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Sassy69
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The idea behind carb cycling or carb rotation is that your metabolism responds to what you give it over time. So if you are eating the same amount of carbs / proteins / fats every day, your body assumes it will have that amount to work with and your metabolism will burn according to that amount in response to the work / stress you put it under with your training & cardio. You can use that to your advantage by setting up a particular meal plan that provides sufficient carbs for your body to run, say for 3 days. So now your body expects this amount of carbs each day and it is burning at this rate. Then on day 4, you cut your complex carbs out. One way I've usually done it is to replace the complex carb calories with the same amount of fat cals so your total cals remain consistent, but the macro nutrient ratios change. So now your body is goign to be burnign carbs at a rate where it thinks its still going to be getting that many carbs for the day. But since it hasn't on day 4, you begin to burn the carbs that are in reserve. Then repeat on day 5 with the fats replacing the carbs.
By day 6 you go back to the complex carbs & take out the fat cals so you are now back to the same as days 1-3. The idea here is after 2 days of low carbing, your body has burned more of your carb reserves, but has started to realize that there is now a deficit in daily carbs it can expect to be in the diet. The reserves may start getting low and you, in turn, may feel a bit sluggish and stupid in the brain (because your brain needs carbs to run unless you have gone into a ketogenic state like the Atkins diet & your brain has made the switch to ketones as an energy source ... but I digress...). So just as your body is gettign ready to decide to slow down your metabolism a bit to match the lack of daily incoming complex carbs as an energy source that it has just realized have been missign for the last two days, you go back to providign those complex carbs and your metabolism DOESNT" slow down.
So you keep repeating this cycle of giving it complex carbs and then pullign them just long enough for you continue burning at an effecient rate, and then replacing them just before your metabolism determines that it needs to slow down to adjust to the lack of carbs as an energy source.
As you were saying , you match your carb days to your training - here you need to run the 3 day sequence to set up an expected carb intake & burn rate, then pull them for 2 days to ride that rate of burn before slowing down. Then jack it back up before the slow down occurs. So here, you are probably goign to want to match your training to the higher carb days where you need more energy, say for leg day, and put your less strenuous or cardio-only or even rest days on the low carb days. Particularly the 2nd of the 2 low carb days because of the two days, you are bound to feel flakier on the 2nd as your reserves are burned up.
By day 6 you go back to the complex carbs & take out the fat cals so you are now back to the same as days 1-3. The idea here is after 2 days of low carbing, your body has burned more of your carb reserves, but has started to realize that there is now a deficit in daily carbs it can expect to be in the diet. The reserves may start getting low and you, in turn, may feel a bit sluggish and stupid in the brain (because your brain needs carbs to run unless you have gone into a ketogenic state like the Atkins diet & your brain has made the switch to ketones as an energy source ... but I digress...). So just as your body is gettign ready to decide to slow down your metabolism a bit to match the lack of daily incoming complex carbs as an energy source that it has just realized have been missign for the last two days, you go back to providign those complex carbs and your metabolism DOESNT" slow down.
So you keep repeating this cycle of giving it complex carbs and then pullign them just long enough for you continue burning at an effecient rate, and then replacing them just before your metabolism determines that it needs to slow down to adjust to the lack of carbs as an energy source.
As you were saying , you match your carb days to your training - here you need to run the 3 day sequence to set up an expected carb intake & burn rate, then pull them for 2 days to ride that rate of burn before slowing down. Then jack it back up before the slow down occurs. So here, you are probably goign to want to match your training to the higher carb days where you need more energy, say for leg day, and put your less strenuous or cardio-only or even rest days on the low carb days. Particularly the 2nd of the 2 low carb days because of the two days, you are bound to feel flakier on the 2nd as your reserves are burned up.
