Calorie cycling is a method of eating that can help you stick to your diet and lose weight. Instead of eating a fixed number of calories every day, your consumption alternates.
Calorie cycling, also known as calorie shifting is a dieting strategy that includes scheduled increases and decreases in calorie consumption over the week, usually by consuming more or less carbohydrate. There are several different calorie cycling strategies to choose from but most include switching throughout the week between heavy, low, and medium-calorie days. There are no limits on foods or strict rules, only how many calories you can consume on certain days or weeks. For this reason, in the traditional sense it’s not a “diet,” but instead a way to organize your weekly or monthly food intake.
- Positive energy balance: You can usually consume more calories on high-calorie days than you are burning.
- Negative energy balance: You can usually consume fewer calories than you produce on low-calorie days.
- Neutral energy balance: Usually you can consume as many calories as you burn on medium-calorie days.Depending on your goals and preferences are the exact mix and makeup of your high, low, and medium calorie days. Studies indicate that the benefits of calorie cycling include increased weight loss, increased dietary capacity, reduced appetite, and reduced negative hormonal and metabolic adaptations to a normal weight loss diet.
Weight Regain
Research shows that most dieters regain much of the weight they originally lost, and somehow end up weighing much more than they used to.The truth is, the long-term weight loss success rate is extremely poor. Another weight loss research review showed that most people regained about 60 percent of the weight they lost within 12 months. Most people will possibly have regained all the weight they lost after 5 years, although about 30 percent will weigh more than their original weight.Another research showed that about one-third of those who undergo diet had regained all the weight they had lost 1 year after the diet, with just 28 out of 76 participants keeping their weight. Since it’s so difficult to lose weight and hold it off, governments and top obesity experts have sought to turn the emphasis on prevention.You need to understand why conventional “diets” mostly fail to understand why calorie cycling is so beneficial.
The Reason People Use Calorie Cycling
The main reason individuals use calorie cycling is that they have learned it is far better than the traditional bodybuilding diets that make you sustain long-term calorie surpluses and deficits.
People usually expect to achieve one of three things with calorie cycling:
- Help increase fat loss drastically by enhancing your metabolism, reducing cravings, and improving workouts.
- Gain muscle and lose fat simultaneously by maximizing muscle gain for several days and then losing fat for several days, with the fat loss outweighing the fat gain over time.
- Make muscle steady and gain strength while remaining very lean.
It’s not that cut-and-dried, unfortunately. Though not completely off-base, these claims overstate fact, which is that, under some conditions, calorie cycling is a slight improvement over the standard for certain people, not a revolutionary invention set to overturn the status quo of diet and nutrition.
Is Calorie Cycling Good for Weight Loss?
Calorie Cycling is effective for losing weight. This being said, any diet that has a calorie deficit for a long time can lead to weight loss regardless of when and how you eat the calories. In other words, you should lose weight as long as you consume fewer calories than you burn over time.
However, the calorie cycling industry increases these calorie deficits according to some of its proponents, increasing metabolism and fat burning so the fat losses can increase dramatically over time.
You must first understand what happens to your body at a cellular level when you lose weight, to understand why. If you limit your calories to lose weight, the body will undergo a variety of improvements in chemical, hormonal, and metabolism.
Primary among these variations is a decline in a hormone called leptin that is created primarily by body fat. This decline in leptin underlies the cluster of side effects associated with diet commonly known as “metabolic adaptation” or “metabolic damage” in more inaccurate terms.
Leptin Helps You Lose Weight
Leptin levels are rising and dropping, based on two factors:
- Your daily intake of calories (in the short term)
- Your body fatness (in the long term)
There is nothing you can do with number two when you’re on a diet to get lean, of course, but you can manipulate number one to temporarily increase leptin production in your body.
Specifically, by raising your calorie intake periodically, calorie cycling, you can raise your leptin levels for a few hours or even days, and this can reduce some of the calorie restriction’s negative side effects.
Two Rules of Calorie Cycling
Calorie cycling can help if you also keep low levels of body fat, but it is of limited use because no matter how much food you consume, your body can only generate so much leptin with such little body fat.
Nonetheless, you need to follow two rules to calorie cycle correctly:
You need to get most of the extra calories from the carbohydrates.
Research shows that consuming an abundance of dietary fat has no impact on leptin levels, although dramatically rising carbohydrate intake induces a substantial spike in leptin output that lasts for as long as you continue your higher-carb consuming. Which effect protein has on leptin levels is unclear, but it is likely negligible when compared with carbs. That being said, some study indicates high-protein dieting may boost leptin sensitivity, so it’s a wise idea to keep a high-protein intake when trying to boost leptin output in your body. By having most of your extra calories from carbohydrates, you are also replenishing your glycogen muscle reserves, which has a beneficial effect on exercise results and building muscle.In other words, as you’re trying to improve leptin levels, calorie cycling actually means “carb cycling,” because this is the primary macronutrient that you raise to improve leptin.
For two or three days, you have to feed on maintenance calories.
Why not only adopt a high-carb diet while eliminating or keeping low levels of body fat? When carbs increase leptin levels, can you not just eat enough of them every day to improve leptin production perpetually?Unfortunately, this will not do the job because the effects of leptin-enhancing carbs are short-lived. And the typical leptin rates should be more or less the same over time regardless of how much or how little carbohydrate you eat everyday. A single high-carb meal or day is also not healthy, as it does not increase leptin levels enough to affect your physiology significantly.
It takes at least a few days and, in some cases, up to a week or two for your brain to recognize and trust the increase in leptin and react positively, including increasing metabolic rates, decreasing appetite, and other changes in the diet. Thus you can make your calories significantly tolerable by raising them to maintenance two to three days per week, and otherwise have a deficit.
How to Implement Calorie Cycling
There are no clear guidelines for doing calorie cycling or higher calorie periods. Stick to a nutritional strategy that works and you prefer, then intermittently conduct these cycles of high calories. When you observe physical changes, you may want to start a higher- calorie period after 1–4 weeks.
This may involve a drop in strength, exercise efficiency, sleep, sex drive, or a plateau of fat loss. In the first week or two, diets appear to go smoothly, but then you experience a significant drop in energy, efficiency, and quality of life.
That is when a higher-calorie period could be added. It’s important to listen to your body before the next mini-dieting session, and allow it a few days to recover and recharge.
Some people enjoy each week having those higher-calorie days. For instance, low- calorie for 5 days, and high-calorie for 2 days.
Many want to settle into a fixed routine and diet for 2–4 weeks, before adding high- calorie periods in slightly longer 5–7 days.
Calorie Cycling Protocols Examples
There is no single fixed cycle in which you should stick with.
Some people diet for 3 weeks, and then have a 1-week high calorie period, as you can see from studies. Others use mini-cycles like on 11 days and 3 days off. Many people often enforce refeeds when required, while others adhere to a fixed schedule or process.
- Weekend cycle: 5 days on a low calorie diet, then a high calorie refeed for 2 days.
- Mini-cycle: 11 days on a low calorie diet followed by a high calorie refeed for 3 days.
- 3 on, 1 off: A low calorie diet for 3 weeks followed by a high calorie refeed for 5 to 7 days.
- Monthly cycle: 4 to 5 weeks on a low calorie diet followed by a higher-calorie refeed longer than 10 to 14 days.
Reduce your consumption by 500–1000 calories on low calorie days. Eat about 1,000 calories more for the higher-calorie days than your estimated maintenance point.
Check every process, and see what’s best for you. Unless you don’t count calories, the refeeds will actually increase the portion size or macros by about one third.
Combine Calorie Cycling with Workout
As workout plays a major role in your health and weight loss, it is useful to adapt your calories to your level of activity.
Different workout demands can change your calory requirements for the day dramatically.
Hence, pairing the longest and most vigorous workout sessions with high calorie days makes sense. On the other hand, reserve the low calorie days for the lighter workout sessions or rest days.
This may allow you to lose fat over time but still maximize performance when it’s most essential. Avoid making your routine too complicated, though. If you’re just doing a health and weight loss workout, you can keep it easy and follow the protocols mentioned above.
The Bottom Line on Calorie Cycling
Calorie cycling or calorie shifting is a modern technique that may increase the effectiveness of dieting.
This tends to play a significant role in preserving the metabolism and hormones, which can sometimes fall during standard low calorie diets. Yet it’s not a magical way to lose weight, despite its advantages. You also need to concentrate on the basics like having a long-term calorie deficit, eating healthy, exercising, and having enough protein.
When these are in place, calorie cycling will definitely help to boost long-term results.
Key Takeaways
Calorie cycling for weight loss is a dieting strategy that includes planned increases and decreases in calorie consumption over the week, usually by consuming more or less carbohydrate.
Calorie cycling will improve the cycle and keep it extremely slow and build strength and muscle with a limited fat gain, but it has no specific fat burning or muscle growth benefits.