I just burned over 800 calories on my hike and had trouble eating them back. I'm really going to try hard to stick to carb cycling at least until I go to Vegas in February (going to see Britney Spears Valentines day weekend and am SUPER excited). After the trip maybe I'll just resort to regular calorie counting, but going to try and stick this out for now. I will probably be cheating a little more than I should (Chris Powell's "Easy cycle" includes 1 cheat meal every high carb day... I don't plan on a full cheat meal, but maybe a cheat snack on high carb days.
Stay tuned. :)
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