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Nathan
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Some general guidelines to calorie cycling and maximizing progress
I am deeply suspicious that many people are not really doing this sort of thing and I don't understand it, personally. I cant' sleep and am losing hiar over the whole thing. In fact, don't tell anyone, but the constant concern has prevented me from being able to get a full-on erection for a while now. I'm lying, but in seriousness, calorie-cycling makes pursuing a lifestyle of fitness manageable and practical, and if you ask me, is the most efficient means to go about putting on muscle mass and removing excess bodyfat. You can even skip the muscle-building phase if you are training for other sports but still need to get your bodyfat down and want it to stay relatively low year-round.
The principal is simple: Your body has its own natural internal systems set-up to maintain homeostatis BUT there is always a lag in the amount of time it takes your body to adapt to both training and diet changes. It is no secret that when starting a new diet or training regimen, the vast majority of the progress comes in the first few weeks. After this, progress slows and it often becomes progressively more challenging to maintain the new routine. Most people who have tried a lengthy diet can attest to this, provided they didn't have their head shoved way up their ass the entire time. What does this mean for your yearly diet considerations? Reasonably short, punctuated diet (and training) changes can be made continually to maximize progress and minimize the risk of not being able to adhere to a solid meal plan.
At the end of a significant period of dieting like I will outline below, numerous hormones that are responsible for keeping a "fast" metabolism have been depleted and have low blood concentrations as your body was doing its best to slow your metabolism down in order to avoid wasting away to nothing and ultimately prevent you from dying. In your body's mind, food is scarce and so it needs to minimize energy output for as long as possible until food becomes plentiful again, which is hopefully long before you starve to death. There are a host of factors that contribute to progressively slowing down your dieting efforts. To name a few, dieting leads to a decreased metabolic rate, decreased willingness to expend energy, reduced immune function, decreased reproductive function, decreased leptin levels, and decreased output of anabolic hormones (GhRH, GH, GRH, testosterone, TSH and thyroid hormones).
A similar, albeit modified, system can be applied to training though I will continue to focus on diet here. The idea is to exploit your body's inherit "lag" in adapting to any changes in regular food consumption you make. For instance, say for a moment that you are a 200lb reasonably fit man that is eating around 4200kcal ED and has been for a solid 6-8 weeks straight (his maintenance calories are around 3400kcal ED let's say). His goal has been to gain strength and muscle but he has noticed that his core lifts (deads, squats, and bench presses) aren't going up as much as they were during weeks 1-4 and that he has gained an extra couple pounds of fat. Many people prefer to simply change up their training regimen at this juncture by adjusting the volume, the exercises being performed, rest-time, etc. in the hopes that this will translate into further gains in muscle mass. Personally, I only take this approach if the amount of fat I have gained in the 6-8 weeks is minimal and not all that noticeable.
I would say the thing to evaluate at this point is how much fat you have gained in the past 6-8 weeks, how much fat you are expecting to gain by continually eating as much as you are over another 6-8 weeks, and then if the answer is more than a few pounds of fat I would lower my calories rather than simply changing up my training. In other words, if after 6-8 weeks you've already gained 3 or more pounds of fat and want to be leaner in the long-run, then it is time to lower your calories (IN ADDITION TO CHANGING UP YOUR LIFTING ROUTINE). Lifting routines should always be changed or modified to some extent at least every 5-10 weeks, though different people will recommend different things there.
Let's say in this particular example that our 200lb man has made good, solid gains in muscle mass over the past 6-8 weeks (gained a few extra pounds of muscle) and is pleased that by eating more or less clean throughout, he has only gained an extra 2lbs of fat. At this point, my advice to him would be to drop his calories from 4200kcal ED to around 3000-3100kcal ED. Personally, I find the reprieve from all the food welcome and it takes me a good 4-5 weeks or so before I even start to feel like I am somewhat consistently hungry, meanwhile I am losing fat like crazy.
Keeping with our 200lb man example, after about 2-4 weeks at 3000-3100kcal ED (depending on whether the fat loss is still going strong at week 3 or whatever), I would start lowering my calories by 100kcal ED each week were I him. So, let's say after 3 weeks you drop your calories, you should be lowering them to around 2900kcal ED from the original starting point of 3000-3100kcal ED, and you should continue to eat 2900kcal each day for at least a full week. Repeat this process nearly every week UNLESS you feel the fat loss is going well in which case lower your calories as slowly as you can from week to week - e.g skip lowering them one week altogether or lower them by only 50kcal ED instead of 100kcal ED one or two weeks. Keep doing this progressive lowering of calories for no more than 7-8 weeks MAXIMUM - you will find the fat loss is slowing considerably by this point anyways, unless you started the diet significantly overweight (in which case it is astronomically easier to remove bodyfat). I would never drop my calories below 2500-2600 kcal ED if I were the person in this example - it gets hard to manage and your body would rather make you feel like shit by partitioning lower amounts of glucose for energy than increase the fat loss. IMO, this is a good time to take a break from dieting - the relevant hormones responsible for most of the fat loss are now depleted and progress is coming much much slower.
So what comes next? Where do we go from here? Shall we indulge and buy into the yo-yo dieting philosophy and stuff our faces full of 45 pies in one sitting? While that is arguably an excellent solution to a great many problems, it won't help us here given our goals. The thing to do at this point is to recharge the system and bring all of the relevant hormones and metabolic processes back up to normal levels. Typically, this can be done by eating at around maintenace for a period of 2 weeks (maybe slightly longer). At the end of this 2 weeks period, hormones like testosterone, GH, T3, T4, etc. have all been brought back up to more normal levels and your metabolism is back to being used to processing your maintenance calories each day - roughly 3400kcal a day if you are the man in our example.
At this point, even if further fat loss is the primary goal, I would recommend slowly raising your calories slightly above maintenance over the next few weeks ("slightly" implies at most a few hundred calories). Your metabolism is high but you can get your body used to processing a little bit more than maintenance on a daily basis, which will make dieting that much easier when it comes time again. Sure, a slight amount of fat might come back but if you up your calories slowly and not really much over maintenance, then it should be negligible (or at least simple enough to lose in a matter of days). From here, either progressively get your calories back up to around 4200kcal ED (maximum) if you wish to gain more strength and size, otherwise lower the calories back down to around 2900-3000kcal ED and jump back into another few weeks of dieting.
The idea is to repeat this process over and over again over a period of months to years. Try experimenting with the length of time you spend dieting, how low and high you raise you calories, etc. I have done periods of two weeks of dieting post-bulking to simply take off any fat I accumulated while over-eating and often two weeks is all it takes. In this case, I haven't even been dieting long enough to slow my metabolism by much at all so I don't have to be all that anal when it comes to bringing my calories back up. The longer you diet, the more anal you need to be....there's probably an analogy to be drawn between the length of time spent in prison and the likelihood of being....ahem...violated but I'm going to refrain from making it. You are so welcome.
A Few Considerations
I mentioned that eating "clean" throughout is a good idea. Hopefully most people here know what I mean by "clean", though if not there are numerous other threads outlining numerous halthy food options. It is important to note, however, that you can eat less "clean" while in the higher calorie phase. I'm not saying pie and cake are good choices at any time, I am simply saying this is a good time to not worry so much about sauces and things like that when you go out to eat, maybe eat more breads (whole wheat or whole grain), more milk, etc. Things that aren't bad for you but are often not recommended for a "clean" diet.
As far as macronutrient ratios, I would always stick to an isocaloric one. That is, I would aim for a daily caloric ratio of around 40/30/30 as far as carbs/protein/fat. It doesn't have to be perfect but lowering your carbs under 50-100g a day will more than likely slow your progress down rather than improve it - at least that has always been the case for me.
As far as lifting goes, you can apply this type of diet to just about any exercise program and it should translate into a leaner body. Even if you don't lift and are a rock climber or a triathlete, I would still try something like this but would simply shorten the periods you spend eating much OVER maintenance. A little over maintenance should still work well to get your metabolism sufficiently fast to prime your body for fat loss.
As far as supplements and drugs go, clearly by administering certain supplements and drugs, many of the effects of prolonged dieting can be by-passed, though you'd have to be pumping yourself full of a ton of different crap in order to not feel any slow in metabolism AT ALL. Generally speaking, there is no way to completely by-pass ALL of your body's natural means of maintaining homeostasis. Jesus could probably have done it, and maybe Richard Simmons, but that's about it.
I am deeply suspicious that many people are not really doing this sort of thing and I don't understand it, personally. I cant' sleep and am losing hiar over the whole thing. In fact, don't tell anyone, but the constant concern has prevented me from being able to get a full-on erection for a while now. I'm lying, but in seriousness, calorie-cycling makes pursuing a lifestyle of fitness manageable and practical, and if you ask me, is the most efficient means to go about putting on muscle mass and removing excess bodyfat. You can even skip the muscle-building phase if you are training for other sports but still need to get your bodyfat down and want it to stay relatively low year-round.
The principal is simple: Your body has its own natural internal systems set-up to maintain homeostatis BUT there is always a lag in the amount of time it takes your body to adapt to both training and diet changes. It is no secret that when starting a new diet or training regimen, the vast majority of the progress comes in the first few weeks. After this, progress slows and it often becomes progressively more challenging to maintain the new routine. Most people who have tried a lengthy diet can attest to this, provided they didn't have their head shoved way up their ass the entire time. What does this mean for your yearly diet considerations? Reasonably short, punctuated diet (and training) changes can be made continually to maximize progress and minimize the risk of not being able to adhere to a solid meal plan.
At the end of a significant period of dieting like I will outline below, numerous hormones that are responsible for keeping a "fast" metabolism have been depleted and have low blood concentrations as your body was doing its best to slow your metabolism down in order to avoid wasting away to nothing and ultimately prevent you from dying. In your body's mind, food is scarce and so it needs to minimize energy output for as long as possible until food becomes plentiful again, which is hopefully long before you starve to death. There are a host of factors that contribute to progressively slowing down your dieting efforts. To name a few, dieting leads to a decreased metabolic rate, decreased willingness to expend energy, reduced immune function, decreased reproductive function, decreased leptin levels, and decreased output of anabolic hormones (GhRH, GH, GRH, testosterone, TSH and thyroid hormones).
A similar, albeit modified, system can be applied to training though I will continue to focus on diet here. The idea is to exploit your body's inherit "lag" in adapting to any changes in regular food consumption you make. For instance, say for a moment that you are a 200lb reasonably fit man that is eating around 4200kcal ED and has been for a solid 6-8 weeks straight (his maintenance calories are around 3400kcal ED let's say). His goal has been to gain strength and muscle but he has noticed that his core lifts (deads, squats, and bench presses) aren't going up as much as they were during weeks 1-4 and that he has gained an extra couple pounds of fat. Many people prefer to simply change up their training regimen at this juncture by adjusting the volume, the exercises being performed, rest-time, etc. in the hopes that this will translate into further gains in muscle mass. Personally, I only take this approach if the amount of fat I have gained in the 6-8 weeks is minimal and not all that noticeable.
I would say the thing to evaluate at this point is how much fat you have gained in the past 6-8 weeks, how much fat you are expecting to gain by continually eating as much as you are over another 6-8 weeks, and then if the answer is more than a few pounds of fat I would lower my calories rather than simply changing up my training. In other words, if after 6-8 weeks you've already gained 3 or more pounds of fat and want to be leaner in the long-run, then it is time to lower your calories (IN ADDITION TO CHANGING UP YOUR LIFTING ROUTINE). Lifting routines should always be changed or modified to some extent at least every 5-10 weeks, though different people will recommend different things there.
Let's say in this particular example that our 200lb man has made good, solid gains in muscle mass over the past 6-8 weeks (gained a few extra pounds of muscle) and is pleased that by eating more or less clean throughout, he has only gained an extra 2lbs of fat. At this point, my advice to him would be to drop his calories from 4200kcal ED to around 3000-3100kcal ED. Personally, I find the reprieve from all the food welcome and it takes me a good 4-5 weeks or so before I even start to feel like I am somewhat consistently hungry, meanwhile I am losing fat like crazy.
Keeping with our 200lb man example, after about 2-4 weeks at 3000-3100kcal ED (depending on whether the fat loss is still going strong at week 3 or whatever), I would start lowering my calories by 100kcal ED each week were I him. So, let's say after 3 weeks you drop your calories, you should be lowering them to around 2900kcal ED from the original starting point of 3000-3100kcal ED, and you should continue to eat 2900kcal each day for at least a full week. Repeat this process nearly every week UNLESS you feel the fat loss is going well in which case lower your calories as slowly as you can from week to week - e.g skip lowering them one week altogether or lower them by only 50kcal ED instead of 100kcal ED one or two weeks. Keep doing this progressive lowering of calories for no more than 7-8 weeks MAXIMUM - you will find the fat loss is slowing considerably by this point anyways, unless you started the diet significantly overweight (in which case it is astronomically easier to remove bodyfat). I would never drop my calories below 2500-2600 kcal ED if I were the person in this example - it gets hard to manage and your body would rather make you feel like shit by partitioning lower amounts of glucose for energy than increase the fat loss. IMO, this is a good time to take a break from dieting - the relevant hormones responsible for most of the fat loss are now depleted and progress is coming much much slower.
So what comes next? Where do we go from here? Shall we indulge and buy into the yo-yo dieting philosophy and stuff our faces full of 45 pies in one sitting? While that is arguably an excellent solution to a great many problems, it won't help us here given our goals. The thing to do at this point is to recharge the system and bring all of the relevant hormones and metabolic processes back up to normal levels. Typically, this can be done by eating at around maintenace for a period of 2 weeks (maybe slightly longer). At the end of this 2 weeks period, hormones like testosterone, GH, T3, T4, etc. have all been brought back up to more normal levels and your metabolism is back to being used to processing your maintenance calories each day - roughly 3400kcal a day if you are the man in our example.
At this point, even if further fat loss is the primary goal, I would recommend slowly raising your calories slightly above maintenance over the next few weeks ("slightly" implies at most a few hundred calories). Your metabolism is high but you can get your body used to processing a little bit more than maintenance on a daily basis, which will make dieting that much easier when it comes time again. Sure, a slight amount of fat might come back but if you up your calories slowly and not really much over maintenance, then it should be negligible (or at least simple enough to lose in a matter of days). From here, either progressively get your calories back up to around 4200kcal ED (maximum) if you wish to gain more strength and size, otherwise lower the calories back down to around 2900-3000kcal ED and jump back into another few weeks of dieting.
The idea is to repeat this process over and over again over a period of months to years. Try experimenting with the length of time you spend dieting, how low and high you raise you calories, etc. I have done periods of two weeks of dieting post-bulking to simply take off any fat I accumulated while over-eating and often two weeks is all it takes. In this case, I haven't even been dieting long enough to slow my metabolism by much at all so I don't have to be all that anal when it comes to bringing my calories back up. The longer you diet, the more anal you need to be....there's probably an analogy to be drawn between the length of time spent in prison and the likelihood of being....ahem...violated but I'm going to refrain from making it. You are so welcome.
A Few Considerations
I mentioned that eating "clean" throughout is a good idea. Hopefully most people here know what I mean by "clean", though if not there are numerous other threads outlining numerous halthy food options. It is important to note, however, that you can eat less "clean" while in the higher calorie phase. I'm not saying pie and cake are good choices at any time, I am simply saying this is a good time to not worry so much about sauces and things like that when you go out to eat, maybe eat more breads (whole wheat or whole grain), more milk, etc. Things that aren't bad for you but are often not recommended for a "clean" diet.
As far as macronutrient ratios, I would always stick to an isocaloric one. That is, I would aim for a daily caloric ratio of around 40/30/30 as far as carbs/protein/fat. It doesn't have to be perfect but lowering your carbs under 50-100g a day will more than likely slow your progress down rather than improve it - at least that has always been the case for me.
As far as lifting goes, you can apply this type of diet to just about any exercise program and it should translate into a leaner body. Even if you don't lift and are a rock climber or a triathlete, I would still try something like this but would simply shorten the periods you spend eating much OVER maintenance. A little over maintenance should still work well to get your metabolism sufficiently fast to prime your body for fat loss.
As far as supplements and drugs go, clearly by administering certain supplements and drugs, many of the effects of prolonged dieting can be by-passed, though you'd have to be pumping yourself full of a ton of different crap in order to not feel any slow in metabolism AT ALL. Generally speaking, there is no way to completely by-pass ALL of your body's natural means of maintaining homeostasis. Jesus could probably have done it, and maybe Richard Simmons, but that's about it.
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