The fastest way to lose body fat and build muscle from a nutritional perspective is to use a system called calorie cycling.
Why is this so useful?
What this allows you to do is match your calories to your output whilst still maintaining a calorie deficit.
This means that on your training days you will have enough calories to maximise your training and when you’re on your non training days you’re eating enough calories to help with fat loss.
How does it help build muscle?
You will notice increased performance on your training days due to the increase in calories. Most people tend to perform better when they have more calories (carbohydrates) in their system.
If you’re able to perform better this will lead to you being able to stimulate the muscle better and also create more consistent workouts.
Being able to perform consistently, progress your lifts and provide your body with the necessary nutrition is what leads to increased muscle mass.
This is how calorie cycling can help with your goal to increase muscle whilst dropping body fat.
What about fat loss?
The main thing when it comes to dropping body fat is being in a calorie deficit. What people tend to forget it that this doesn’t work on a 24 hour clock. You should actually be more focused on your weekly average rather than your day to day calorie intake.
This is also the same when you weigh yourself and track your bodyweight. More often than not people go of a day by day weigh in to gauge their progress but you should be more focused on your weekly average as this will give you an insight to what’s actually happening and if you’re progressing.
You add up all of your daily weights and then divide by the number of weight ins (7) in this case. If you miss a weigh in and only manage 6 then divide the sum by (6).
This also works with your calories, so if you’re noticing that after your lower calorie days that weight is dropping but then after your higher days it goes up a bit then you need to have the awareness to focus on the weekly average so you don’t lose focus on your goal.
This isn’t always the case but it’s just to make you aware of potential issues that could come up and these are things I often work with clients to understand.
So using calorie cycling to help you with your fat loss can also be very beneficial because it will allow you to still create a calorie deficit throughout the week whilst having the higher calorie days whilst training.
Here is an example of calorie cycling to provide you with more of a visual
This chart is based on an average 2,100 calorie intake. I’ve used the changes in calorie intake to give you the understanding that this will achieve the same results if you were consuming 2,100 calories a day. Overall calorie intake is the key factor to fat loss. This can allow you to prepare for social events and still progress towards your goals.
For the higher calorie days, I would also advise trying to stick to your macro nutrient breakdown of protein, carbohydrates and fat. If you decide to remove carbohydrates to create the lower days then on your higher days use this nutrient.
For example, if your average carbohydrate intake is 200g and you decide to have 2 low days of 150g carbohydrate you then have an extra 100g of carbohydrates to have on the higher day.
I would recommend keeping protein the same each day. Only manipulate carbohydrates or fats.
What this means is you now have your weekly average calorie intake under control. This will make things a lot easier to adjust moving forward because you can get an idea of what days you might not need as many calories on.
For example if you took 200 calories off your 3,000 calorie day it would not be as noticeable compared to taking 200 calories from your 1,800 calorie day.
This is something that anyone can implement and it might take some trial and error but I’ve seen incredible progress from so many clients when they implement this correctly. It’s extremely useful to understand, you don’t need to do it every week but it can be something you use when you have social events coming up or even just to push yourself more on your training or non training days.
I hope this helps, any questions fire away in the comments!
Ricky Brodie